Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ Brings Your Hard Drive Videos Right to Your TV

No more cables with this Seagate TV docking station.

After a somewhat disappointing initial release back in February, hard-drive manufacturer Seagate has released an updated version of its FreeAgent Theater HD Media Player called, simply, the Seagate FreeAgent Theater+.

The FreeAgent Theater+ makes storing and using your media files a breeze. Simply load the hard-drive with your selection of movies, music, videos and pictures from your home PC and slide it into the FreeAgent Theater+ docking system to get instant access to your digital media library on your HD TV.

Like its first generation, the FreeAgent Theater+ still allows users to slide and exchange modules between your PC and home-theater; but unlike its predecessor, the FreeAgent Theater+ actually acts as a home-network, drastically simplifying the process of streaming your content directly from your PC to your television.

We use Seagate drives to back up our data because they are small and cheap, now we can just take it to our TV to watch all our vides on a bigscreen. This changes movie night at a friends house, or even how you will lend out your DVD collections in the future.

The new FreeAgent Theater+ has been updated with a 1080p HDMI output port, Dolby Digital and DTS 2.0 and Ethernet connectivity. It also now supports a number of (previously unsupported) video formats including: MPEG-1 MPEG-2 (VOB/ISO), MPEG-4 (DivX(R)/Xvid formats), DivX HD, Xvid HD, AVI, MOV, MKV, RMVB, AVC HD, H.264, WMV9, VC-1, M2TS, and TS/TP/M2T. As far as audio is concerned, the FreeAgent Theater+ can support AC, MP3, Dolby Digital, DTS, ASF, FLAC, WMA, LPCM, ADPCM, WAV and OGG. Finally, the device supports the following image files: BMP, GIF, PNG, TIFF and JPEG files up to 20 megapixles.

Finally, the Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ HD Media Player includes two additional USB ports and an Ethernet port for network connectivity.

The Seageate FreeAgent Theater+ itself is available for pre-order through Seagate.com and/or other online locations. It retails for about HK$1,170 (US$150) or, when bundled with the 500GB Go drive for HK$2,250 (US$289.00). A USB Wireless Adapter is slated for release in October and will be available through seagate.com for around HK$640 (US$69.99).

Download the full datasheet in PDF format here.