External media hard disks aren’t new, they’ve been around for some time and we’ve reviewed a few here and there, but I’ve always been in the “what’s the point” camp when it comes to these expensive little devices. Let me get it straight: it’s an external hard disk for video files and you want me to pay a premium because it has an archaic composite output on the back?

It’s taken a little while, but I’ve come to realise I’m approaching the topic with my PC Pro hat too firmly wedged onto my balding scalp. Recently my dear old father wanted to watch some .avi files I had on my PC, but wanted to do so on a proper TV in the comfort of his living room. A TV that’s (gasp!) not HD and far from au fait with modern digital inputs. Beneath that sits a DVD player completely unaware of the existence of .avi files, .mpegs or any other type of file that isn’t a properly authored DVD video.

We often get carried away with all the technology we see, and it’s sometimes good to take a step back and acknowledge the fact that my father’s living room is probably very much like those of a large proportion of the UK. HD is growing but has some way to go, while the old DVD players people bought when they first became affordable still work fine, so why upgrade them to newer, more advanced models? No, for better or worse, the majority of the population are not PC Pro readers.

Faced with the prospect of recoding the twelve hours or so of scattered video files into a format I could then spend my afternoon burning across multiple DVDs for him to work his way through, I really couldn’t be bothered. Sorry Dad.

But these media hard disks are perfect for the job – a job they’re very obviously aimed at but which we tech nerds often dismiss as neanderthal. The files go on; the media hard disk plugs into the SCART socket on the TV; they play without a hitch. My parents can set it up and work it; that tells me all I need to know.

With HD versions now becoming the norm, adding HDMI ports and digital audio outputs, I’m belatedly beginning to take these players more seriously as mainstream consumer devices. In light of this we’ll be gathering the latest and best models in the near future for a shootout on the pages of PC Pro. Dad, your copy will be in the post.