You don’t have to be a couch potato to appreciate that digital photos, videos and music are more captivating when enjoyed on a large-screen TV and a home cinema system rather than a small PC screen.

Wireless media streaming devices such as the Showcenter 250HD connect to a TV, allowing users to browse and play any digital media stored on a networked computer from the comfort of the sofa.

Pinnacle says the Showcenter is plug-and-play, but we found that stretched the truth. It lacked drivers to install in the first place and it was in fact quite difficult to get our existing wireless network to recognise it.

There are three ways of adding it to a network: using your PC’s own wireless network facility (if it has one), a wireless router or a network cable. The poorly written instructions offer little help to the inexperienced user in this area and do not even state which version of Windows they refer to. We were disappointed that Pinnacle has not improved upon the ease of setup, given that the device’s forerunner, the Showcenter 200, had compatibility problems with some wireless routers.

Even once set up correctly, the Showcenter failed to impress us on a number of counts. Its unintuitive and unresponsive menus are hindered by the poorly laid-out remote control. Performance was also unimpressive: high-definition video playback - one of the device’s selling points - suffered from blocky patches and was less smooth than we would have liked.

Our four-megapixel photographs also took longer to appear than we expected. Annoyingly, they were obscured by a ‘loading’ message each time we clicked through to the next one, and often appeared skewed.

To the Showcenter’s credit, it can stream a wide variety of music and video file formats as well as bought downloaded tracks that are copy-protected. It is also similar in appearance to a typical DVD player and shouldn’t look out of place next to any other AV equipment below your television. However, its good points are not enough to outweigh the Showcenter’s shortcomings and as such it is difficult to recommend.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 5:31 pm and is filed under Electronics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.