Review: Verbatim Mediastation network media player

It's now possible to legally download both TV programmes and films, and the number of such sites is growing.

It may soon catch up with the number of devices that are designed to act as a bridge between such video and audio material stored on a PC and the television sets in most people's living rooms.

Verbatim has released two versions of the Mediastation, which does exactly that – a basic version, which is what we're reviewing, and the Pro.

The key differences are that the Pro version can be connected to a wireless network and supports more video formats.

One area where both products impress is the range of outputs, which include HDMI for the highest quality high-definition video (if you have a TV that can handle it).

We connected the Mediastation to our router using a network cable (one wasn't supplied to so you'll need to shell out for that) and within a few moments it had detected our settings and connected to not only the computer's hard disk but also the network hard disk plugged into the same router.

So far, so simple, but the menu system wasn't what we'd call intuitive. We'd go so far as to call it dated and unfriendly, although a few minutes of trying out buttons on the remote control paid off.

From that point on, operation was simple and satisfying: the player can either access files on the PC and play them on the TV as they flow over the network, or store video, music and photographs on its own 500GB internal disk.

Our main complaint, apart from the fiddly menu system, was that the basic version we tested ignored some of the files on our hard disk because it did not support their formats.

In fairness, it will support most popular formats, but if you have any video stored in the standard and fairly popular Windows WMV format, or in the increasingly popular MPEG4, then too bad. Given that the field of video compatibility is already a nightmare, we'd have liked to have seen both devices cover as many formats as possible.

The Mediastation Pro does support a far wider range of formats and wireless networking, meaning it's more flexible – with the basic version the television must be very close to the router, as the player needs to be wired in to the network. But with the Pro's wireless connection it is possible to put the player in any room with a TV.

Our guess is that most people keep their main TV and PC in different rooms, so that leaves this wired version with little appeal for many.