Koreans prep cylindrical media-playing HDD case

It looks a bit like a dustbin - or maybe one of R2-D2's ancestors - but South Korean manufacturer DVICO's TVix M-5000U is a full media player equipped with 64MB of RAM, a 3.5in hard drive and the ability to pump out pictures at up to 1920 x 1080i HD resolution.

The 18.5cm tall unit - it's 13.1cm in diameter - has its own 7 x 5-character display to allow users to select from the video, music and photo content stored on the box's hard drive. DIVCO is pitching the TVix as an HDD enclosure, so it's up to you to obtain a drive and install it, but at least you get to select the capacity and you can upgrade in the future.

The machine supports video encoded in MPEG 1, 2 and 4; DivX; XviD and WMV 9. On the music side, it will play MP3, Ogg, WMA, AAC, PCM and AC3 formats, but it doesn't appear to handle DRM-protected files. BMP and JPEG round out the list of supported formats, these two for pictures.

The TVix has a trio of USB 2.0 ports, two of which can operate as a host, allowing the machine to grab content from other devices, such as digital cameras and external hard drives. It's got analog audio jacks plus digital co-axial and optical outputs. One the video side, it's got DVI, s-video, composite and component ports.

The machine is due to ship in Japan mid-March. It's expected to retail for around ¥40,000 ($340/£195). ®