Product Reviews

If your PC is home to a large digital music collection that you want to play back on a stereo in another room, you'll need a network music player such as Terratec's Noxon 2 audio. It can connect to stored music via a home network and play it back on any stereo with an auxiliary input.

The Noxon 2 is about the size of a Mac Mini computer. It's made from white and silver plastic and looks fairly smart, but it's propped up at the front by its awkward-looking display, which extends beyond the bottom of the case. Many network music players we've reviewed wouldn't look out of place next to an expensive hi-fi system, but the Noxon 2 is unlikely to elicit admiring comments from house guests.

After pressing the power button on the infrared remote control, there's a delay of a few seconds before its blue screen comes to life. We were struck immediately by the similarity between

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the Noxon 2's display and that of Philips' SLA5520. Both are a little blocky and are difficult to read from any distance. The two products' menu structures are also nearly identical, but this is no bad thing.

This music player was easy to set up on our secured wireless network, leasing an IP address and immediately finding music that we had shared using the Windows Media Connect UPnP server. This free Microsoft download works with Windows Media Player 10, but you can use any other UPnP server, such as TwonkyVision, which is included on the install disc.

The Noxon 2 may not look as sleek as the SLA5520, but it has more ports and connectors. It can connect to a wired or wireless network, and has an optical S/PDIF digital audio output. The player can access music stored on portable storage devices plugged into its USB port.

Even without a UPnP server, it's possible to listen to a variety of radio stations streamed directly over the internet. You can choose between a large range of programmes, grouped according to genre or location. However, the list of radio stations is far from complete; many BBC radio stations weren't listed and lots of them failed to work, giving us an "unsupported file format" error.

The Noxon 2 audio sounds fine and is quite easy to use, but it isn't worth £67 more than Philips' similar SLA5520. If you must have a digital output, we'd recommend Roku's Soundbridge M1000, reviewed in What's New, Shopper May 2005.