Up on the review block today is Cirago’s TV Platinum CMC2000 1.5TB Network Multimedia Center. I personally have not yet had the opportunity to review anything like this for the site, so this was an exciting product to receive. The box boasts that it contains a 1.5TB hard drive for storage of recorded video and pictures, can record live TV, stream media, play internet radio, access files over your network via built-in NAS and look at all types of pictures. That’s a lot of stuff, so let’s take a look.
Info:
CiragoTV Platinum CMC2000 1.5TB Network Multimedia Player
The CiragoTV Platinum delivers a comprehensive multimedia experience in an a sleek and compact device. Play a variety of video formats, images and digital music from the built-in storage, network-connected PCs, attached USB devices and memory cards. Access and copy files on the CiragoTV from your local network through the built-in NAS feature. Choose between thousands of free internet radio stations. Record video from any device that can output to AV; recordings can be scheduled, edited and time shifted. All functionality can be easily accessed from the intuitive menus with the included remote control.
Finally, a media player that records too!
The CiragoTV Platinum combines a lot of great features into one sleek and compact device that fits right in with your entertainment center. It records TV, stores and plays your photos, music and movies, streams your digital media from your wired or wireless network, and even has thousands of internet radio stations to choose from. Choose between the 500GB and 1TB CiragoTV Platinum for the one that meets your digital storage needs
Record Video or Timeshift Live TV
Record your favorite TV shows with the touch of a button, or schedule future recordings through a simple menu. With different recording modes from HQ to SLP, the Multimedia Center can record up to 700 hours of video on a 500GB hard drive, or 1400 hours of video on the 1 TB hard drive. The video editing feature allows you to remove commercials or just save parts of the recorded video you want directly from your remote control. Use the Timeshift feature anytime you need to need to step away from the TV. You can pause, forward or even rewind Live TV, allowing you to always back up and see what you’ve missed.
Store and Play HD videos, music and photos
Consolidate all your photos, videos and music on to one device which you can access from your TV. The CiragoTV Platinum can play a variety of videos, music and photos formats. Use the Playlist feature to create a playlist of your favorite photos, videos and music. It supports video resolution playback of 720p or 1080i, so use it as an HD video player too.
Stream from Wired or Wireless Networks
Connect to your network and stream your media files through a wired or wireless internet connection. Use the optional wireless USB adapter to connect to your network wirelessly. There’s also a handy File Copy feature that allows you to copy files between the CiragoTV Platinum and your network, or any other external storage device.
Access files on local network through built-in NAS
Access and copy files on the CiragoTV from your local network through the built-in NAS. When connected to your local network, the CiragoTV Platinum can access files stored on other computers or devices on your local network. The other devices can also see the CiragoTV Platinum as a networked device.
Listen to thousands of Internet Radio Stations The built-in internet radio allows you to listen to thousands of internet radio stations for free! You can select stations by genre and save your favorite stations.
Backup old VHS and Hi8 tapes Do you have old home videos on VHS tapes collecting dust up in the attic? VHS and Hi8 tapes degrade in quality over time. The recording feature on the CiragoTV Platinum enables easy and free back up and digitization of analog media such as VHS or Hi8 tapes. Simply connect your VCR to the AV input on the Multimedia Center, and then connect the AV Out (or HDMI) to your TV. Hit play on the VCR, record on the Multimedia Center, and you have a digital backup of your tapes, for free!
What’ in the Box?
The multimedia center comes packaged in a rather attractive box. The outside tells all pertinent information about the device and is graphically appealing.
The top layer inside has the booklets and included cables. Beneath all that rests the drive itself, safely enclosed between two big pieces of foam and wrapped in foam paper.
The package contains the power cord, two AA batteries, mini USB cable, composite a/v cable, nylon HDMI cable, manual and a remote. I love the fact that there is an HDMI cable included, and that it is a decent-looking flexible nylon cable. Batteries for the remote are also appreciated. Altogether, the accessories that come with the system are nicely comprehensive. The remote is pretty huge – about the same size as my TV and DVR remotes – but there are a lot of features to this thing so I don’t imagine there’s a lot that could be done about that.
Also shipped with the device, but in a separate package is a small 802.11 B/G wireless internet dongle. This doesn’t come with the retail version by default, but runs an extra $24.99.
The unit itself is a fairly plain black box that had some plastic on the front to keep it nice and scratch-free. On the front, we find nothing but the Cirago logo, media card input, and power button.
On the rear, we find the DC input, SPDIF/Coax input, Optical, LAN port, two USB ports, HDMI input, A/V input, Component out, mini USB input and a ventilation fan.
