Assembly

Installing the hard drive is actually quite easy. It rests on the metal tray, that also acts as a cover to the underside of the EM7280 and is secured by the provided screws. Next just connect the unit with the provided cables and screw the panel back into place. Having the hard drive sit on the underderside really weighs it down nicely with a low center of gravity.

Interface

The menu is circular and actually really easy to navigate. On the right side you have the file "Manager", the "Setup" and the "Apps" items. While the latter may make you think, that you could install applications on the device, this is not the case. The EM7280 shipped with software version 1.1.2 and the latest release only fixed a minor glitch so we have the full functionality. Upon connecting a network cable to the media player, it displays the IP address in the bottom left corner.


To the left of the central orb are the three menu items for "Movies", "Pictures" and "Music". These are pretty self-explanatory.


The file manager is quite simple, but still allows you to perform copy, move, rename and delete operations. It gives you access to all connected media, which includes the internal HDD, external USB devices, Network drives and uPnP devices.


The "Settings" menu has five tabs, grouping items. In the first one - called "System" how the media player handles connected DVD drives, how the screen saver is displayed and DLNA functionality. The second, called "Audio" gives you complete control over how sound input and output is handled, so odds are no matter how your home theater is set up, the EM7280 will fit nicely. The next, called "Video", allows you to set the resolution, aspect ratio, 24Hz and "Deep Color". The latter is something to enable vivid colors on the display.


The last two items, "Network" and "Misc" hold some interesting items as well. You may set the EM7280 up as a BT downloader and Samba Server, while the last tab is mainly used to provide some information, but also allows you to easily update the firmware with the use of a USB flash drive.


The Apps menu offers a tile based interface to various, fairly popular internet based services. You will find YouTube, Shoutcast, Picasa and various podcast services here. Under the "Eminent Web Services" is another fairly long list of various media you can open up, including Flickr, Revision3, GameTrailers and more. All the apps are fairly flat in design, but easy to use. This is shown with the Yahoo! weather app, which is also part of many other media players and the Youtube app.


Audio is easy to use as well. Each CD is shown as such on the screen, selecting the medium allows you to play it back one song after another. The music will continue playing even if you leave the menu, allowing you to do other things as long as no audio is needed to do so. Viewing a video for example will immediately stop the song from playing.


Pictures can be viewed individually or as a slide show. Hitting the info button basically shows you the meta data found for that picture. The rose on the screen was shot with a DiMAGE Z1 for example.


Last, but not least, Video playback is fast and it remembers where you stopped watching, even if you turn the device off. Once you start the video file again, the EM7280 asks you if you wish to continue where you left off.

Performance & Power Draw

There are two very positive aspects about the EM7280: One is the fact, that it only requires 15 seconds to power up completely. This means that after this short time period, you will be at the main menu screen, with networking connected and are able to move things around with the remote control. The second is power draw, as the device only requires 13.3W at most. There is no difference when watching a movie or simply taking a look at images, nonetheless you will never be able to achieve something like this with an x86 based HTPC for example.