Although most people automatically associate high-definition playback with Blu-ray players, the truth of the matter is that there are also other ways one can push HD-grade movies to their HDTV. And that's exactly what Seagate is showing us at CES, its “way” being the FreeAgent Theater HD media player, a complete home theater solution that uses the company's FreeAgent Go portable hard drive in order to allow users to watch stored digital media directly on their TV screens, with no computers being involved.

Practically, all the users have to do in order to watch their favorite content is simply transfer it to the FreeAgent Go portable HDD and then dock the respective portable storage solution to the Seagate FreeAgent Theater. The docking solution is quite easy to use, featuring a DVD-style remote control interface. Plus, the included FreeAgent Theater software will automatically take care of such tasks as the transfer and organization of all the multimedia content stored onto one's computer.

Furthermore, if looks are an issue, then fret not. Seagate's FreeAgent Theater sports a sleek, piano-black encasing, which makes it feel right at home in any home entertainment system.

Another important selling point of the Seagate FreeAgent Theater is represented by its versatility. Hence, Seagate's solution supports MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 formats, and DIVX files with video resolutions for NTSC, PAL and HD up to 1080i and even provides support for subtitles. The audio formats supported include 5.1 channel surround sound, where available, and also plays the popular digital audio formats including: MP3, WMA, WAV and OGG.

As far as the connectivity options go, the FreeAgent Theater is rather basic, since it connects to any TV with either composite, S-video or component video and audio inputs. Strangely, there's no HDMI, but that would have probably pushed the price tag a little higher.

And since we've reached this issue, we'll also mention the fact that the FreeAgent Theater HD player will arrive in stores at some point in March 2009 and will be available in three different configurations, namely as either a standalone media player with the remote control at a manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) of $129.99, or with the choice of either a 250GB (MSRP of $229.99) or 500GB (MSRP of $299.99) capacity FreeAgent Go Drive.


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