Buffalo LinkTheater

The LinkTheater is one of many media-streaming devices on the market but, in addition to playing computer files on your television, it also includes a DVD player.

Like other streaming devices, this one allows you to hook it up to a wired or wireless network in your home and stream videos, music and pictures from any computer to a TV set or hi-fi.

The built-in DVD player means you can reduce the number of boxes under (or on top of) your television, and decrease the power that the whole lot uses. There is also a USB 2 port to plug in an external flash memory drive or camera and play files from the devices.

It supports a bewildering array of standards: up to 802.11g for wireless, high-definition TV (HDTV) at the highest quality level, DivX, WMV and WMV HD format video, and WMA and MP3 audio files.

It has progressive scan outputs, meaning that if you connect it to a progressive scan television, you will see an improvement in quality.

Although there are not many televisions capable of displaying progressive scan signals, they are becoming more common, so this machine could prove to be a bonus in future, should you upgrade your television.

Likewise with HDTV, there are no British television companies broadcasting an HDTV signal at the moment, but it is a standard that will take effect over the next few years, so having a HDTV-ready player is useful.

Of course, you will need a high-definition television set or monitor on which to view HDTV files in all their glory.

Setting the LinkTheater up was uncomplicated: plug it into the mains and a television and it works as a DVD player, and attach a network cable and it automatically connects to the network.

If you want to stream media across the network, you need to install the supplied software on all the relevant PCs on the network. The software is easy to use and doesn't take up much of the PC's processing power, but it is a hassle to have to run yet another media application on the computer in addition to whatever media player you already use.

Setting it up on a wireless network was a little more troublesome; it took a while to recognise the network at all, and it only supports the older WEP security rather than the newer WPA.

This means you might have to lower the security of your home wireless network just to use the player, which not an ideal situation.

That aside, the quality of playback is good. Streamed files play very well in both audio and video quality, and it will play all the supported file types from DVDs and CDs that you insert. Oddly, playback from these discs appeared to be slightly lower in quality than over the network but not enough to cause concern.

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Philips Streamium SL400i