ATMT 320GB H855 Mobile Media HDD review

The SCART connector is large and can be a pain to plug in, but it does offer an excellent RGB video signal along with stereo sound.

Also known as the Euroconnector, it's often omitted from hardware not originally intended for the European market. Because of this, the H855 is the first hard disk media player we've seen with a SCART output.

It's an external hard disk with video and audio outputs so you can play back media files from it directly. Simply copy the files from your PC via USB, then carry the drive to your living room and watch them on TV. It doesn't have an LCD screen, so you have to plug it into a television to select the files. The plastic casing feels sturdy and the slim remote control tucks away neatly in the base.

As well as the SCART connector there's a number of other sockets on the rear. There are two mini-jack outputs, the first for composite video and stereo audio output, while the second is for component video output. This doesn't support HD, unfortunately, but will output progressive scan video. Finally, there's a coaxial S/PDIF digital audio output, which can send AC3 (Dolby Digital) data from video files to a surround-sound decoder. All the leads you need are provided except, annoyingly, a SCART lead.

The player supports a range of video file formats, including MPEG1, MPEG2 (including VOB files direct from DVD, as long as they're not encrypted), and MPEG4 (including Xvid and DivX). There's MP3 support for music and JPEG photo viewing, too.

Video quality was good with a wide range of test files. VOB files played back smoothly and looked identical to the way they would appear on a simple DVD player.

Music quality from our MP3s was fine, but you can't browse through your tracks while listening to one and there's no playlist support. Photo viewing is severely hampered by the low resolution of PAL TV (720x576) and the scaling is not the best we've seen, leaving the images badly pixelated.

The onscreen interface is simplistic, with icons for file types beside the filenames. Just browse through the folders on the hard disk to find what you want. It's controlled by the remote control, which is clearly laid out. Controls during play are well implemented with smooth fast forwarding and rewinding at up to 8x normal speed. Inside the casing is 320GB IDE hard disk. It's a big chunk of storage, but you'll pay only £90 for a similarly sized external hard disk without the media capabilities.

If you can't be bothered to set up a home network and stream media files to your living room, the H855 is a good alternative. It's not cheap but it does everything we expect of it and you get plenty of storage, too.

Author: Seth Barton