HDX 1000 Review #5 - Services

Introduction

In this 5th part of our HDX 1000 review, we are going to go through the services it provides. The services can be categorized into two parts. The first part, “Web Services” are pre-installed in the HDX 1000. In other words, users can enjoy the benefit of using the out-of-box HDX 1000 to browse some pre-selected video / picture / news sharing websites. The second part of the services will be available when an internal SATA HDD is installed. It includes functions of file transferring and BitTorrent downloading.

Web Services

The “Web Services” are described in the introduction section. The browse-able websites are listed below in four categories. The link to each websites is also provided for preview purpose.



1. Video (21)

• Youtube
• Veoh
• Videocast
• DL.TV
• Cranky Geeks
• Blip.tv
• Podfinder UK
• Vuze
• Break
• Revision3
• The Larry King Podcast
• Anderson Cooper 360 Daily
• The CNN Daily
• In Case You Miss It
• Meet the Press
• NBC Today Show
• CNET TV
• CBS Face the Nation
• NBC Nightly News
• Mevio
• Mediafly
  

2. Audio (8)

• Live365 Radio
• iPodcast
• Radiobox
• ABC News
• BBC Podcast
• CNN News
• Indiefeed
• Jamendo
  

3. Photo (4)

• Flickr
• Picasa
• Pikeo
• 23
  

4. RSS (7)

• Bloglines
• Yahoo! Weather
• Yahoo! Traffic Alerts
• Traffic
• Cinecast
• Yahoo! News
• MSNBC News
  

As of today, Oct 22, 2008, the total number of the browse-able websites via HDX 1000 web services is 40. Syabas is in the process of adding more channels to the list.

HDX 1000 Works as a NAS (Network Attached Storage)

You can setup your HDX-1000 (with the internal SATA HDD installed) as a NAS device and move contents in or out of the HDX 1000 from your PC. The way to do so is shown below:

1. Access the HDX 1000 by IP address.

• Go to your HDX 1000.
• From Root menu page, click on “Setup” at the left-hand-side navigation bar.
• Click on “Network” on the left-hand-side navigation bar.
• You can see the current ip address on the screen.
• Go to your PC. Click on Start\Run in a XP machine and type “ \\(Your HDX 1000 IP address)“. (If you have a Vista machine, please go to Start and type “ \\(Your HDX 1000 IP address)“ at the Start Search Box.)
• Enter the User name and Password, you can login to your HDX 1000 from your PC. (Default user name is “nmt”. Password is “1234”.)
  

2. Map the HDX 1000 as your network drive.

• Right click on the “share” folder. You can see one option as “Map Network Drive”. Left click on that.
• Select the drive label you want to assign to the “share” folder, and click “Finish”.
• The mapped drive should appear in “My Computer” for easy accessing.
  

Access HDX 1000 via FTP Service

When installing the NMT application package on your HDX 1000 Internal SATA HDD (See the procedure here), by default you are adding a ftp server onto it. Later on, you can access HDX 1000’s internal HDD via FTP Service.

You first need to have a ftp client application installed on your PC. I recommend to use FileZilla (download from here). It will make the ftp tasks much easier.

Type the following server / login information into FileZilla site manager, hit connect, you should be able to access to your HDX 1000 now.

• Host: “HDX 1000 IP address”
• Port: 21
• Username: ftpuser
• Password: 1234
  

myiHomeLite Server

When installing the NMT application package on your HDX 1000 Internal SATA HDD (See the procedure here), by default you are adding the myiHomeLite server onto it. You can do two things with this service:

• You can playback content stored in HDX 1000 on your PC. However, I cannot make this function work on my system. Since I usually need to stream the content in the opposite direction, from my PC to my HDX 1000, I don’t care if this function works or not.

• You can upload a torrent file onto HDX 1000 and let the HDX 1000’s built-in BitTorrent application download the file for you. The downloaded file will be stored in the HDX 1000 Internal HDD.
  

The way to access the myiHomeLite server is to open up your browser and type “http://(Your HDX 1000 IP address):8088 in the URL box. You should be able to see the myiHomeLite welcome page display. The rest of the operation is intuitional.

Conclusions

The services listed above have added convenience when using the HDX 1000. I’ve found the NAS service extra helpful in transferring files in to and out of HDX 1000. The BitTorrent downloading service is also a plus. With this service, I can use my HDX-1000 (with internal HDD installed) to perform the download task and leave my PC to rest at night.

As to the web services, I have mixed feelings. The service can definitely do the job and it offers a good variety of channels to see. However, I just don’t like to use the limited buttons on the remote control unit to navigate. Imagine you are using your cell phone key pad to browse the Internet and do any necessary search key-in. This is exactly how it feels. In addition, there is also one thing you need to know when using the HDX 1000 to perform web browsing: on a PC, you will receive a buffering message warning when the PC is retrieving data from Internet; on the HDX 1000, you will just experience a pause during data retrieving. Please go watch the following video clip. You can better understand the scenario. This is not a bad thing, but is something that may take getting used to. Usually, this pause only happens when you first try to load the media.

Read the Part 6 of the HDX 1000 Review - Comparison List

Go to the HDX 1000 Product Page at AmperorDirect.com