Product Reviews

It's all very well having lots of video and music files on your PC, but do you really want to have to hunker down in the spare room to watch them? Wouldn't it be a lot more comfortable on the couch?

LiteOn clearly thinks so. Its LVD-2010 is a normal DVD player that also doubles as a media streaming device. It connects to your PC via its built-in Ethernet port, or using the bundled Wi-Fi wireless adapter. You will have to connect it using an Ethernet cable first, though, to get it set up.

To make the multimedia content on your PC accessible to the DVD player, you need to install the media cataloguing software that comes with the LVD-2010. This finds all the photos, music and video on

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your computer and transmits the list to the DVD player. The LVD had no problem locating the PC over our wireless network and connecting to it - not something we can say of all its competitors.

The software is easy to find your way around. Sometimes there's a delay between selecting a menu with the remote control and that menu opening. This is a little annoying, but it's the same for most media senders we've seen up until now.

Once the network is set up and the software is installed, you can start sending music and video over your network. Video quality was good. The LVD lets you watch the most movie files - Xvid, MPEG1 and MPEG2 - but doesn't support the WMV (Windows Media Video) format. The video output connectors on the back of the device, enabling it to hook up to your TV, include component (with progressive scan option), composite, S-Video and RGB SCART.

The LVD-2010 is adept at playing a range of music file types, including MP3, OGG, WMA and WAV. It can also display photos stored on your PC, on your TV. It did a good job of scaling down our hi-res photos to display them on 720x576 resolution TV.

The LVD-2010 is a decent media sender, but we prefer the Pinnacle ShowCenter 200. Having said that, the LiteOn costs £70 less - so is a bit of a bargain.