Black Boxes: HP Digital Media Receiver en5000

by Charles Fulton
Winter 2003/Spring 2004

Hewlett-Packard (er, HP, these days) has stepped into the home networking fray with the HP Digital Media Receiver. Available in Ethernet (which we tested) and Ethernet/Wi-Fi versions, the device has a well-thought-out interface and was able to handle the most common files that we threw at it (once we passed the hurdles that the software threw at us). HP is also offering a version of this product that adds WiFi connectivity, dubbed the ew5000. This version also supports 64- and 128-bit WEP encryption, allowing you to add the Digital Media Receiver to a Wi-Fi LAN that has extra security measures in place to protect against bandwidth stealing from local WarDrivers (for those not steeped in the latest networking lingo, these are people who find open Wi-Fi access points to connect to the Internet for free.)

Simple Hardware Setup
Without delving too far into the documentation, we hooked the Digital Media Receiver to our home theater via our VCR. We attached it to our network and turned it on. Setup was simple-there were just a few settings to make the device see our network. At the end of the setup, the receiver showed its main screen, with a prompt at the bottom of the screen that there were no servers on the network. So, we proceeded to install the Digital Media Receiver's server software on our computer.

Hurdle #1
The majority of software that's come through our building lately runs on a broad range of Windows operating systems, generally Windows 98SE, Me, 2000 and XP, with the occasional program that still runs on Windows 95 (though these are getting rarer,) 98 or NT 4.0. With this assumption, we logged into our Windows 2000 machine's administrator account, and placed the install disc in our CD burner. Unfortunately, a polite yet terse message appeared informing us that the software only runs in Windows Me and XP. So much for making it work on this computer.

Relocating the unit to another venue (that had a machine running Windows XP Professional) allowed us to install the software. The server for the Digital Media Receiver installed, along with a basic version of MusicMatch. Like the versions of MusicMatch that install with other consumer electronic products of this nature, there were a number of nag screens that appeared, touting the benefits of upgrading to the full version of the software.

Picture It
Making the unit display our images was a simple matter. We dragged some art into our Administrator's "My Pictures" folder and voila, our pictures were accessible in the Digital Media Receiver's "photo albums" area, complete with thumbnails of our newly moved images. You can print your digital photos to your default printer with one press of the print key on the remote control.

Hurdle #2
The Digital Media Receiver ships with a number of jazz tracks to get you started. But we wanted to listen to our own tracks. Trying to make the tracks in our collection accessible via MusicMatch Jukebox required a frustrating barrage of trial and error. So much for not having to refer to the documentation.

Once we downloaded the PDF manual online, we found the location where we could specify the folders that the server software would watch and sync its database to (and once everything synced up, the selections were available on the Digital Media Receiver). This setting lies within the server software itself, not within MusicMatch Jukebox-this threw us for a curve. One problem is that you can only specify five folders as sources for the music and images that you want to access on the Digital Media Receiver. If you are anything like us, hoping to leverage the music and images stored on the outer recesses of your LAN, this will quickly become an obstacle. (Additionally, the manual states that music must be on local hard drives, and cannot be located on network shares or local removable disks.) However, you can install the server software on other Windows Me or XP machines on your LAN. (Of course, if you don't have one of these operating systems installed on a machine that has music or photos that you want to view or play on the Digital Media Receiver, you're back to the same annoying conundrum of OS compatibility.)

This leads us to believe that the inclusion of MusicMatch Jukebox was mostly for ripping your own CDs to add to your music library. If you already have a CD ripper/MP3 encoder application that you like to use (say, Roxio Easy CD and DVD Creator, Nero Burning ROM, WinDAC, Windows Media Player, RealOne player or even iTunes, if you have a Mac on your network), we'd heartily recommend using the software that you already know and love, and forgo using MusicMatch.

However, if you were looking forward to making playlists of some of your favorite tracks, the MusicMatch playlist folder is one of the folders shared by default. If you have better luck than we did with MusicMatch, this will be a convenient way indeed to organize the way the Digital Media Receiver handles your music.

The Digital Media Receiver's server software can handle M3U, PLS and RMP playlists. Again, if you are proficient with creating playlists in popular MP3 players like WinAmp 2, Sonique, FreeAmp or RealOne Player, we'd recommend that you use the program you already know.

Formats
The unit can handle music in the ubiquitous MP3 and WMA formats. While we have not seen any players that can support AAC or Ogg Vorbis formats quite yet, we hope that HP will consider adding support for these formats. For those of you who have filled your hard drives exclusively with MP3s, AAC is the default format for Apple iTunes 4, and Ogg Vorbis is a royalty-free audio format that achieves sound quality similar to MP3, using lower bitrates.

Come and See the Show
You can also run music in the background while showing the photos arranged in the albums. The slide change interval can be set from anywhere between three seconds to two minutes, depending on the nature of your slideshows.

For best presentation, you can rotate photos (i.e. those taken in portrait orientation) to make your images most viewable.

Remotely Capable
We found the Digital Media Center's remote control to be very usable. Navigation was a breeze, and the dedicated fast forward/fast reverse buttons were a very nice touch. There are also buttons to jump back to the home screen, a button that will allow the Digital Media Center to control another Digital Media Center in another room, and an options button to enter setup menus. A display button allows you to see different information about the music currently playing, within the banner that appears on the top of the screen as music plays. Just don't lose the remote - the only front panel control is the power button.

No Frills
Once you master the few quirks in the Digital Media Receiver's server software, you will likely find the Digital Media Receiver to be a suitable companion for enjoying your digital media collection away from your computer. HP put a lot of work into the unit's hardware design, and came up with a nice, sleek unit with the most important connections covered, along with well-thought-out software in the client. We are optimistic that the next release of HP's Digital Media server software will be a little more polished and a little more capable.

III SMART SPECS
System requirements: Windows Me or XP, 128MB RAM, 50MB disk space
Video out: Composite, S-video
Audio out: Stereo analog (RCA jacks)
Audio formats supported: MP3, WMA
Image formats supported: JPEG, GIF, BMP, PNG

Company: Hewlett-Packard
Phone: (800) 752-0900
Web: www.hp.com
Price: $200