Frankfurt  - They go by a variety of names, including multimedia receiver, network media player, or streaming client. What they share is a mission: acting as a data bridge to bring data like photos on USB sticks or films stored on PCs onto the home television. Some are also capable of accessing the internet as well.

At present this type of device is still considered a niche product, says Roland Stehle from Germany's Society for Entertainment

and Communications Electronics (gfu). "There is a trend toward these devices, though," Stehle says. One new entrant to the battle is Sony's SMP-U10 media box. It is intended to transport photos, films, and music from the PC to the living room, the manufacturer claims.

The SMP U10 provides only a USB port for data input, which makes it difficult to integrate into a home network. Ethernet or WLAN are preferable. Those who prefer to use a USB stick or mobile USB hard drive may well find the device perfect for their needs.

At 70 dollars it is also quite affordable - and well outfitted with outputs: composite video, component video, HDMI, analogue audio and coaxial digital audio all come as standard. It can play back formats ranging from JPEG, DivX, MPEG-1, MPEG-4 and WMA to MP3 and AAC-LC.

When it comes to formats, most devices actually offer similar functionality, says Christoph de Leuw from Germany's Audio Video Foto Bild magazine. "Only if you use special formats like Ogg Vorbis or Flac do you need to look more closely," de Leuw says. The SMP-U10 can also scale photos and films up to a resolution of 1,080 pixels (Full HD) as needed.

Full HD is also a feature on the new WD TV Live HD Media Player from Western Digital. Beyond two USB inputs the 150-dollar device also includes a HDMI output as well as optical (SPDIF), composite and a component interfaces. An Ethernet connection is also on hand for linking it into the home network. The device configuration wizard even includes pre-sets for WLAN.

Another device with integrated WLAN is the EVA8000 network receiver from Netgear. It can transmit at up to 54 Mbit/s of speed - too low to stream high-resolution films. The device, available for around 130 dollars, has a variety of connections: HDMI, composite, component and USB are all on board. It is near the top of the pack in terms of supported formats.

Buffalo Technology has created the LT-H90WN LinkTheater HD. It too can handle a direct connection with hard drives or USB sticks. The LinkTheater offers a broad range of features: that means Ethernet LAN and n-standard WLAN, which is fast enough for fluid streaming film. Videos are output to the TV using HDMI, including in Full HD.

De Leuw considers the solution of connecting an external hard drive to the streaming client as impractical: "You'll be constantly plugging and unplugging. I see a network hard drive as a better solution."

That class of storage device, known as network attached storage or NAS, is integrated directly into the home network. What's important is that the device can also serve up music, photos, or films, especially on models supporting the UPnP standard or which are DLNA certified.

More and more routers can support UPnP themselves, de Leuw says. Those that do can connect to a standard hard drive via USB to the router and then send the data on to a TV or stereo set. If the user has a TV or AV receiver with a network interface also capable of UPnP then the streaming client can be eliminated entirely. (dpa)