Eminent hdMEDIA RT EM7080 review
The EM7080 has a better interface than most, but we were irritated by problems such as poor YouTube support for users who don't install a hard disk.
Like most modern streaming multimedia receivers, the EM7080 has excellent format support. It successfully played the video content of our Blu-ray rip and gave us full menu support for most DVD ISO rips, as well as happily playing all our codec test files. Alongside a list of file names, the browser show a preview window for video files and album art for music. We were annoyed to find that music tracks usually produced a slight skip when we started playing. After that, entire directories played in correct album order without further problems. Directories full of videos also played sequentially until stopped. Photo viewing worked reasonably well; the slideshow viewer had trouble loading a 38MB TIFF image but smaller TIFFs weren’t a problem.
The EM7080 is cheap for a streamer capable of taking a hard disk and comes with a phenomenal five-year warranty, but it’s also noisy and its functionality is compromised if you don’t add a hard disk. We prefer the Western Digital WD TV Live Hub.
Basic Specifications | |
|---|---|
| Rating | *** |
| Media Streamer type | hard disk streaming multimedia device |
Audio Compatibility | |
| Audio MP3 playback | Yes |
| Audio WMA playback | Yes |
| Audio WMA-DRM playback | No |
| Audio AAC playback | Yes |
| Audio Protected AAC playback | No |
| Audio OGG playback | Yes |
| Audio WAV playback | Yes |
| Audio Audible playback | No |
| Other audio formats | FLAC, COOK |
Video Compatibility | |
| Other video formats | MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, APC, H.264, WMV9, XVID, DIVX |
Image Compatibility | |
| Image BMP support | Yes |
| Image JPEG support | Yes |
| Image TIFF support | Yes |
Network Interfaces | |
| Wired network ports | 1x 10/100 |
| Wireless networking support | Yes |
AV Interfaces | |
| Minijack line outputs | 0 |
| Minijack headphone outputs | 0 |
| Stereo phono outputs | 1 |
| Coaxial S/PDIF outputs | 0 |
| Optical S/PDIF outputs | 1 |
| Total SCART sockets | 0 |
| HDMI outputs | 1 |
| Component outputs | 1 |
| S-video output | 0 |
| Composite outputs | 1 |
| Other connectors | 2x USB, 1x USB (client) |
Physical | |
| Size | 50x166x166mm |
| Power consumption standby | 0W |
| Power consumption on | 7W |
Server Compatibility | |
| Software included | none |
| UPnP | Yes |
| iTunes | No |
| SlimServer | No |
| SMB | Yes |
Buying Information | |
| Price | £125 |
| Warranty | five years RTB |
| Supplier | http://www.amazon.co.uk |
| Details | www.eminent-online.com |