HP MediaSmart iStream Demo: Terabytes of Multimedia at My Fingertips

HP released MediaSmart iStream, an iPhone application that gives users access to all of the multimedia content on their MediaSmart home servers. I got my hands on an early release of MediaSmart 2.5, which allows HP’s latest servers stream video, photos and music to the iPhone application.

In this GBM Shortcut, I demonstrate what the application looks like and how it interacts with my HP MediaSmart EX487 server, which has 5TB of storage capacity. I have somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000 photos, days worth of HD video and full backups of four of my notebooks backed up on it.

GBM Shortcus are sponsored by Lenovo.
MediaSmart 2.5 transcodes almost any video format into two H.264 sizes. The high-quality videos can be streamed locally, while mobile versions are accessible via the iStream app or any web browser.

The iStream application works pretty much as you’d expect. Unfortunately, iStream doesn’t let you save images onto your iPhone. It takes a very long time to exit out of the video, photo and music shares to the application’s home screen.

MediaSmart 2.5 will be pushed to users later this week.