Streaming devices

The idea behind the Push2TV is pretty interesting: you use your notebook’s Wi-Fi adapter to transmit its video display to the Push2TV receiver, which then outputs that video via HDMI to a big-screen TV or similar display. However, the devil is in the detail and because the Push2TV relies on Intel’s Wireless Display (WiDi) technology, you’ll need a notebook with an Intel Wi-Fi adapter and, ideally, one with a second-generation Core i-series processor. We tried seven notebooks before we found one that fit the bill (a Lenovo ThinkPad T420), so be warned — few notebooks have Intel Wi-Fi.

Despite being completely revised and redesigned, Western Digital has confusingly kept the old WD TV Live name. This new model finally brings the Live more in line with the WD TV Live Hub — the key differences are that this unit lacks the Hub’s built-in 1TB hard drive, but adds 2.4GHz 802.11n wireless networking. That makes the Live the ideal device for streaming video or audio from a PC to your TV.

The McTiVia is designed to be a KVM-style device for PC to TV media streaming. It’ll let you send your PC’s display and sound over your home network to a TV, with full mouse and keyboard control. It’s a small box with Wi-Fi antennas and HDMI output. With a USB receiver installed, it’ll allow full connection to your PC, including video and audio streaming (and even 3D games) in real time.

A.C. Ryan’s second stab the network media player category is a little more successful than its adequate yet average initial offering. The A.C. Ryan Playon!HD2 is its new top-end model and though it’s a comparatively big unit (a more portable Playon!HD Mini 2 is also available), that size is mostly so it can accommodate a user-installed 3.5in hard drive.

With the market for network media players as heavily oversaturated as it is, it’s surprisingly hard to find much in the way of innovation. Unfortunately, Japanese vendor Buffalo’s entry doesn’t do a lot to distinguish itself from the crowd. Still, the Buffalo LinkTheater LT-V100 ticks all the right boxes for features, with a Realtek-based chipset and wide file format support (including up to 1080p x264 .mkv files), DTS downmixing, DLNA streaming, two USB inputs, one HDMI and optical audio outputs.

For the follow-up to its popular WD TV Live HD networked media player, WD has essentially married that older model with an internal 1TB hard drive, given the interface a good lick of paint and shored up some weaknesses. The Western Digital WD TV Live Hub is still light and portable, though its footprint is quite a bit larger. It’s a 1080p-capable unit equipped with a range of output options (HDMI, component video and optical S/PDIF among them), plus two USB ports and a Fast Ethernet network port for streaming media.

Wireless video transmitters rarely work as well as they should, but the 8ware Full HD Video Wireless Kit mostly does exactly what it claims, sending uncompressed 1080p video using HDMI. In testing with a PlayStation 3, we found it worked pretty much flawlessly, provided we could get a strong enough signal, with no delay and crystal-clear clarity that was identical to a cabled connection.

Apple’s radically redesigned Apple TV network media player is significantly cheaper than its predecessor, and cheap and Apple aren’t words that normally flow together. You can’t get something for nothing, however, and the primary reason for the hefty price cut comes down to simplification. It’s a smaller unit running on an Apple A4 processor, with HDMI the only AV output option and no user-accessible onboard storage at all. This is just a streaming box that by default will show Apple’s take on HD (which equates and tops out at 720p) films from the iTunes Store.