I did my homework. I got to see some of my buddies media centers in action. I priced units and decided on two models that would probably work for us. We went to Worst Buy and started looking. Immediately, we were approached by someone that could possibly be of service. After some discussion with the "expert", he convinced me to purchase the LG FX-1 Multimedia HDD. This sounded great! It was supposedly capable of reading virtually all needed files, including the ever-so important subtitle files, SRT's, etc. The bonus being that unlike its competitors, it has a 500 gig HD built in! This is important because it was the same price as the non-HD units I was considering. It also said "Mac compatible".
Eagerly we drive home to set up our new gadget. I unpack the unit, making sure all is there. The first sign something may be amiss was seeing one of those mini-cd/rom's in the box and no hardcopy owners manual.
The paperwork that did come with it told me I could go straight to LG's site for further assistance. I decided to fire it up plugged into the Mac. As I suspected, the HD was formatted NTFS.
No worries, the Mac has a nifty little program called Disk Utility in which I can format any drive into just about any conceivable format. This includes FAT-ass 32 and NTFS (NoTFuckingSafe).
I format the mounted volume to Mac OS Extended(Journaled), and drug some files over to test. Things go down hill from here.
Attaching the FX-1 to the TV, I turn the unit on and then the television. The FX-1 immediately informs me it is formatting itself... I start to frown a bit. It finishes. I check for my files. Gone! The FX-1 gets unplugged. I plug it back into my Mac. Disk Utility reports as I had feared, NTFS format! I repeat the steps. To no avail...
To those of you that know Mac's, they are very forgiving. They can read FAT and NTFS files like a champ! The same is not true of FAT and NTFS! Hence my need to make this FX-1's HD Mac OS compatible. NO DAMN DICE!!
Here's where the teeth gnashing and hair pulling session come in. I'm not about to stick that miniature cd of death into my laptop, so I go to LG's website, per the instructions given in what little paperwork I had.
UHHHHH.... LG's website has never heard of this product. I even tried typing in it's fucking serial number, to no avail. I tried LG's over-sea's sites. NADA!
At this point I'm relegated to looking for a pdf of the owners manual. Nothing on RapidShare or like sites. Nothing on Bitorrent. Nothing on sites that reviewed the damn thing!! ZERO!
I calmly wrapped the piece of stinking, poorly engineered, shit up and returned it the next day!
I considered loosing my cool to a manager at Worst Buy, telling him/her about my wasted gas, wasted time, and the employee that recommended this contraption, knowing full well I asked about its Mac compatibility. I did not this time, for fear my anger may get the best of me.
I haven't given a rating for anything yet on this site, so I have no guideline. So how about this... I'll call them ANGRY YELLS. The order being 1 Angry Yell being the best and 10 being the worst. This steaming hunk of wasted time gets 7 ANGRY YELLS.
DO NOT BUY!!
P.S. Just today while writing this I found the damn thing on LG's site dedicated to it's junk. Try sitting through the "flash fest" that is it's site and tell me if you still have the nerve...
On another note--- I got the Western Digital TV Live. Works like a damn champ!!
ANGRY BRADY
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