trekstor moviestation

By David Ponce

Having recently purchased a 37 inch HDTV, I’m in the market for the best way to bring higher definition content to it. I’m about to buy the Ziova CS-505, but now that I’ve seen the TrekStor MovieStation, I’m reconsidering. It’s basically just a hard drive, with media player hardware thrown in. You plug it into your PC and fill the drive up with whatever video content you’ve got, then plug it to your TV and watch it. It handles a variety of formats (MPEG-1 (VCD), MPEG-2 (SVCD, KVCD, DVD), IFO, VOB, DivX3, DivX5, XviD), and it can upscale them up to 1080i. Sadly there is no HDMI output, so you have to use component cables and either Digital optic (Toslink), analog stereo (Cinch) audio connection. And it’s not networkable, so you have to shuttle back and forth between TV and PC. The drive comes in sizes ranging from 250GB up to 500GB, and prices $300 and $400.

Of course, this device alone is inferior to the Ziova CS-505 (which does all this, and more, but streaming over your network), but I own an Xbox 360. Used in conjunction with the MovieStation, I may just be able to cover all my bases (since the Xbox 360 upscales DVDs over the VGA connection). Well… except for true HD content, but that’s easily solved with the inexpensive HD-DVD drive for the 360.

If anyone wants to suggest a better hardware combination, let’s hear it in the comments.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ SciFi Tech ]

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

4 COMMENTS

  1. Try the Galaxy Metal Gear TVisto. Essentially the same box, but without a hard drive. Recently, SuperMediaStore had them on for $110, and who doesn’t have a multi-gb hard drive kicking around? Even if you had to buy one, I just saw a 300 Gb Seagate for

  2. That’s true, but that thing is not HD. It only outputs with composite cables, so it wont work. I want to do all this:
    1. Upscale DVDs up to 1080i
    2. Plays Divx, Xvid, upscaled
    3. I dont want to burn every movie

  3. As a professional AV systems designer for Texas Integrated Systems (shameless plug), I like to specify the Kaleidescape for our client’s homes. The Kaleidescape provides all that you are looking for with an extremely user friendly interface. You can graphically search your collection (both movies and music) by genre, actor/actress, production year, title, etc etc. The units are multi-drive with RAID-K data protection (who want’s to lose all of their media due to a faulty disk?) and expansion of up to 9 terabytes as your collection grows. I feel that this is the only way to do it right (for now). Link: http://www.kaleidescape.com/

  4. hi..i was wondering if you could help me decide..i would also like to buy a multimedia external hard disk..if you could only tell me which would be the best, i would really appreciate it..it would be either argosy(www.argosy.com.tw/product-detial.php?prod_id=115) lacie or trekstor..thank you so much..

LEAVE A REPLY