Eminent EM7195 HD server

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.