Overall, the unit is quite sturdy feeling and is constructed in a way that doesn’t feel junky at all. It is aesthetically pleasing and sleek, which I very much appreciate from something that is designed to be out on display as a permanent fixture with your TV.
Usage:
Before I get into this, I’ll say that there are a number of elements that really impressed me about the CMC2000, and a number of elements that really disappointed me. It should be easier to review this product going through all of its features one by one, examining how well they turned out for practical use.
When you first turn on the unit, you’ll notice that it takes a while. In my case, I had the device hooked up to the TV through HDMI. Turning on the unit would almost immediately display the Cirago logo on my TV, then the screen would go dark and show the “no signal” box for about 20-30 seconds. After that time, the main menu would appear.
The main menu is a fairly plain but easy to understand blue screen with a few choices. The first on the list is Video In.
Now, the CMC2000 bills itself as the “Cirago TV Platinum.” When I first heard I’d be receiving this unit, I was really excited by that name. Seeing as it can process HD video, has HDMI and can record HD video, I thought I’d be able to use it as a DVR for my second TV, which currently only has a basic HD receiver and no recording capability. I was right, but I was also wrong.
While the device is capable of recording HD video, processing HD video and outputting video via HDMI, it doesn’t have a high definition input. The only video input on the unit is standard composite AV input. To me, this makes absolutely no sense. If I have a device that can process HD, calls itself a “TV Platinum” unit and markets itself primarily on its live TV recording functions, shouldn’t it be able to take an HDMI or component input from my HD receiver? We’re moving into an HD age and that’s what people want to watch. I don’t want to run AV cables from my HD receiver to this unit. I did so for testing purposes and the quality was as you’d expect – not good. I simply couldn’t understand why AV input is the only option.
So personally, I would have absolutely no use for this device if I wanted it to record live TV. It may be able to hold up to 1800 hours of video, but that’s 1800 hours of low-quality video that I don’t want to watch. This is its main feature, and it’s not with the times.
Having said that, the Video Input recording capabilities of this unit are not entirely worthless. One thing I’ve been meaning to do for years is to back up all my old VHS tapes into a digital format. I have dozens of them sitting around, mostly from the second half of the 1980s and early 1990s that are starting to wear out and degrade.
Hooking up a VCR to this unit is absolutely effortless, and recording couldn’t be easier. You push play on the VCR, it runs through the unit and shows up on the screen, and you hit the record button on the remote. Suddenly, your video is being captured onto the device’s enormous hard drive and digitized into MPEG format. Later, you can take the device to your computer, hook it up via USB and transfer the videos to your computer, burn them to DVDs, or do whatever you want with them. The encoding is awesome and this device is truly superb for these types of backups. It’s also not too shabby for doing things like capturing video games (though again, not in HD) or recording any other video devices you hook up to it.
I did have an issue where the recording would stop sometimes when breaks in the VHS tape occurred. On real old VHS recorders (you know, the ones that were 30 lbs and the size of professional movie cameras), whenever the recording was stopped, it would sometimes put breaks in the film that nowadays cause the TV to show a “no signal input” message for a second or two between footage. The CMC2000 would sometimes stop recording during these breaks, though the light would stay on and it would look like it was still recording. It wasn’t until going back and looking at the recorded videos that I’d notice it had dropped. Clearly the light isn’t a good indicator, and it forced me to stay with the unit and make sure it kept recording. This made it time consuming to digitize my tapes, as I had to watch them all in real-time and keep stopping/starting the multimedia center to make sure it captured it all.
Whew!
The device also has the ability to play while recording and gives you several options on quality settings, allowing you to save more or less video to the hard drive depending on what you select. But with 1.5TB of storage, even on its best quality setting, you’ll be able to store around 150 hours worth of video at once.
The second icon on the main menu is the Video Playback option. The video playback functions in this unit are awesome, to put it simply. Each instance that you record shows up in a chronological list on the left, along with a thumbnail image and information on the clip’s quality, length, source and date/time of recording. Moving your cursor over each clip will cause it to show up on the right side and start playing automatically, so you can watch the clip. The right side shows the free space on the particular hard drive partition in which the clip is stored (the 1.5TB unit is divided into two halves), and information on how much video space is left with the different quality settings. You can watch the entire clip here, or push the main button on your remote to make it full-screen. It works really well, and the Delete / Rename / Sorting / Edit buttons at the top help you maintain your system. I think it’s pretty obvious what all those options do.
Title Edit is pretty cool, as it allows you to create chapters, merge files, split files, delete chunks of the video, change the thumbnail that shows in the preview menu or copy the files to the other partition. That’s all really handy stuff if you need it.
In my opinion, this playback menu is the best-designed area of the device. And the most functional.
