$249
The Medialounge series from D-Link is designed to fit in with the rest of your home theatre components – it even takes on the same form factor as a typical DVD player, in fact. The difference is that the DSM-520 has a wireless antenna on the back, and pulls your multimedia files from a shared folder or a media server located elsewhere in your home. It connects to the television via component, composite or HDMI outputs, and in addition to the stereo analogue audio, there’s also digital SPDIF and digital optical outputs. While the DSM-520 comes with software for setting up a Windows machine to act as a media server, it can also pull data from other third-party servers, too, and you can select between servers on the fly using the remote control. Streamed content looks very good when it’s streaming, but as always your ultimate performance is susceptible to other traffic on your network and the type of encoding on the original files. And in case you don’t have any local file servers handy, you can also stream directly from a USB key (there’s a port on the front), or go online and stream directly from compatible sites on the net. You can even use the menu system to download things to your PC for later use.

Shiny
- streams audio and video
- HDMI connection to home theatre
- stream from USB key too
Dull
- requires computer with shared folders
- some formats won’t play

Medialounge DSM-520
D-Link