Though the unit ships with a remote, it conveniently has a full complement of controls on the unit itself that allow you to control playback as well as to navigate the on-screen menu. It's not all that uncomfortable to actually hold the drive in the palm of your hand like a remote and press the buttons. Just be careful not to drop it--the case has a spinning hard drive inside that will almost certainly sustain damage in a fall.
The Iogear played all its supported files types (including MPEG-1, MPEG-2, Xvid, DivX, MP3, WAV, and JPEG) without any glitches. The one on-screen error message I received was when I tried to play a 1080p DivX file whose resolution exceeds the Iogear's 720p output capability.
One inconvenience: The onboard video electronics apparently takes a fair amount of power, so the drive requires its AC adapter to operate, even when plugged into a PC's powered USB port.