Very straight forward hookup -- took longer to get the cables and unit out of the box than it did to have it up and going. HP made this very simple! And it does exactly what I had wanted --

(Of course now I wish I had gotten the wireless unit. Oh well...)
Summary: Not bad!

Rating - 1 Date: 2004-02-13
Content: This is a great idea. Unfortunately, the HP people forgot to give any thought to how people might actually use this thing and ended designing something that has all the problems of computers (crashes and poor interface) with the worst parts of traditional receivers (inflexibility and inability to customize). The biggest problem I have with this is that it is very slow to respond to button presses. This is especially evident when trying to get it to shuffle or repeat playlists. You push the button, no response. An hourglass would have been nice, just so you know that it's at least trying to do what you asked it to do. Even a beep from the player would've been nice.

Then there are stability issues. It crashes often, and sometimes you have to unplug it to restart (the power button on the remote and on the unit itself becomes unresponsive). After one such crash it forgot my settings.

Also, there's no way of adding files to the playlist on the fly. Let's say you're having a party and you're playing a playlist. Your friend says, "hey could you add Song X to the playlist?" You'll have to go to your computer, add the file to the playlist, and then re-synchronize the receiver. No problem, except resynchronizing can take like 5 minutes and the music stops playing during that time.

Then there's the screensaver. Again, say you're having a party so you've turned off the TV and you just want to use it as a, heaven forbid, a media receiver. Let's say now you want to skip to the next song using the remote, so you hit the "next" button. Nothing. Why? Because the screen saver was on and hitting a button only inactivates the screen saver. You now have to push the button again.

Also, it can't use windows media player play lists. You have to save your playlists as m3u playlists. This is fine, except windows media player has some nifty features like blending songs and equalizing volumes. The HP Media player is like the first versions of media player or winamp: no blending, no volume equalization.

And no visualizations, either. I wish they had built in some simple visualization routines that show up when the music is playing. If you want to add visuals to the music you have to associate a playlist with a photo album, but then it has no option for shuffling the pictures in the album, so you end up cycling through the pictures in order. I had to write a simple app to randomize my picture names. How hard would it have been for them to build in a shuffle option for the photo album.

Another issue with the photo album is that you can set the duration for each picture, but the settings get applied to all your photo albums. This is annoying, as you may want pictures to have different delays in different albums.

Save your money. Get an IR remote control for your computer and run a stereo wire from your computer to the stereo.
Summary: Poor User Interface Design

Rating - 2 Date: 2003-07-31
Content: I really, really wanted this to work. I had previously purchased the SonicRio Digital Media Receiver ... but as the reviewers point out, this is no longer a supported product, and when my device crapped out on me, I was stuck.

So I had been eagerly awaiting this product, hoping that a more reliable, trust-worthy vendor would do a better job with a networked MP3 receiver. Sadly, this was not the case.

This is very similar in design to the SonicBlue (with the exception of photo viewing and TV UI as opposed to embedded LCD screen.) Otherwise, many of the flaws pointed out in the review for the SonicBlue apply here as well:
"1. You MUST run THEIR software on your server.
2. You MUST log in ( and stay logged in)to the server for their software to work (it SHOULDN'T, but does!).
3. They don't pay any attention to Track Numbers on an album. It always plays in ALPHA order. "

These may seem minor, but they are a real pain. Example: you need to keep your PC on (and not in standby or hibernation, either) for the system to work. I don't like having to run 2 flights downstairs to my office to make sure my PC isn't hibernating in order to listen music on my stereo.

Other flaws: the "server" software was very basic and poorly designed -- it wouldn't keep my preferences for where to look for music, so this needed to be specified each time. They take the HP approach of making something "simple", but they remove all control and provide no documentation for the server software. This might be fine if everything ran perfectly, but when you run into problems, you're hosed. The documentation for the receiver itself is adequate, but the "Troubleshooting" section didn't address any of my problems (below).

Finally, though, the fatal flaw was that it just plain didn't work. I think the problem was that I had too many MP3s (20GB+) and too many pictures (30GB+)for it to handle. Anytime I started the server software on the PC or turned on the EN5000 Receiver, it would start "synchronizing", and take anywhere from 15 minutes to over an hour to complete. Often, it would just hang up entirely in the "synchronization" process.

I hooked up the device to my work laptop which had only a few albums worth of music and a dozen or so pictures, and it synched more quickly, but still failed to perform as promised. It would frequently hang up, or it would show me the title of the song or picture but nothing else -- no music, no thumbnails, no actual image.

I tried troubleshooting my problems with HP tech support, but I found that I knew way more about the product than they did. In their defense, it is a new product, but still, it was very frustrating talking to someone who obviously was just reading from a script and had no idea what they were talking about --

30 minutes on hold, 30 minutes of explaining the problem, then the following exchange...

HP Tech: "Let's see, let's see, 'no sound' -- OK, here it is. First, check and make sure all your cables are connected and the power is on"
Me: "AAARGH!!! I JUST TOLD YOU THAT IT WAS DISPLAYING THE TRACK INFORMATION, SO IT'S OBVIOUSLY ON AND CONNECTING TO THE COMPUTER! THINK! WORK WITH ME!"

Please, HP, invest a little more in customer care and technician training.

If the product works for you as advertised, congratulations. I hope it does, and you'll probably be very pleased. However, just be aware that this is a new product that looks like it was slapped together very quickly. You might want to wait or go with a more low-tech solution.

Good luck.
Summary: Good idea, flawed execution. So disappointed...

Rating - 1 Date: 2003-06-25
Content: I bought and tried out one of these devices to access the sizable MP3 collection on my computer. Alas, it's really hard to set up and slow to use.

I much prefer my SLIMP3 from Slim Devices. It's a little more money, but it is tiny, has a bright and beautiful display, incredibly powerful music management software (free and open source!) and is so easy to set up and use. My wife loves it and would touch the HP product. You can build custom playlists from the remote or any web browser and the support is great! Oh, and it works on Windows 98,ME,NT,2000,XP, Mac OS X, Linux, BSD and Solaris!

Of course, the SLIMP3 is a music-focused device, so it doesn't use your TV and can't display JPEG images, but that's what I have a laptop for.
Summary: Hard to use. Try SLIMP3.