Labs

Solwise's DMP-1120w is the cheapest video receiver here. It's a neatly designed white box with component, composite and SCART video outputs and stereo phono and optical S/PDIF audio outputs. There's also a USB port and a built-in card reader to play media files directly from Secure Digital, Memory Stick, MultiMedia Card and CompactFlash cards.

It doesn't support as many media formats as

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other receivers in the group. It can play MPEG1 and MPEG2, DivX and XviD video files, but not MPEG2 VOB or WMV. High Definition Video and the H.264 codec aren't supported. It supports MP3, Wav and AAC audio, but can't handle WMA files, let alone OGG or FLAC. Setup was easy, though. Our UPnP server immediately showed up over a wired network connection, and connecting to our wireless network went without a hitch.

It makes a fair job of video playback. Its menu is easy to use, but file lists were slow to load and navigate, and its remote control is poorly designed. Fast-forwarding through files was a slow process with buffering delays. Many files we couldn't skip or fast- forward through at all, including MPEG4-encoded AVI files. It also wouldn't remember where we'd got to in a video file.

The DMP-1120w supports most common TV connection standards and plays a range of video formats, but we were frustrated by its slow interface and limited control of playing videos.