TVisto Series 3.5'' Multimedia External Hard Drive Enclosure
by Metal Gear
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Our Price: $99.00 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of TVisto Series 3.5'' Multimedia External Hard Drive Enclosure
Customer Review: It does the job!
Summary: 4 Stars
TVisto really does what I want it to do: back up my DVDs so that my kids don't destroy them. I agree with a previous review that states that the only format that matters for backing up DVDs is the ISO format. Image quality is great. I do not recommend this product if you are not hardware oriented, even though installation of the hard drive is a breeze it may get a little tricky and I will describe my experience on setting this puppy up next.
I installed the hard drive (HD)as described in the user's manual. The manual says it needs to be installed as a master but I had a problem with this because my PC did not recognize the USB mass storage device once plugged in. So then I went ahead and changed the HD configuration to slave. Now, this setting worked for me. As soon as I plugged the USB cable, my PC detected the mass storage device. The next hoop was that I had to create a primary partition and format the HD to NTFS. The user's manual instructs on using Windows disk manager utility. Well... this didn't work either. My PC runs on a Windows XP Home edition and the Windows disk manager is not available; but this is really not a problem. I used my laptop instead which runs on a Windows XP Pro and only then I was able to create my partition and format the HD. I also recommend using a third party software like Partition Magic or so to do this. So in a nutshell, I had these two small problems fixed with small details but important ones and were not mentioned in the owner's manual. Therefore, I deducted one star rating just becuase of poor documentation. I did not want to get into customer support, because I do not think TVisto has such thing. Customer support is done through the merchant that you buy from and it makes sense since you can think of TVisto just like another HD enclosure that enables you to play movies on your TV. Again, I do not recommend this gadget to anyone not familiar with installing hardware as TVisto is not really a product ready to use; however, it is one of the best choices in the market of multimedia storage, and the best part is its low price.
I noticed that the cable has been purposely slit to allow greater flexibility and ease of HD installation. None of those cuts exposed any wire so it was fine. Some may think that the unit came with a broken EIDE cable, but this is not the case.
Overall I am very pleased with my new gadget.
Customer Review: Almost there but doesn't live up to advertised capability.
Summary: 3 Stars
The documentation is not necessarily clear, especially for someone who has never dealt with an unformatted externally connected USB Drive. In fact if you have never formatted a Hard Drive at all you may be left scratching your head. The directions no doubt make complete sense to an IT person but not the layman consumer. It makes reference to opening Computer Management and Disk Management. Say what??? It took some digging on the Internet but I realized my ignorance. The path is: Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Disk Management. It will ask you some other things along the way, like initializing the drive. Just click OK. You are left up to your own devices as far as actually formatting the drive with Disk Manager, I did not record my actual steps. I recommend you visit the Hard Drive manufacturer's website.
I initially got a `USB device not recognized' error. I'm using a 500GB Seagate Barracuda Ultra ATA IDE, 7200.1 model#: ST350063 0A. It was shipped with the jumper set to Cable Select. I removed the jumper completely, Bingo! now it worked. Again isn't this basic information that could be added to the manual. Duhhh! I was finally able to format the drive according to the steps above. It has a formatted capacity of 465.76GB. Follow the instructions to create the four main Folders/Directories and you're off. Just download your files to it.
Now for the actual results. It works as described, kind of. So far I am unable to play ACC (mp4) files. Very frustrating since it clearly says that it can. Also there is no VGA output cabability as advertised, so if you are thinking of using it in conjuction with a monitor forget it. I am going to give it a try for bit and them maybe consider the MviX.
Ok I've had some time with it now and I'm still not very impressed. The menu features could definitely use work. Very clumsy. As for the AAC capability they have now qualified it's capabilities in their literature. Basically it doesn't play mp4 audio.
