2009's Top Set-top Media Players
Get content off your PC and onto your TV
Kit of the Year Apple's Apple TV was launched in 2007, but it has taken until 2009 for rivals to really get to grips with the notion of a device you can use to play local and network-connected content on your TV. Too many storage vendors have tried their hand, offering good content capacity but usually accessed through a slow, poor UI. Western Digital got it right by leaving out the storage - you add your own - and getting network connectivity.
Western Digital WD TV Live
The WD TV grows up. The original was a great way of hooking up a hard drive full of content to your television, but the Live makes the gadget a fully fledged network media player, allowing you to hide the HDD right out of the way. It's not perfect - the UI is still a tad clunky and inconsistent in places - but it does the job and its format support is excellent.
Read the full review
Reg Rating 85%
Price £120
Iomega ScreenPlay Director HD
The Director HD is certainly an improvement on its predecessors. The support for H.264 video is welcome, and the online media options are good fun to play with. The support for a wider range of file formats is welcome, as is the big storage capacity, but the browser needs to be more versatile to cope with large collections of music and video. It’ll be great for watching video and photo slideshows, but could be hard work if you want to rip your entire CD collection onto it.
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Reg Rating 75%
Price £179 (1TB), £309 (2TB)
Apple TV 3.0
A contentious inclusion, this, since Apple hasn't tweaked the hardware since the Apple TV launched in 2007 - the storage capacity is still just 160GB. But a new OS, version 3.0, allows us to mention it because it is a darn fine network media player with the best looking, most responsive UI yet seen on one these kinds of boxes. Its out-of-the-box format support is limited, but it's not hard to remedy this with a little hackery, and what there is won't worry any iPod owner. And you can download iTunes music, movies and TV shows straight to the box.
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Reg Rating 75%
Price £219 (160GB)
Best of the Rest
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Netgear EVA9150
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Wyplay Wyplayer
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LaCie LaCinema Black MAX
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COMMENTS
List misses the best one - popcorn hour
Frankly it better than either the WD or the Iomega and you can stuff it with any size disk you like. It can also serve as a proper NAS to both windows and Linux kit you have at home so it is not just a "media player".
It is a pity that this fairly popular in the EU or USA media player remains almost unknown in the UK.
KiSS DP-500?
Why does the author give the impression that Apple invented this niche? As always, they were not the first, nor did they make it the best.
I bought a KiSS DP-500 so long ago I can't remember exactly when, but it was either 2002 or 2003. That played all the common audio and video formats available at the time, including VOB, over ethernet, and was also a damn good DVD player. And it had internet radio built in. And it could output high-definition VGA via it's SCART socket if you wanted.
They even brought out plasma screens with the technology integrated into it.
xbox or ps3?
for a media player ps3 has to win over xbox as its much quieter, has a bluetooth remote (so you can use it outside etc) and plays blu-ray.
Popcorn Hour?
No popcorn hour? It got rave reviews when released.
Eh?
You recently reviewed the Hisense 1080p HD TV Media Player and gave it 85%. And at 60 quid thats definitely worthy of a place in your list!
