Pinnacle ShowCenter 250HD review

Why not enjoy your digital photos, videos and music on the big telly in your living room rather than huddled over a PC?

That's what wireless media streaming devices like the ShowCenter are for. They let you browse and play back any digital media stored on your computer from a TV, hi-fi and/or home cinema system in another room.

To the casual observer, the ShowCenter looks like another anonymous set-top box, so it should fit in unobtrusively next to your existing equipment. The only physical setup required is to connect a TV aerial and hook up the device to a spare Scart socket or component video input (if you intend to use its HD capability) on your TV set.

The ShowCenter can then link to your PC in one of three ways: using your existing wireless router (most likely), by creating an 'ad-hoc' wireless network, or, for maximum performance, via Ethernet cable. Whichever way you choose, it can get complicated, and the lack of any software to guide you through is notably unhelpful. Instead, you get a paltry set of instructions that assume a high level of prior knowledge and don't even tell you which version of Windows they refer to. (You'll need either XP with Service Pack 2 or Vista.)

Once you're up and running, things don't get much better. The user interface looks slick in pictures, but in use it's garish and clunky, and the bulky remote control doesn't help. Photo browsing is limited to a list of filenames which take an age to cycle through. Playback of MP3 and WMA music was satisfactory, and there's support for WMA-DRM protected music from download services (not iTunes). The ShowCenter can play Windows Media Video 9, WMV-DRM, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG-4 AVI, DivX and XviD video files, and supports WMV 9, DivX HD and MPEG-4 at resolutions up to 1080i. However, when we tried to play back HD video we got a blocky, stilted picture. Today's home networks arguably just aren't fast enough to make HD a realistic prospect, but it's a let-down that the ShowCenter makes HD one of its selling points and then can't really deliver.

The ShowCenter is described as 'plug and play'. We beg to differ. Each buyer's installation will be different, and it could be a very frustrating task for non-technical users. If you like the idea of access to your digital media from your armchair, a friendlier device would be a better buy.