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Editor's Choice

Prismiq MediaPlayer

REVIEW DATE:  07.01.03

  • Product: Prismiq MediaPlayer
  • Price: $249.95 direct
  • Company Info: 888-880-1583, www.prismiq.com

    • Ratings

    EditorExcellent

    ReaderFair

    Rate This Product

    Prismiq is not a household name—yet—but the Prismiq MediaPlayer is the product to beat in this roundup. It offers the best value, hands down, and provides the most features.

    The MediaPlayer is a music jukebox and photo viewer, like the HP ew5000, and it also shows MPEG movies, displays local weather and stock quotes, browses the Web, and lets you chat over the Internet. Personal video recorder (PVR) functions will be added sometime this summer.

    The receiver has wired Ethernet and RCA audio/video jacks, plus S-Video and coaxial optical audio outputs. A PC Card slot lets you add wireless Ethernet (802 .11b, 802.11a, or 802.11g); the price is in line with the $50 you would pay to upgrade a wired model by adding a wireless card.

    You can control the MediaPlayer with its 34-button remote, also using its numeric keypad for chat in a pinch, or an optional wireless keyboard ($49.95). We found the MediaPlayer slightly more complex to control than the ew5000. But over time, you'll come to appreciate all the things you can do with the Prismiq remote. If you have a picture-in-picture TV, you can lounge on the couch watching the big game while surfing the Web or instant-messaging your AIM buddies. The MediaPlayer is what WebTV wanted to be, had it ever embraced broadband.

    So the only knock on the MediaPlayer is the slight complexity caused by its significantly larger feature set. The year isn't over, but we expect the Prismiq MediaPlayer to prove one of the best products of 2003.

     MEMBER RATINGS Rate it Yourself 

    jtriest
    Member rating: 
    April 20, 2005
    I'm amazed that the editors seemed to love the Prismiq. The software is awful, setup is less than intuitive and playback (minus audio) is subpar. Granted, for under $200 I didn't expect a miracle, but being that it is often rated above most (if not all) other offerings I did expect far more than it delivered. Shame on the editor's for giving such high praise to such a flawed device! As you can see, it's not just that feels this way, but the vast majority of reviewers of this product.

    CodeMonkey1
    Member rating: 
    December 7, 2003
    Well we are to version 4.0 now and I have been through 2 boxs and countles reinstalls. I have to say the phone support has been pretty dedicated but they rarely can actually fix anything. Don't let anyone tell you that they are going to call you back though!!! Oh and summer has come and gone, No PVR features!!! I would just get the media feature for Tivo Series 2 and never look back. It works awsome every time all the time.

    MediaGuy
    Member rating: 
    December 5, 2003
    This product (as of software version 4.0) still isn't ready for prime time. MP3 feature set isn't anywhere close to what Slim Devices provides (no browse by artist, no way to search by artist and get an album list, etc.). Stability is improved from V. 3.0 but is still only fair. Check out Prismiq's discussion board for a list of other complaints (no fast forward and fast rewind on video files?). How the reviewer could give this thing 5 stars even today (much less last spring when they did the review) is beyond me.


    blackketter
    Member rating: 
    September 27, 2003
    The thing was so hard to set up and the user interface so poor that I put it on ebay. Nothing beats my SLIMP3.

    MrsEd
    Member rating: 
    September 27, 2003
    I can only guess that the 5 star reviews here for the Prismiq are IT professionals or geeks. We bought one and have since returned it because of the many glitches we discovered in setting it up and trying to use it. Prismiq's support is horrible and tried to blame our problems on our PC (it's brand-new!). They pointed us to a user's forum for help with our questions: www.prismiq.org. I wish we had seen this site to read about all of the problems & complaints other users are having before we bought ours. A warning to the casual user: The Prismiq is definitely not plug 'n play!!!! Be prepared to spend a lot of time to get it to work (ours never did work smoothly).

    turnouts2001
    Member rating: 
    September 25, 2003
    Love this MediaPlayer. I had a little trouble with setting up the wireless side. I would have saved some time if I went to the posted tech support page and reviewed their list of support cards. Other than that, the MediaPlayer works perfectly. I have a desktop PVR and the Prismiq plays all that content back for me. (I tossed my VCR, and why pay for TiVo when you can use this product for Free?) The audio side is great! I've got it set up to play commercial free Internet Radio Stations though my home stereo, as well as my 2,000+ MP3s. I had the relatives over to visit and we watched my vacation photos while sitting in the living room. I can IM with friends while watching football on Sunday's and check email during halftime.....all through the TV. This product is a lifesaver! (I would suggest spending the extra $50 to buy the keyboard....makes typing IM, Email, and Web surfing easier). These guys were first to market with the complete solution. Video/Audio/Images/Web/Email/IM/Internet Radio/etc.... who else does it all? 5-Stars in my book, and they have only been selling it for 10 months! It can only get better.

    fremic
    Member rating: 
    September 24, 2003
    Simply put, using this device to play your PC's mp3 files at a remote location in your house is a nightmare. I spent way, way too much time and effort to get this thing set up and it only works some of the time. If you do go the Prismiq route, make your life simpler and forget the wireless set-up. Even running on a wired network, I couldn't get consistent performace out of this thing -- lots of resets and software 'refreshes' were required both on the set-top box and my PC. When actually playing a file, a skip or 'burp' in the playback was not unusual. Mp3 Playlist management is a joke -- actually, non-existent with the current software. In the end, I sold mine on ebay and purchased a low-end e-machines CPU-only at Sam's club and added an Audigy sound card with SPDIF out. This solution works great; is 100% reliable; cost a little more than $100 over the Prismiq solution (w/keyboard) and MOST importantly, was a breeze to set-up compared to the effort and constant tweeking of the Prismiq. Unless the Prismiq folks are able to stabilize and simplify their software, look for this device soon for $59 on TigerDirect.

    mhbare
    Member rating: 
    September 22, 2003
    This thing doesn't deserve a star. It is no where near ready for the market. I doesn't do what it is advertised to do. It's horribly buggy from a software side and there is basically no support from Prismiq. I would not reccommend this to anyone. Mines in the box and headed back.

    MrUp
    Member rating: 
    August 5, 2003
    I sold my Audiotron on eBay when I heard about this product. It's great. I have several thousand MP3 files on my home network, and enjoy hearing them through my stereo. That's what the Audiotron did, however now I can select the song or playlist via my TV set instead of the two line display on the unit and I can read the news and check my email as a bonus. There is no question that the quality of image on a TV is not as good as a computer... my mother has had WebTV for several years and I can tell you that the TV is not the ideal way to surf. I got my Prismiq Media Player for MP3 music, the Web is the bonus, and I'm very happy!

    dowdybrown
    Member rating: 
    July 26, 2003
    While the Prismiq is a great concept, its software still needs a lot of improvement. My biggest issue is that I have spent many hours organizing my jpeg and mp3 files into folders. I can burn these files straight onto a data DVD and my $50 DVD player allows me to easily browse the directories and play all of the photos or music in the directory I select. But can my $250 Prismiq do that? Not a chance! While the latest software claims to support directory structures, the feature is too hard to use, works only works on mp3 files (not jpegs), and displays on the TV as a single-level directory (doesn't allow you to navigate through multiple levels). Also, not that you would want to do much web surfing with the Prismiq (TV resolution is too low), but the browser software locks up occasionally, forcing you to cycle power to the box (even in the 3.x versions). NOT RECOMMENDED.
     
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