Review: Disgo Mediabank media player

The Mediabank player from Disgo offers not only storage solution for your entire collection of music and video, it also allows those files to be played back directly.

It comes with a 500GB hard disk onto which you can copy files by connecting it to a computer (it uses a USB connection).

There’s also a multi-format memory card reader so files can be copied directly from a card, but there's no full-size USB port on the front for copying directly from a camera or USB memory key.

It can play back video on your TV using the composite output, but it can also be set up to receive a signal from device such as a DVD player or Sky box, to record programmes to the internal disk – there's a simple scheduler to help plan recordings.

After copying our media onto the Mediabank we were impressed by the range of formats it supports but let down by the control it gave over files. The main interface is basic, allowing the user to choose between video, photos and music, but none of these categories offers much control over playback. You'll also find that things get a bit convoluted if you have large collections of files which, considering the size of the internal storage, could be a bit of a problem.

We weren't impressed by the recording quality either, and considering the abundance of high-definition televisions on the market the Mediabank should be offering more than a basic composite output. A remote control is supplied, but despite the limited range of features available it's still rather confusing to use, leaving the user to adopt a trial-and-error approach to find out what everything does.

Disgo's Mediabank is very simple to use but that's because there's not really a lot to it. When it is put up against rivals such as the Archos TV+ it falls sadly short, with its only redeeming feature being the capacious storage. The recording facilities didn't really impress and despite being capable of handling a wide range of file formats we were ultimately disappointed by this uninspiring media player.

Vista compatible: Yes