Whilst not strictly a PVR, the Philips Streamium SL400i does include some PVR-style features, but it's probably best described as a media extender.
I was given an SL400i to review recently, and found myself reasonably impressed by the potential for the technology around the home, especially if you're a regular user of audio and video content straight from your PC or Mac, like me.
Straight out of the box, the setup was fairly simple: connect the unit to your TV via SCART, and plug in the wireless adapter to your PC, then install the software. No problems there, and I was up and running in a matter of minutes.
The Phillips Media Manager software performs a scan of your hard drive, ignoring or including folders as you see fit, in order to catalog the various A/V files you have on your machine. The Philips Wireless USB 11g Adapter software then makes the connection from your PC to the unit and streams content wirelessly via a simple remote-controlled interface on your TV. It can even connect to the Internet if you bridge the connection from the wireless adapter to your main web router.
However, that's pretty much where it all ended for me.
I spent a few minutes browsing around my media files and was quickly impressed by the speed and quality of the output, but I quickly discovered that files with DRM or incompatible codecs (XVid) wouldn't display.
Then, the wireless adapter software decided it couldn't be bothered establishing a network connection for me. So, I tried again; nothing.
I uninstalled all the software and ran through the entire process all over again; bingo -- I was back up and running again. But not for long. After I switched off the Streamium unit and powered it back up again, the connection was gone, and no matter how hard I tried or how many times I uninstalled and reinstalled the software, it just wouldn't work.
I even went on to Streamium Cafe, a well-known Phillips Streamium messageboard forum, but I was roundly ignored. Someone eventually suggested that "nobody uses this setup... most people have a 'real' WLAN router running."
Which, frankly, is a bit ridiculous and hard to believe; that no-one on the forum who owns an SL400i uses the wireless adapter which is shipped with the unit.
Potentially, on paper, this is a fantastic product and a brilliant innovation. In reality, for me, at least, it was a waste of time.
At £180, you would think there would be a more comprehensive troubleshooting guide with a product like this (an update helper card provided with the manual and supposedly aimed at users with Windows XP Service Pack 2 was factually incorrect), but I couldn't find a single help document which covered wireless networking for Windows XP on the Philips website, or on any messageboard forum.
Save yourself the bother and buy a £40 video sender.
1. Harsh comments about streamium here.
I have the Streamium WACS700 device and I love it - there are some minor issues with it but its still great.
I think the problem with the Streamium devices is that they seem to still be at a beta/'early adopter' stage, even though they have been around for a while. This is purely due to lack of effort by Philips.
Even though I love my unit I would not recomend it to any of my less computer-savvy friends. However - it would not take much from Philips in terms of improved software and documentation to make Streamium units more appropriate for a wider userbase.
Posted at 7:49AM on Feb 7th 2006 by manc555