Dvico TViX review

These days the average PC hard drive contains thousands of digital photos, hundreds of MP3s, a great many movie clips, home videos and even films downloaded from the Web.

But who wants to sit on the hard chair in the spare room to enjoy all these files?

The TViX is a portable media player that allows you to enjoy the music, video and photo files from your PC on your TV. It's simple to use. You just plug it into the PC's USB 2 port, drag your files over, then unplug it and carry it to the telly. You can link it to your PC using a number of different types of connector, including S-Video and component, so compatibility with your TV shouldn't be a problem. High definition is also supported through the component output, and the optical S/PDIF is capable of outputting DTS or Dolby Digital (AC3) from appropriate movie files.

Unlike most of the media players we've reviewed, the TViX doesn't come with a hard disk installed, but if you have an old drive lying around, this makes it very good value. If you don't, you'll have to budget an extra £30 to £60. You can install any IDE hard disk up to 400GB in the TViX.

The remote is well designed and has clearly marked buttons. There's another set of controls on top of the player as well. The device's software also works well, scanning your PC for media files and offering you the choice of whether to copy them to the TViX or not. But, bizarrely, you have to download it - it doesn't come on a CD.

Playback quality depends largely on which video output you use. We tested the S-Video and HD component outputs and were pleased with the results. It supports all the important file formats, the only real exception being WMV.

If you have an old IDE hard disk lying around that you'd like to re-use, then the TViX is a bit of a bargain. Otherwise, go for a media player that comes with a hard disk already built in, for instance the Freecom Mediaplayer we reviewed in issie 171.