Product Reviews

The desire to get music, pictures and videos from a PC to the living room is growing among PC owners. Thankfully, there are an increasing number of products that make this easy, such as Philips' Streamium SL300i.

This small set-top box plugs into your TV and hi-fi and streams digital content across a wired or wireless network. It needs a PC on the same network running Philips' Media Manager. This server software uses Universal Plug-and-Play (UPnP), which means that the SL300i will work with any other UPnP server. It should also mean that another UPnP box can read data from your Philips server, which removes the complexities of having to run

ADVERTISEMENT

multiple proprietary servers.

Once the software is installed, it needs to be told where you keep your digital media. It scans these folders regularly, automatically updating for new files. When the server has been populated, however, there's a bit of grunt work involved. For example, you can create playlists and photo albums, where it's likely that this will replicate existing items you've created in other applications.

The software can be tricky to use. Music files have to be selected manually and dragged, as you can't drag an entire album into a playlist. That said, once it's running the SL300i is simple to use, and the uncluttered interface makes it easy to view your media.

While the SL300i can play MPEG2 files, a wireless network might not be fast enough. We'd suggest converting to DivX for this process. It's also worth noting that there's no support for WMA audio files. Anyone using Windows primarily should check their music collection first. Should you get bored of your own media, there's an internet option that streams content using broadband. .

This is one of the best wireless products we've seen. A version with a screen, the SL400i, is available if you don't want to turn the TV on to play music.