Prismiq MediaPlayer

If you're like me, you have a collection of MP3 files that you can play only on a portable MP3 player or through your desktop PC speakers. I have about 7000 music files, 100 video files in various formats (home movies of the kids and feature-length movies), and thousands of JPG images of my family on one of five wirelessly connected PCs throughout my house. I needed a way to listen to that collection of digital music on a better sound system, and I wanted to showcase my home movies on something better than my computer's 17” plasma screen.

The Prismiq Mediaplayer is a sleek black box that fits seamlessly into your living room or den. Using the remote control or keyboard, your can instantly pull up the latest news from the Web, chat through AOL Instant Messager (AIM), play MP3 or WMA audio tracks, or enjoy a movie.

Setup is quick and painless. I loaded up the MediaManager software onto my dedicated PC and let the software to scan for appropriate media. This process takes a while, but you can get busy with the hardware while the scanning proceeds.

I placed the Mediaplayer atop my TV and judged its aesthetics. The unit is only 9" x 1.5" x 5.25", and its slim design and elegant style blended nicely with my TV/Xbox/DVR system. Using either the supplied RCA analog-audio cables or the preferred S-Video/Digital Audio output, setup takes just a minute or two. Next, I had a choice between regular cable and a wireless connection to my network. I went the wired route because I already had the network router and cable in place for my Xbox Live connection.

I hit the power button and waited 45 seconds for the unit to power up and connect to the Media PC. I was presented with a helpful menu system that let me to navigate around the MediaPlayer. Network setup went without a hitch: The default settings let MediaPlayer jump onto my network and introduce itself to the wide variety of media!

Media playback is smoother than I expected. Prismiq has done a great job of creating easy-to-navigate menus for Audio, Video, and Photos, and the MediaPlayer comes with the CE version of Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE), which doesn’t support all Web sites but nicely covers news, weather, and stocks. The remote control is a user-friendly navigation tool, with dedicated buttons for audio, video, Web, and so on, but the keyboard is the preferred choice if you plan to use the Web and/or instant messaging (IM)

In my video-playback tests, both DivX and MPG movies worked perfectly—no lag and zero stuttering through the wired network. Prismiq even includes a setting with which to change the aspect ratio from 4x3 to 16x9, demonstrating forward thinking. In my audio-playback tests, MP3 and WMA also worked well, but I’d like to see AAC support at some point. In the imaging department, I created several slide shows that played an audio track in the background—great for weddings, vacations, and birthdays.

The MediaPlayer performed flawlessly through my wired network; however, when I configured the device to work over my 802.11b wireless network (Linksys PCMCIA Card/Linksys Access Point/Router), I had problems with DivX files. MPG and MP3 played fine, but the large file size and slow data-transfer rate (802.11b is just 10Mbps) caused stutters after a couple of minutes of playback with the DivX encoded movies. Changing the wireless network to 802.11g, running at 54Mbps, eliminated the problem.

Prismiq has crammed a plethora of features into its MediaPlayer. This nifty device gives you access to your digital media collection—music, video, art, and the Web—so that you can display it in your living room, den, or bedroom. For $199 (plus $50 for the optional wireless keyboard), the Prismiq Mediaplayer is a device no connected home should be without. We can’t wait to see the recently announced MediaPlayer/Recorder in action.

Checkout the MediaPlayer at the Prismiq Website