ROKU SoundBridge M1000 review

As good as some PC speakers are, most homes have a better-quality hi-fi in the living room.

It's probably a more comfortable place to listen to music than a study or home office, too, but getting access to your computer's digital music collection can be tricky.

Roku's SoundBridge M1000 is one answer. It's a stylish aluminium tube that connects to any amplifier via phono or S/PDIF connectors, and plays audio streamed over a network connection.

Having a network cable draped between a host PC and stereo isn't much of an improvement on a lead directly from the PC's sound outputs, but the SoundBridge has wireless networking. Connecting to an unsecured or WEP-protected network is reasonably easy, too.

There must be a networked PC available to serve music files. The SoundBridge will work with several music server applications, including Rhapsody, Windows Media Connect and the open-source Slim Server software. The product manual assumes that most people will choose iTunes, though. Multiple libraries can be recognised, with each share name appearing as an item in the Roku's top menu.

The SoundBridge is worked by an infrared remote control. It operates the menu and standard audio functions such as volume and playback. The player has a large, illuminated two-line display that makes most operations simple.

The top menu remains constant, but the content and style of submenus varies depending on which music-sharing software is in use. With iTunes, tracks can be browsed, selected and queued by artist, album or name, and playlists are supported.

We also tried to get the software working with Slim Devices' Slim Server, which was simple to install and set up. However, although the SoundBridge connected successfully to our music library, playback was silent for files of any format we tried. Roku offers no support for Slim Server, and the Slim Devices help files don't cover the problem.

The included CF wireless networking card is 802.11b only, but streaming a stereo, 44kHz MP3 file encoded at 224Kbit/s used less than three per cent of the connection bandwidth. This leaves enough headroom for multiple players, if required.

There are several products that compete with the SoundBridge, one of which is the Netgear MP101. Roku has the clear edge in style, and working with software such as iTunes is a big advantage. This should make it better overall, but the excellent MP101 costs nearly £100 less.