Review The Eminent 7195 is a monster of a media player. It towers above diddy streaming clients like the Apple TV and WDTV models, and would doubtless win a brawl with its HDD media player Netherlands neighbour A.C.Ryan.

All-encompassing: Eminent's EM7195 HD server

To emphasise its size, compatibility badges are writ large and loud across its substantial aluminium casing. But then it does have a reason to shout. It’s extremely well specified. Not only is the EM7195 a media player/server, it has two integrated DVB-T terrestrial TV tuners on-board, as well as some nicely thought out file management and web services.

If you’re familiar with devices like the Popcorn Hour, you’ll know what to expect. The model reviewed here ships with a 500GB drive and is priced at £220. You can also buy one sans drive for £179, or with a 1TB drive at £250, 1.5TB at £269 and 2TB at £289.

Naturally, the most important aspect of any media player is file support, and the EM7195 is not found wanting. Basically, everything I threw at the EM7195 from my ragtag assortment of downloads and rips was played. Popular video formats AVI, AVCHD, MOV, H.264 and anything in an MKV wrapper were all quickly unspooled.

Drives are easily swapped out and you can buy the unit unpopulated

Not only is there SRT subtitle support, but you can also customise font, size, colour and position of your subtitles. The player will also play DVD and Blu-ray ISOs (although there’s no Java compatibility) and Video TS files. Music compatibility is equally as comprehensive. The EM7195 tapped its little plastic feet to FLAC, MP3, AAC, WAV, APE, OGG and WMA tracks - but there is no support for album artwork.

Standard issue

The DVB-T tuner is standard def; recordings can be made to either the hard drive or USB. There are some tell tale signs that this unit’s main market is not the UK. The aerial connections are F-connector rather than the usual Belling-Lee UHF type. In the UK, F- connectors are the sole province of cable and satellite boxes; in mainland Europe they’re everywhere.

EPG

A trip to Maplins for adaptors sorted that out. I’m not really convinced there’s a need for a DVB tuner in a media player like this, but it may float someone’s boat. The unit itself has multiple 50/60Hz options for video play-out, but anything other than 50Hz causes the DVB-T tuner to lose audio sync.

Daisychain the unit in front of a Freeview HD device and put it into standby and you’ll also lose access to your hi-def channels. It’s worth noting that the EM7195 runs rather noisily, so you might want to plan on locating it in an enclosure of some description.

Main menu

I was initially excited to find a USB 3.0 client port provided. The promise of speedy file transfers between PC and device is rather attractive when you have large MKVs to move around. Unfortunately I never got to see this work.

Driver error?

Despite having several EM7195 samples each running various hard drives, all attempts to transfer a large file across failed. I used Buffalo’s handy USB 3.0 PCExpress interface card and then a high-end laptop with dedicated 3.0 USB port, but without success. File transfers would start but never complete. My disappointing conclusion is that there’s a fault with the hard drive controller which is not confined to one rogue unit.

USB 3.0 file transfers is a nice idea, if it ever works

Verdict

Albeit a tad noisy, the Eminent EM7195 appears to offer everything you need for a networked media server. Build quality is substantial, file support is extensive and the inclusion of a DVB tuner should give it an edge. However, ongoing tribulations with file copying make it difficult for me to recommend for USB 3.0 aficionados, although it all works fine on a network. ®

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