I'd be tempted to get one of these if it were just a bit cheaper. I fairly often travel around, and having a way to play all the media I have would be good. As it is I rely on my laptop, but particularly when on holiday, it'd be good if I could leave that at home, but still be able to watch my stuff (rather than French TV!)

"...480i, 480p, 720p and 1080i resolutions as the ScreenPlay HD unit (note that the latter two are still achieved through upscaling...

HDMI / component/ composite / SCART connection and plays stored media content from external storage.

Supported media formats include MP3, AC3, WAV, WMA, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (AVI/VOB), MPEG-4 (AVI/DiVX 3.11, 4.x, 5.x/XViD) and JPEG.

...

Link will be sold in Europe later this month for €79 (£62.5). ..."

what the hells wrong with the UK and EU innovators, its half way through 2008 , and still they are trying to palm off all this crumby Mpeg4 ASP /divX SOC kit, and not a single cheap AVC/H.264 decoder codec SOC in retail sight.

its not as if the AVC SOC doesnt exist, its existed for many years now (2004/5), and www.conexant.com your bargin basement yet capable and cheap chip shifters as just a single example, have several AVC decoder SOC off the shelf

"Main Profile and High Profile up to Level 4.0, with high-definition video resolutions up to 1920 x 1080..."

http://www.conexant.com/servlets/DownloadServlet/PBR-200702-001.pdf?docid=703&revid=1

stop piddleing about and get these AVC/H.264 decoders and encoder SOCs slapped on the far eastern micro motherboards (Efika/CherryPC) or even a simple bog standard USB2 key for gods sake and the world can finally start speding their money on something werth buying and encoding your old archived content to AVC

both D1 PAL and above...

hell you can even get cheap wireless 11N on a SOC now, just combine them and be done, RTL RJ45 1gig,11n,and AVC on a SOC with the usual HDMI and related output, a 512 meg ram,8meg rom, and a VLC for streaming and micro web server, what more caould you want, and its all available TODAY OFF THE SHELF and low lower and cost too, just make the thing and sell it for £60 a pop, and every one will be lining up to buy one for every single screen they have be it HD, LCD, or even generic VGA PC TVs, thats got to be werth a massive cash return and for once it might be a valid purchase forthe end users...

forget old an antiquated Mpeg2 and divx, they had their day, lets start buying and using TODAYS AVC tech, just make the friggin things and sell them IK.

Will this work with an external hard drive that is powered from USB?

Will a bog standard memory stick be fast enough to play HD media from?

If both of these are yes then should be a great device for £60.

Nice idea but where is it's market?

Travellers will probably have a laptop so use the laptop screen, as it's less bother. Home users if they were into home media storage / streaming will have a Xbox 360 / Xbox with XBMC to get files from a Media centre PC already.

It's also too expensive you can get 2.5 '' Drive caddy / media boxes for £30 (or less if you don't mind chinese sellers on Ebay) add in a hard drive and it's about the same cost, and a lot more useful as you don't need to lug around network storage and cables.

DVD players with Dixv and a USB slot are better in the home. There are already streamers by Netgear, Pinnacle and Happauge, that have all failed to take off, this will probably be the same.

What a previous poster says is almost right, at home I use my PS3 for media streaming so this device isn't much help.

However, when I'm travelling I currently link my laptop to the hotel TV (sometimes it's not possible or sometimes the TV is too crappy). It could be more convenient to use this device instead.

Mind you my next laptop will probably have HDMI so, perhaps not!