576 commentsWe’re giving away an HP MediaSmart server + 1 terabyte of storage!
// October 22nd, 2009
Contest is over! Winner: Jeff Mahoney
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HP has very generously offered to give away one of their snazzy MediaSmart Servers—the EX490 with 1 terabyte of storage—to one lucky Photodoto reader!
This giveaway is sponsored by HP.
I haven’t used one of these but it’s an impressive bit of hardware on paper. In a few years, I wouldn’t be surprised to find new homes being sold with home media servers pre-installed—toilet, check; internet, check; media server, check.
A media server is primarily a storage device that can gather all of your photos, videos, and music and stream those files to your television, across your home network, or on the internet. Here’s a rundown of some of the things you can do with the HP MediaServer:
- Automatically backup important files on multiple PCs or Macs on your home network.
- Automatically collect, organize, and centralize your media files.
- Publish photos directly from the server to Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, and Snapfish.
- Share private photo albums with family and friends.
- Stream photos, music, and videos to your TVs, gaming consoles, and computers.
- Convert videos into formats that can be played on gaming consoles and mobile devices like iPhones.
- Expandable to 17 terabytes.
Find out more about the HP MediaSmart servers at HP’s website.
How to enter / Official rules
To enter: leave one comment on this blog post explaining how you would use the MediaSmart server. Include your full name and email address (email addresses are not published or shared but are required for verification and to contact the winner).
One entry per person. Entries must be received by midnight November 6, 2009 (Pacific time). One winner will be selected randomly. The winner will be announced on Photodoto.com on or around November 6, 2009.
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The fine print:
Sweepstakes is open to all U.S. Citizens that are legal residents of the United States except Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories and employees of Photodoto and its affiliates, subsidiaries, advertising and production agencies, and their immediate families and household members are not eligible. Must be 18 years of age or older to enter as of promotion start date: October 22, 2009. All federal, state, and local laws and regulations apply. Void where prohibited or restricted. By entering this Sweepstakes, participants agree to be bound by these Official Rules and the decisions of Photodoto and/or its agents. Odds of winning prize depend on the number of eligible entries received.
One Winner will be randomly drawn from all eligible entries received. The Winner will receive an HP MediaSmart server model EX490 (total value: $550) shipped directly from HP or their agent. Winner is responsible for all federal, state and local taxes associated with acceptance and use of prize. Prizes are not transferable. No substitution of prizes permitted except at Photodoto’s option, including Photodoto’s right to substitute a prize of equal or greater value if advertised prize is unavailable.
Winners will be selected in a random drawing on or about November 6, 2009 from the aggregate of all eligible entries received. Awarding of prizes will be conducted by Photodoto, whose decisions are final on all matters relating to the promotion. Photodoto will notify the Winner via e-mail. If the Winner cannot be contacted within 72 hours of notification, an alternate Winner will be selected from the remaining eligible entries. Any prize notification or prize returned as undeliverable will be forfeited and awarded to an alternate Winner. Prize will be mailed to the U.S. mailing address provided by the Winner. The Winner will be required to provide a valid U.S. mailing address and phone number.
Photodoto and its promotional and advertising agencies, and all respective officers, directors, employees, representatives and agents of each, shall have no liability and shall be held harmless by Winners for any damage, loss or liability to persons or property, due in whole or part, directly or indirectly, by reason of the acceptance, possession, use or misuse of prize or participation in this promotion. Photodoto reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to cancel, terminate, modify, or suspend part or all of this promotion should virus, bugs, unauthorized human intervention or other causes beyond the control of Photodoto corrupt or impair the administration, security, fairness or proper play of the promotion. Photodoto and its promotion and advertising agencies, and all respective officers, directors, employees, representatives and agents of each, are not responsible for technical, hardware, software or telephone failures of any kind, lost, interrupted or unavailable network connections, fraud, incomplete, garbled or delayed computer transmissions, whether caused by Photodoto, users, or by any of the equipment or programming associated with or utilized in the promotion or by any technical or human error which may occur in the processing of submissions which may damage a user’s system or limit a participant’s ability to participate in the promotion. Photodoto reserves the right at its sole discretion to disqualify any individual Photodoto reasonably believes to have tampered with the entry process or with the operation of the promotion, or who is found to be acting in violation of these Official Rules. This Sweepstakes is intended and limited for play in the United States and shall only be construed and evaluated according to United States law.
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I would use this to show home movies on our tv when all the family is over for Thanksgiving. Thanks for a great giveaway!
I would use this to back up my fiance’s design work, as well as run a dual boot os.
i’ve been waiting for something like this for awhile, as i’ve watched my collection of music, photos, and movies grow to fill several smaller hard drives.. backups are a nightmare when you simply don’t have enough space!
i also have a small child and am eager to have an easy way to play some of his favorite shows directly on our tv.
looks like a fantastic product. i want one!
I would the the mediasmart server for my website.
I would use this to back up all of my files, my music, photography, and writing.
I would love to have this to store my photos and other media.
Our hard drive crashed once and we lost all of our digital photos. I’d love to have an HP MediaSmart server to keep them safe. Thanks.
