OSNews has reviewed a small, inexpensive uClinux-based multimedia server that adds a hard drive-equipped multimedia jukebox to TVs and other displays. The MacPower TVisto Series 3.5 houses a 3.5-inch hard drive, and features an infrared remote control, and support for a wide variety of media files.

(Click for larger view of MacPower TVisto)

Unlike most media jukeboxes and media adapters, the TVisto device has no Ethernet port. Instead, it offers a pair of FireWire 400 ports, and a USB 2.0 device port. The small, lightweight device is meant to be physically carried to computers, loaded, and then transported back to its monitor. Additional I/O includes an S-video port, SP/DIF digital audio out, a proprietary A/V port, and VGA and SCART ports.

The TVisto also offers an ATA-133 IDE port, and supports drives up to 500GB. Drives can be formated with FAT32, HFS+ (Apple Mac filesystem), or NTFS; reviewer Eugenia Loli-Queru notes that FAT32 does not support files over 4GB.

Loli-Queru says the TVista shines in terms of support for a variety of media formats, including many files that she says failed to work on similar devices. One weakness is an inability to downsample video such as high-definition DVD content that has been encoded at resolutions greater than the device's native WGVA (720×480) size.

The device comes with a remote control and cables, and has a street price of about $160, not including the hard drive. Additional details can be found in the complete review, here.

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.