Crystal Acoustics Pico HD 5.1 high definition media player

Media players such as this allow people with collections of music and video on a computer to watch and listen to it in the comfort of their living room.

They can be quite expensive, but the Crystal Acoustics Pico HD 5.1 is one of the cheapest media players we have seen.

Unlike more expensive models it doesn't have a hard disk or do anything else such as tune into Freeview channels. Instead, this compact box has a USB socket into which you can plug a USB hard disk, USB memory key or memory card with some photos, music or video files stored on it.

It has a HDMI socket to connect it to a flat-screen TV and can display high-definition (HD) pictures at the highest 1080p resolution, and in 5.1 surround sound. It's controlled using the supplied remote and simple icons that appear on screen.

It works with all major audio and video file formats, including MP3 and WAV audio, and MP4 and WMV video files, so you shouldn't have any trouble playing your collection on it. It was temperamental when it came to playing AAC music files from Apple's iTunes software, which could be a problem for iPod owners who have a music library in that format.

If you don't have an HD TV with HDMI socket it can also be connected using the component output, but people with older screens are out of luck as there are no other ways to attach it to a TV.

The menu system was rudimentary: locating the file to play means using the remote control to browse through the various folders on your storage device. This could soon become tedious if there are lots of files on the device and the PicoHD 5.1 would have benefitted from a more streamlined design that would allow browsing by categories or, for music, artist or genre.

The Pico HD 5.1 isn't ideal, then, for people who have large collections on a single disk. However, at this price it's still good value if you want to play the occasional file on your high-definition TV and don't want to splash out.

You can buy it from Crystal Acoustics direct or from Amazon.