Pinnacle ShowCenter

Windows XP Media Center Edition may not be catching on in the UK as quickly as Microsoft might have hoped, but it has spawned dozens of similar products.

Pinnacle ShowCenter is the latest contender. It allows you to access digital music, image and video files stored on your computer through your TV. The premise is simple; connect the ShowCenter box to your TV, install the computer software and multimedia files can be streamed over a wired network.

To view anything on the TV, files have to be imported into the ShowCenter PC software first, which is very simple. Once this is done, your chosen files are automatically sorted into music, video and picture genres, making it simple to browse for specific files using the supplied TV remote control.

ShowCenter can read most media file formats, and any file that isn't natively supported is automatically converted to make it compatible with the ShowCenter player.

We found it a great tool for showing off lots of digital snaps, which can be organised into a slideshow. You can even add your own music soundtrack while the slideshow is playing.

The slim, silver ShowCenter player is designed to fit in with your existing home entertainment kit, so it won't look out of place next to your DVD player. It also features an impressive collection of ports and sockets, such as composite video and digital audio, to connect to audio and visual hardware.

A PC Card slot is also integrated but there are only a few Wi-Fi cards that the player supports, which are highlighted on the Pinnacle website.

Even on the slower 802.11b Wi-Fi standard, it managed to stream video without any jerking, which is excellent.

ShowCenter's TV menu system doesn't look as nice as Media Center but it's intuitive to use and works very well in practice. The remote control is quite bulky but is used to operate everything from switching the player on to navigating through files.

If you want to free your media files from the constraints of your PC to a TV, ShowCenter is a good bet.

Contact: Pinnacle 01895 442003
www.pinnaclesys.com