Hands On: HP EX495 MediaSmart Server

HP Media Collector

Earlier this year, I fed back my distrust of the EX487’s media collector feature. It’s not that the concept was poor – automatically finding and storing my mp3s from multiple PCs on the home server is fantastic! But the execution was flawed on the last generation, with little visibility of what music had been collected from each PC – end result? I ignored Media Collector and moved the files manually – paranoid, I know, but this stuff is important!

On the EX495, HP have improved the Media Collector significantly (based on my feedback or not!) with a new dashboard page listing all of your PCs, their connection status, along with drill down details on what files have been copied, files pending transfer, as well as a list of files that have been passed over.

The Media Collector now also includes a wizard integrated into the main dashboard to configure collection settings for Music, Photos and Videos for each of your computers.

The result is a much more user-friendly experience, with a better understanding of what the Media Collector is doing, I’m much more inclined to trust it. A nice enhancement on the last generation.

HP Video Converter

The last generation MediaSmart Server debuted a new HP Video Converter feature that would convert your videos to a various file sizes and formats for convenient playback on mobile and other devices around the home.

This time around, the Video Converter has been augmented as well as simplified! New input formats have been added to the list of files the Video Converter will support, with MP4, M4V and MKV now available for conversion, which will be a boon to any TV downloaders out there who have trouble playing high definition video.

For users looking for a “set and forget” solution for video conversion, device-centric video profiles have now been included in the configuration options, so you can select the device you’ll be playing your videos on, and the converter will be configured accordingly based on defaults set by HP. Advanced users have the option to further tweak audio and video settings using the defaults as a baseline.

Default settings are available for a Mobile Default and Full Resolution Default of your choosing, as well as iPod, Zune, Playstation Portable, iPhone and High Definition (1280 x 720). A visual indicator to the right shows the required network bandwidth to playback each format, which is a nice touch.

The Video Converter worked well on most video files we tested. However, there were audio issues with two MKV files we downloaded for the purposes of the review. Video conversion was fine, but the audio was corrupted and unplayable. Perhaps there’s a little more tweaking required on MKV support.

HP Photo Publisher

No change to HP Photo Publisher in the EX495, which does an excellent job of allowing you to upload your photos directly from the home server to a host of photo sharing sites including Flickr, Picasa, Facebook and more.

Media Server

HP continue their relationship with TwonkyMedia on the EX495, who provide an integrated DLNA-compliant media server which enables enhanced media playback on a wide number of digital media receivers and other networked media players. As mentioned earlier, I’ve found Twonky’s Web Streamer to perform poorly with my media collection (your mileage may vary), but streaming to Xbox and PlayStation 3 works well.