Earlier this year Seagate announced a new product intended to simplify the enjoyment of digital photos, movies, and music from your home theater. The FreeAgent Theater was a prominent feature in Seagate's display at CES 2009, and the early preview of the device was definitely generating some interest.

Fast forward a few months and the FreeAgent Theater is now available at a handful of online stores, and for us to review. The promotional image below shows an overview of the FreeAgent Theater, which is pretty much a home theater connected dock which makes use of a Seagate FreeAgent Go portable hard drive (as reviewed here) for storage space. You can purchase the FreeAgent Theater in three configurations; without storage (add your own drive), with a 250GB drive, or with a 500GB drive. We'll be checking out the version that ships with a 250GB drive, while also swapping in a 320GB drive for comparison purposes.

Before taking a closer look at the Seagate FreeAgent Theater media player, let's take a look at some of its features and specifications.

Features and Specifications:

» Model: ST902503CEA1E1-RK
» Interface: USB 2.0
» Capacity: 250GB
» Dual-docking system eliminates fumbling with cables and connections
» Automatically syncs with new content on your PC
» 1080i High-Definition playback
» Dolby Digital 5.1 audio surround sound support
» Intuitive user interface
» Customize slideshows with music and transition effects
» Directly connects to digital cameras, USB flash drives, and additional external USB hard drives
» Supported File Systems: NTFS, FAT32, FAT
» Video Output: Composite, S-video, Component
» Audio Output: stereo, coaxial S/PDIF
» Supported Formats:
   » Video: MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (AVI/VOB/ISO), MPEG-4 (AVI/DivX /Xvid)
   » Subtitles: SAMI(smi), SRT and SUB
   » Video resolutions:
         NTSC 480i/480p; PAL 576i/576p
         Supports video (HD and upscaling) up to 720p/1080i
   » Audio: MP3, AC3 (5.1 audio - Dolby Digital) WMA, WAV, OGG
   » Photo: JPEG files up to 20 megapixels