Product Reviews

While many manufacturers try to make their network media receivers look like slick hi-fi components, Buffalo has made its latest LinkTheater indistinguishable from many wireless routers. This bland silver box would look more at home next to your telephone rather than your TV.

The front of the receiver has a standby button and a USB port, so you can plug in storage and access files directly. The rear has all the usual video outputs, including composite and S-video. However, you should opt for the RGB SCART socket, as it gives the clearest picture and carries stereo audio. If you want to connect to a hi-fi or surround-sound amplifier, there are stereo phono and optical S/PDIF outputs. There are no HD video outputs, so those with an HD TV must look elsewhere.

Two wireless antennas stick up from the rear of the unit. They're removable, so you can switch them for more powerful ones if you're getting a poor wireless signal. There's also an Ethernet port if your want to use a wired network. The LinkTheater found our wireless network when turned on, and we just had to

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enter our WPA-PSK key to get connected. It supports WPA-PSK and WEP encryption, so it should work with any home network. Without large HD files to worry about it, wireless performance was flawless in our tests.

The LinkTheater comes with its own server software, which works well and found all the media files on our test PC. You can also use Buffalo's LinkStation NAS to serve files to the receiver without the need for a PC, as it has a built-in UPnP server. The LinkTheater is compatible with any UPnP server software and so will work with Microsoft's Media Connect, which is built into Windows Media Player 11.

The onscreen interface is clean and easy to navigate. It provides thumbnails where necessary, and these pop up instantaneously. Photos looked surprisingly good considering they'd been scaled down to the PAL resolution of 720x576. When selecting video clips there are a few seconds of buffering, but they then play smoothly. Video quality was fine, and we noticed no untoward artefacts during playback. The audio playback options are minimal, so you'll have to use your server software if you want to set up a playlist.

The LinkTheater is compatible with a wide range of media files, including MP3, JPEG and MPEG2. It'll also play h.264 MPEG4 files, so you can watch movies encoded with this efficient and widely used codec. However, the receiver won't play DRM-protected audio files.

The LinkTheater is a decent network media receiver. However, Philips' SLM550 (reviewed in Shopper, February 2007) costs just £20 more from www.dabs.com, is easier to use and has an HD video output, too.