I would use the Media Server to save all the family photos then be able to show them on TV at family get togethers.
I have a couple of Sony cameras, all taking 10 mp photos and, let me tell you, that just eats up storage on the old hard drive. This HP MediaSmart server with 1 terabyte of storage would be great to backup all those photos on. And, it will fit in nicely with my HP laptops and printers! :-) Thanks for a fantastic giveaway!
There is nothing more important than adequate back-up storage. A networked storage device would be amazing to have at home!
We would store recital music, dance studio flyers and documents, candy drive orders, recital and Christmas programs, and web publish competition results and pictures !
I have tons and tons and tons of stock images, textures, 3D assets, programs for design, photography, 3D… you name it… They are all on my main tower… One mess up to the HD or one power surge and poof… all gone! I have been saving up for over a year now to get a decent backup server. Getting this would be a dream. I could finally backup everything I have, and finally, since I live in florida, would be able to stop running up the stairs to unplug my tower when it starts lightning outside. Being that this is florida, its a daily occurrence! Please pick me!
With the use of more than 3 computers at a time in my home, I would use this to back up my personal guitar recordings, audio files, wed design projects, and other projects that I work on. The HP Media Servers seem like a good NAS system, especially since I use three different OS’s (Windows XP/7, Ubuntu, and OS X)and this would make it easier to transfer files.
I have started a bookkeeping business and I need a good backup system.
I would network all my computers, TV ,Blue Ray, together
Right now I have 5 usb hard drives backing up photos, video and data, it sure would be easier to have it all in one location :)
I would use this to combine 3 individual towers in my home office.
Oh, this would be great for our mac and pc world.! I need something like this, hope to winner winner chicken dinner!
I would use this HP Media Smart Server to back up all of the important files on our computers such as personal,financial and photos.
Thank you so much for the chance to win.
jweezie43[at]aol[dot]com
I would the the Mediasmart server for my Website Business.
i’d love to use the HP media smart server to keep all of my photo files safe…i take a LOT of pictures and they take up sooo much space on my hard drive.
back up all my important files, don’t have anything now help!
I would love this. we could store all of our songs, pix, and video in one place. Then route it to any device.
I would use an HP Media Smart server to backup our 3 home PCs,make our photograph collection available to family and friends via the internet, and serve media to our entire household
I woul duse it for our home booking agency, for storing and submitting press kits and demos, putting the files in a central location for us both to work with would benefit us greatly
I would use it to back up the three computers in our household, and to store files that we would like to share.
I create a lot of 3D artwork, which is exactly what I’d do as the winner of this contest. Not to mention that storage would be amazingly handy for transferring files between my computers, and saving the data in case of failures.
srsly.
I’d definitely use this to store all of my film footage for editing — it’s a huge drain on my computer as-is!
I’d use it mostly to save photos – I have a three year old and lost a bunch of his early photos on our old computer.
This would be a great asset for myself, as a side job to earn some extra money to buy a house, I build webpages and this would give me the extra space needed to store all my photography, photoshop files, code, and other items.
AWESOME!
I would love to win this HP MediaSmart Server!
A great tool to use to back up important business files for ‘our’ new catering business!
Thanks for the great giveaway offering!
Good luck to all!
I would put videos of my daughters on the HP Media Smart server to remind me of what little angels they were then … and I could put up their art projects and photos so they could show their friends.
This is an amazing piece of equipment–I could use it for all my home movies, pics of grandkids, and who knows what else I could do with it. Would love to win it. Thanks for the opportunity.
Debbie
I could definitely use one of these! I have over 200gigs of photos, 200gigs of music, 100gigs of video… and right now they are spread across my local hard drive and a few external drives. It would be cool to have this to keep them all in the same place! Very cool product.
I would backup EVERYTHING on my media server…like my own personal media fallout shelter. Plus, I’d backup my PS3 harddrive so I could upgrade to a larger one without losing all of my data.
I could back up all my art work.
I would use this to show home movies.
I’d use it to serve up family videos on my television.
I would use this to collect and store all my disparate music and videos so everyone at home can access them whenever they want. I would also use it as a nice back-up since I tend to have bad luck with hard drives lately.
I would use it to run my home buiness
for my website – i am posting comments too quickly slow down
I would use the HP media smart server mainly to backup my digital art & photos. I would also use it to finally get a website going. And I’m sure I would discover lots of other uses for it too!!
I would be able to back up all of my CDs, videos, and pictures to one place! That would be fantastic!
scan old photos and transfer all my current digitials to a single server
I’d use the HP MediaSmart to back up my files. Thanks for this offer.
I’d look at my photos & stuff on the tv.
Oh my gosh! I wouldn’t have to burn CDs/DVDs with images and folders every 5 minutes so my computer has room to do what I need it to. This would be awesome! Plus, all of the added stuff. My computer doesn’t allow me to do much and the HP media smart server would open a whole new world for me!
I would backup pictures and other important files.
i’d use it to store all of my work
we would use it to back up our personal files and all of my hubby’s work files. this would be perfect right now as he is just now starting an audit.