Third up is Browse. This lets you see all your media on the hard drive, local network, media card or connected media card reader. If you have a ton of media files accessible by the player, it’ll be extremely slow to navigate the menus. This is likely because of the mandatory preview windows that you can’t disable. However, it is fairly simple to use. You navigate available paths in a linear fashion and when you come across media, much like in video playback, it shows up small on the right-hand side, and you can click it to make it full screen. If the folder contains pictures, you can slideshow through them, and if it contains videos, your remote will work like in video playback to navigate through the video.
Not all is peachy keen with this feature either, I must tell you. While the box is a NAS and talks about how you can access all the files on your local network, you won’t be able to do it without some extra work. For whatever reason, Cirago makes you hook the unit up to your computer and download some files off their site that enable the NAS feature. Once they’re in there, it’ll show up in your computer list like an external hard drive. I’m not really sure why this feature can’t just be enabled right out of the box, as it’s just one more thing for less tech-savvy people to be challenged with.
When you do get it working, the transfer rates are alright, but nothing that spectacular. I wouldn’t back up an entire collection of HD movies onto the CMC2000.
The next feature of the CMC2000 is internet radio.
My network was configured using the included wireless dongle I mentioned earlier. I’m going to give the CMC2000 the benefit of the doubt and assume the dongle I got was just a bad one, because the network connection hardly ever worked. Internet Radio offers you a list of thousands upon thousands of internet radio stations to choose from in every genre imaginable – many of which are from other countries. All you do is rifle through the list, find the one you want, and select play. At least that’s the idea.
After trying about 15 different stations, I had not listened to a single one for longer than 5 seconds before it had to buffer and restart. One might ask if I have weak wireless signal in the area where my box is located, but that’s not the case. The media center is only about 20 feet from my router, and about three inches from the CMC2000 is my Xbox 360, which also uses a wireless adapter to get online. The Xbox manages to play online games and stream HD-quality movies through Netflix without so much as a hiccup, yet the CMC2000′s network adapter can’t manage to stream a 64 k/bit internet radio station for more than five seconds. Something was clearly up with the hardware. I moved the CMC2000 into another room to another TV and attempted to connect there, and the thing couldn’t even manage to locate my wireless network, let alone connect to it. One foot away, a laptop was connected with completely full signal.
Since the 1.5TB is a brand new model, it really ought to be offered with a wireless N adapter to begin with. But, despite that, it would have been nice to at least receive a functioning B/G stick.
However, because I care so much about you, dear reader, I strung an ethernet cable all the way from my office to the TV so that I could check out the internet radio using a wired LAN connection. It worked extremely well and had no problems whatsoever.
So the moral here is if you buy the wireless adapter, I can’t guarantee the stick you receive will be worth a damn, and hopefully you have the ability to operate a wired connection near your TV if you want to use network functions. Or else already own a better wireless adapter.
The last thing of note is the device’s setup menus. You can use them to configure everything from the video aspect ratio and brightness to audio settings, recording quality, wireless/LAN configurations and more. They are fairly easy to use and function on drop-down menus where you simply select the settings you want.
Another thing I should note, which I’m not sure was another piece of faulty hardware or simply the way it works, was with my remote. I would often push the up arrow to find my cursor moving down. Or push my select button to find it moving backwards through the menus. There was a lot of mis-movement that very frequently made navigating the menus a supreme annoyance.
On top of that, the LED on the front of the unit that indicates the device is turned on would sometimes remain lit when the unit was powered off. There were little faults like that all over the place as I used the unit.
Finally, there was frequent lag when navigating the basic menus for the box. Scrolling through the setup screens was often click…wait…wait…there it is.
Conclusion:
For something that runs a couple hundred dollars, the only use I can personally find for the device is backing up VHS tapes. I can do that for a lot less with something else. The internet radio didn’t work for me at all via wireless, and since this is 2010 and I don’t have cables running all over my house, wireless is basically the only option. The absence of an HDMI input makes me not want to record TV, and despite the number of devices that do it, I can’t imagine why anyone needs to look at pictures and photos on their TV.
It does function very well as a recorder for old VHS/Hi-8 tapes and television for those who don’t mind a meager picture. It can store an insane amount of video and can transfer it to your computer with ease, albeit a slow-moving ease.
It communicates well with your computer and has a lot of features that work with great ease. It also has a lot of features that need work, and ultimately doesn’t live up to what I was hoping from the unit.
| PROS | CONS |
| +Video recording is easy and great for backing up old footage +Internet radio is nice when using wired LAN +Simple menus and navigation +Physically appealing unit +Bundled with a great amount of cables |
-Wireless adapter was garbage -Weird remote often moved in the opposite direction of what I wanted -No HD video input hinders a lot of potential -NAS not functional out-of-box |
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