Plextor MediaX

Hard disks have become a common addition to our living rooms, courtesy of set-top boxes like the Sky Plus, which use their huge capacities to record vast quantities of television programs and films. What you can’t do with a Sky Plus or similar box is plug it into your PC and copy your PC-based photos, videos and music to it.

The Plextor MediaX, however, promises access to both PC and TV worlds. It’s a little black box that can suck the media from your PC – either via USB or over a wired network – and send it to your TV. It can also record what’s on your screen, letting you time-shift your viewing, pause live TV or archive programs for viewing at a later date.

Features:
The MediaX has a wide array of outputs for connecting it to a TV. We went the whole hog and routed it through an HDMI port (cable not included) into a flat-screen TV, but there are component, composite and Scart options too. There’s a USB port for connecting to your computer and a FireWire (also known as i.LINK or IEEE 1394) port on the back for transferring video from an old-style digital camcorder. Last, but certainly not least, there’s an Ethernet socket. We connected this to our router elsewhere in the house with two pass-through HomePlug adapters from Solwise (www.solwise.co.uk or read our review at http://tinyurl.com/wusolwise).

You can either transfer your media files onto the disk via USB or, if you prefer to leave it by the TV, drag them across via the Ethernet connection. Alternatively, it’ll also work as a streamer, playing files from your network that are shared through Windows.

Lastly, you can use the the MediaX to record video directly from your devices by plugging them in via your Scart connection, though realistically this is more useful for making copies of things than for time-shifting TV programmes, as the device doesn’t have a tuner of its own.

Performance:
Cranking out on a 1080i HDTV, you might initially be a bit disappointed – the control interface shrinks to about half the screen, surrounded by black. Your digital photos, however, will look great.

It supports a good enough range of picture and music formats, but is a bit light on movie formats. MPEG, Xvid and DivX are all in place, including HD versions, but you’ll have to convert anything that doesn’t naturally occur in this format – there’s no QuickTime or WMV support.

You can force things back up the network via its split-screen interface but the drive doesn’t appear on the network as a device in its own right.

Ease of use:
Unfortunately, the user interface is far from perfect. Problems include the need, when browsing files, to select whether you’re looking for video, photos or music – folders containing both will only display the type you’ve got selected. Selecting files and folders is a bit clunky and the process of copying files across the network makes it look like FTP (File Transfer Protocol) software – more functional than attractive. Not being able to see the hard disk on the network from your PC means you can’t drag and drop things over the network to the disk – instead, you’ll have to unplug it and use the USB option.

Value for money:
Although it sounds quite expensive, this device gives you a lot of storage for your money – under-the-set recorders for domestic use usually have hard disks with a maximum capacity of 160GB.

The MediaX’s network connection makes it very versatile, but it’s worth remembering you’ll need to connect it to a wired network or HomePlug network, so there might be some extra expense to consider. Also, it doesn’t come with a tuner, so you’ll need to combine it with another box if you want to record anything other than analogue broadcast TV directly, which may mean forking out even more cash.