Pinnacle ShowCenter 250HD review

Pinnacle's ShowCenter 200 received a Best Buy award in Shopper 211.

It was the first media-streaming device that really impressed us, as it was easy to set up and supported lots of file formats. Despite this, we were concerned that the new ShowCenter 250HD seems to differ so little from its predecessor.

The hardware is roughly the same size and shape, although a redesign of the fascia means it will blend into your living room far better. The front panel has only a USB port, for connecting storage devices such as USB sticks or digital cameras, plus a power button so you don't have to leave it on standby all the time.

The rear of the unit is identical to that of the ShowCenter 200. Those with older TV sets are well catered for, with SCART, S-video and composite outputs. Audio options are also good; there are stereo phono plus coaxial and optical S/PDIFs. A component output supports HD resolutions up to 1080i but, disappointingly, there's no HDMI output. This output would be more convenient, as modern sets often have multiple HDMI ports and the connection can be used to carry audio, too.

We were hoping that this device would support the Draft-N wireless standard, as the extra bandwidth would be very useful for streaming HD video. Instead, there's the usual 802.11g and wired Ethernet support, and you'll have to use the latter to get smooth HD playback. WPA encryption is supported, so you shouldn't have any trouble connecting the ShowCenter to your home wireless network.

It's easy to get everything up and running over either a wired or wireless network. There's no server software provided with the player, but it supports the UPnP AV standard so can be used with a variety of freely available applications. Pinnacle recommends that you use the media server built into Windows Media Player 11.

Audio support is well thought out and lets you browse tracks ordered by all the usual options, including artist, track name, album and folder. You can browse your music collection while listening to other tracks, or use any playlists from Windows Media Player. Photos were capably handled, with straightforward slideshow and rotation controls. Image quality was decent, too, with pictures resized to our TV's resolution without any quality issues.

The 250HD supports most of the video formats you'd expect, but there's no support for H.264 files. With more HD camcorders supporting this format, we find it hard to recommend buying a product that can't play it. We also had problems playing back VOB files from DVDs. Our test file played OK on our server PC, but the sound was lost if we tried to stream it or play it directly through the USB port. On the plus side, it supports DivX and XviD files. Video quality was good, and you can fast-forward and rewind through files.

The ShowCenter 250HD is a good product, but it doesn't do anything new. Linksys's Kiss 1600 (reviewed in Shopper 235), supports H.264 and has an HDMI output too, making this look a little old fashioned.

Author: Seth Barton