Media streamers are a fantastic way of getting movies, and photos stored on a portable drive or server on to a television, either wirelessly or via Ethernet. Nondescript black boxes seem to be the design norm for network media streamers, which at least makes them easy to hide in the living room. This certainly applies to the anonymous-looking Med8er MED500X, but it does at least pack plenty of ports — HDMI, component, composite video, optical and co-axial digital audio, USB and Ethernet. There’s no Wi-Fi or storage, but we think room inside the case for a 3.5” SATA hard drive makes up for it.
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The MED500X’s user interface is big and bright, with options that are all clearly labelled and sensibly arranged. PAL and NTSC output up to 1080p/60Hz is possible (with an option for 24fps playback), while audio options include 2-channel down-mixing and pass-though for both HDMI and SPDIF (Sony Philips digital interface) outputs.
Media playback starts with selecting a source, after which you can browse all files, or filter by music, photos or movies. External USB storage can be used in lieu of an internal hard drive, but the MED500X also connects seamlessly to both shared network drives and UPnP media servers. The UI responds promptly to the supplied remote control too, but this could do with fewer buttons and a more logical layout to match the clean on-screen presentation. Still, the MED500X also has controls on its front panel should the remote prove too fiddly.
Viewing photos and watching movies
Photo handling is simple, but adequate — slideshows can be pepped up with a few simple transitions and your own choice of background music. It’s a similar story with music playback, but while the MED500X does recognise tags, these aren’t used for the browser, instead you just navigate the usual file and folder structure.
Video playback is equally fuss-free and the provision of thumbnail previews for files selected in the browser at least makes it easy figuring what is what. Support for almost every video format under the sun makes the MED500X a versatile performer (no QuickTime — no surprise) and it impressed us with perfect playback of a 1080p MKV file over a wired network. Performance was let down a little by problems picking up the soundtrack on MKV files played from any source, but stopping and restarting playback fixed it.
At around £150, there’s little to fault with the Mede8er MED500X and while it may not be much of a looker, it still has what it takes when it comes to media playback.
