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Eminent EM7280 hdMEDIA RT3 review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £136
inc VAT

A hard disk, USB3 port and support for HD Blu-ray audio are all incredibly attractive options, but the WD TV Live Hub is similar and easier to use

While most of the media streamers we see rely on a network connection to find content, Eminent’s hdMEDIA RT3 also has a 500GB hard disk, which can serve as a central repository of your favourite media files. If you don’t already have a NAS or a large external drive, the hdMEDIA RT3 kills two birds with one stone, acting as both networked storage and media player.

Eminent EM7280 hdMEDIA RT3

To make it easier to transfer your existing media, the hdMEDIA RT3 comes with a USB3 input and cable, making transfers from a USB3-equipped PC or laptop even faster. You also get a Gigabit Ethernet port (a wireless version, the EM7285, is also available), two USB ports and an SD card slot, giving you plenty of ways to fill up the hdMEDIA RT3’s disk. The USB ports both accept mice and keyboards, as well as storage.

As far as outputs are concerned, there’s HDMI, composite video, and a choice of phono, optical or coaxial audio. Eminent bundles HDMI, composite and optical cables in the box, too, and it’s all covered by a five year warranty, which makes the hdMEDIA RT3’s price more palatable. The current high price of hard disks is also a factor here: hopefully we’ll see the price fall as supply gets back to normal.

Eminent EM7280 hdMEDIA RT3

Media is only visible under the main menu headings – Movies, Music and Photo – once it’s stored on the local disk. To access networked media (SMB or UPnP) you have to use the Manager option instead to navigate through your network. Once you’ve found network content you can either play it or copy it to the local disk.

We couldn’t find a way of storing network locations for easy access and the hdMEDIA RT3 encourages you to store things on its hard disk. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. File support is excellent, and you can upgrade the hard disk to a larger one if need be. There’s support for DVD and Blu-ray menus, although we couldn’t get the latter to work with all of our test discs and the hdMEDIA RT3 just listed the video files. Impressively, this player supports DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD – the HD Blu-ray audio formats – and is the only streamer we’ve seen to do so.

Eminent EM7280 hdMEDIA RT3

Music support is similarly as good. There’s also support for playlists, but you can only create a playlist whilst in the Manager section, and not in the Music section.

Internet services are listed under Apps. The first page lists Facebook, YouTube XL and Picasa apps, a Buddy Link IM app, a weather app, a browser and two Yahoo! news feeds. There’s also a link named “Eminent AppCenter” and then a further link before you get another page of apps. Why these are split off from the first page of apps is a mystery, and an annoyance. The extra apps include Shoutcast radio, Revision 3 videos, Apple trailers and a host of less well-known services. It also includes adult content from PornHub, which can’t be blocked or removed from the list.

Compared to the Western Digital WD TV Live Hub – our favourite disk-equipped streamer – the hdMEDIA RT3 looks a bit shabby, with its fewer internet services and an interface that’s both uglier and less intuitive, plus it has half the space of the Live Hub in a box twice the size. While the ability to transfer files to the internal disk via USB3 is a big plus for some, in everyday use it’s far more cumbersome to operate, so if you’d prefer a disk-based streamer, we’d advise spending a bit more on the WD TV Live Hub instead.

Basic Specifications

Rating ***
Media Streamer type streaming multimedia receiver

Audio Compatibility

Audio MP3 playback Yes
Audio WMA playback No
Audio WMA-DRM playback No
Audio AAC playback Yes
Audio Protected AAC playback No
Audio OGG playback Yes
Audio WAV playback No
Audio Audible playback No
Other audio formats MP2, COOK, RA-lossless, FLAC

Video Compatibility

Other video formats MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, AVCHD, VC-1

Image Compatibility

Image BMP support Yes
Image JPEG support Yes
Image TIFF support Yes

Network Interfaces

Wired network ports 1x 10/100/1000
Wireless networking support No

AV Interfaces

Minijack line outputs 0
Minijack headphone outputs 0
Stereo phono outputs 1
Coaxial S/PDIF outputs 1
Optical S/PDIF outputs 1
Total SCART sockets 0
HDMI outputs 1
Component outputs 0
S-video output 0
Composite outputs 1
Other connectors 1x USB3 (client), 2x USB2 (host), SD

Physical

Size 57x222x160mm
Power consumption standby 1W
Power consumption on 11W

Server Compatibility

Software included none
UPnP Yes
iTunes No
SlimServer No
SMB Yes

Buying Information

Price £136
Warranty five years RTB
Supplier http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk
Details www.eminent-online.com

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