D-Link Boxee Box DSM-380

If you have lots of music and video files stored on a computer, one way to play them on your main TV is to use a dedicated media streamer.

Another is to attach a laptop to the TV, or to buy a separate ‘home entertainment' computer and have that permanently connected to the TV.

But connecting a computer isn't always convenient, which is why D-Link has come up with the Boxee Box, somewhere between a media streamer and a full PC. The rather odd name is because it's based on the free Boxee media player software and it's a box that plugs straight into a TV. It plays media files from networked PCs or without a PC by playing files from USB hard disks, memory cards or the internet.

It's oddly shaped, like a small cube that's been sliced at an angle. At the rear are the stereo and optical audio sockets, two USB ports and the HDMI port for attaching it to your TV, along with a network socket, and it also connects to wireless networks. SD and SDHC cards of up to 32GB can be plugged into the card reader at the side, handy for those with cards full of photos or video.

The small remote control uses a radio connection so it doesn't need to be in sight of the Boxee Box to work. One side has navigation controls and the other has a full but tiny keyboard – as it's all-black and not lit, it was impossible to use in a darkened room. There's an on-screen keyboard as an alternative.

Setting up the Boxee Box was easy enough, although you need a free Boxee account to use some features. However, beyond the initial menu (Movies, Shows, Apps, Files) the convoluted navigation and awkward remote control became utterly infuriating. Even after several days' use we still hadn't warmed to it.

The preloaded collections of online Shows and Movies were easy to use and contain links to hundreds of online videos, mostly free but with some pay-per-view titles. The Apps folder contains dozens of small downloadable applications such as a web browser, Youtube player and one for accessing the BBC iPlayer.

Files and folders can be added from a home network, SD cards or USB devices, and almost any type of video or audio can be played, though not anything protected by DRM. You can browse the web to find more, but using the remote control to move the cursor around was annoying.

A filter to remove ‘adult' content is enabled by default for Apps and web feeds, but it didn't work for movies or shows, meaning the Boxee Box is most definitely not family-friendly (the problem is that it relies on video providers to properly identify videos, and we came across several dodgy movies with the filter on).

Online videos played smoothly most of the time (performance is dependent on broadband and home network speeds, plus the speed of the particular website) and the video quality was good for high-definition material. You can get a good idea of how Boxee itself works by downloading the free software from www.boxee.tv, although the look is different.

The Boxee Box is a great idea, but we found it far too hard to use, and the problems with adult filtering mean that we can't recommend it.