Customer Review: Good idea, mediocre implementation
Summary: 1 Stars
Bought this device (from another vendor) about a year ago as it was hitting the market. It does what it says it does when I get it to work which is sometimes difficult. First unit had the internal ribbon that connects the controls to the HD broken, so the device needed replacement on my dime. The new one works OK but if turned off by the remote, it ALWAYS hangs up requiring a power reset or even total unplugging before it will play again. Also firmware is NOT upgradable from TVisto since the unit is a Galaxy branded unit and the Firmware is only good for Macpower units (it says so in the fine print on the web site). So, after unsuccessfully trying to upgrade the firmawre several times I noticed this and they are now on version 2+ and mine has version 1.4.10 and I can't upgrade and I an not able to find a Web site for Galaxy that has the firmware; what a bummer. To add insult to injury I have a Harmony Logitech remote and the GaLaxy remote is not on the list and it has proven impossible (for me at least) to manually program it using the learn mode. Also, the Galaxy remote lay out is not as intuitive as it could have been (e.g, push home to save settings). In addition if you notice, the component video cable has just been made available for about $38.00 on some sites although it was listed all along as included in the equipment but was actually not part of the device I recieved. To get the RGB cable I needed to go to Europe. Finally verdict, too much money (although I paid even more than the currnet going price) for not-so-polished unit with primitive non-upgradeable AV interface to which you yet need to add a HD drive. I started rating this unit as a 2 star but it does not metit this, one is enough since there is nothing lower than that.Customer Review: Great for the road. Good in the home, although a little outdated.
Summary: 3 Stars
I used this as a primary media player on my home TV for about a year before I began building HTPCs. It worked well and I had very few complaints about it.
I was able to put up to a 500GB drive in mine and it played back most all of my DivX and XviD encoded movies. I'm not into music, but I know it will play most of the more common formats.
Setup is not overly difficult, but is a little tricky to make the settings stick (especially for audio). Menus are simple, yet effective, and there are some decent playback controls available while viewing videos.
There are plenty of output options available, with even more if purchased separately (component for HD, for example). S-Video, Composite, analog stereo, and optical S/PDIF are all standard. There is also USB and Firewire ports for transferring your media.
Updates for the device are probably long gone as newer models have far surpassed what this is capable of. However, if you want simple and inexpensive (as this one should be now), it's a good device to take on vacations or weekend trips since the common hookups will attach to most hotel TVs without a hitch. This makes it great if you have kids and want to bring all their favorite shows (if you encode them, like I do).
On the downside, the device is a little slow to respond to the remote at times. Not a big deal, but it is there. Also, it will only take specifically encoded files, meaning certain features of supported formats will make it incompatible with the TVISTO (GMC/QPEL in XviD, for example). I would have also liked AVC playback, but I realize this is an older device and AVC was not as popular when I bought this.
Customer Review: Great for what it's supposed to do.
Summary: 4 Stars
Just got my Tvisto and set it up. Used a 200gb WD hard drive and everything went together easily. I noticed on the Macpower site (same thing, different brand) that they have several firmware updates. I noticed from another review that Galaxy did not have any updates available on their site, but someone was successful in using the Macpower firmware update on their Galaxy drive. I tried it out and it would not update. I got on Galaxy's site and found out that there is a firmware update available (looks like a recent addition, May 06). Downloaded that and it updated without issue.
I had borrowed a DVD disc with a season's worth of a TV show in avi files on it from a friend. I had copied the avi files to my PC drive and had been watching them using Media Player. When I noticed a write up on the Tvisto in a magazine, I got one. I copied the avi files from my PC onto the Tvisto drive, unhooked it, hooked it up to the TV, and presto! I was able to watch all the avi files on my TV. Very clear picture, excellent sound (I'm not sure how the original recording was made).
To use this you need to be able to:
- open the case (3 small screws) and install hard drive (two cables)
- connect drive to PC (USB or firewire) and format
- create file folders on the new drive and copy media files to the drive
- connect drive to TV and select input