Review For those using their PCs as home entertainment centres, the Samsung SH-BO83L internal drive turns your computer into a versatile Blu-ray player while also acting as a fast DVD and CD writer. In one step, it upgrades your disc burning ability and adds BD-Rom support at a thoroughly reasonable price.
Samsung’s SH-BO83L: Sata desktops need only apply
Installation is easy: the product slots into any free 5.25in drive bay in your Desktop PC and can be fixed manually with the mounting screws provided. It is a Serial ATA device, so requires an appropriate Sata connector on your motherboard and a Sata plug leading from your computer’s power supply. A Sata data cable is provided in the box along with the drive.
The drive fascia is designed in the popular colour of the hour – glossy black – with a mirrored finish given to the flap covering the tray. The large, L-shaped eject button also acts as the drive’s data access light, flashing a bright blue probably to suggest ‘Blu-ray’ or possibly to remind you not to burn pirate discs or the police will be on to you.
The specifications of the unit are good, promising 8x read speed of single-layer BD-ROM discs (including BD-R and BD-RE) and 4x for dual-layer media. For DVDs, playback is rated at 16x while you should be able to write DVD+/-R discs at 16x, DVD+RW at 8x and DVD-RW at 6x. You can write CD-R media at 48x and CD-RW at 32x. Read speed for standard CD-ROMs is 48x, reduced a little to 40x for CD-R and CD-RW discs. Read the rest of this entry »
Review It has taken Devolo a while to come up with a set of powerline Ethernet adaptors with pass-through power sockets in them, but here, at last, they are.
Devolo’s dLan AVplus: powerline with pass-through power
The dLan 200 AVplus is essentially Devolo’s dLan 200 AVeasy adaptor stretched to accommodate the power socket that’s placed diametrically opposite the device’s own power pins. The pins and socket are placed in the upper half of the adaptor, and the 10/100Mb/s Ethernet port is on the bottom of the unit.
The adaptor’s value to you will depend, then, not only on whether you need that ‘extra’ power socket but also whether there’s room for the 130mm top-to-bottom device to be plugged in. It’s 65mm wide and 40mm front to back. Our test bench main sockets, for example, are placed too close to the top of the bench, so we couldn’t plug the Devolos in there. Read the rest of this entry »
Kit of the Year More and more Register Hardware readers started storing files in network-attached drives this year, and we began our coverage of this hot topic in earnest. We haven’t looked at every model from every manufacturer, but here are the Nas boxes that most found favour in 2009.
Qnap TS-219P Turbo
Cool and quiet on the outside and chock-a-block with features on the inside, the TS-219P has a more comprehensive firmware than any other dual-bay Nas we’ve tested. It’s not the quickest product of its kind and its power management needs a small upgrade, but Qnap has created a Nas box that geeks and laypeople alike will spend many hours enjoying.
MSI has switched sides in the AMD versus Intel war, releasing a redesigned all-in-one AE2010 Desktop PC with Intel processor and Nvidia graphics.
MSI’s AE2020 has Intel and Nvidia Ion inside
The AE2010 – released in August – featured a dual-core, 1.5GHz AMD Athlon X2 3250e processor andintegrated AMD Radeon HD 3200 graphics. The machine’s successor, however, has Intel’s 2.1GHz dual-core Pentium T4300 processor and Nvidia Ion graphics.
MSI hasn’t fiddled with screen size or resolution, so the AE2020 still delivers a 20in, 1600 x 900 display. However, buyers of the latest machine get multi-touch capability as standard and, while the two machines may look identical, the AE2020 apparently has a black leather finish. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Iomega’s original ScreenPlay Pro network media player was a bit of a mixed bag. It had very good connectivity features, including a video input option that allowed it to capture video as well as simply playing audio and video files that were already stored on it. However, it was let down by its inability to play H.264 video – the format used by the ubiquitous iPod and numerous other devices.
Iomega’s ScreenPlay Director
Needless to say, the first thing we did when we received the new Screenplay Director HD was to check whether it could handle H.264. It came through that test with flying colours, although we did discover a few other rough edges along the way. Even so, it’s clear that Iomega has put a bit more thought into this model than it did with its predecessor.
At first glance, the Director HD appears identical to the earlier ScreenPlay Pro. It’s a slim, glossy unit that looks like a fairly conventional hard disk, albeit with a few extra buttons on the front. Our review unit had a 1TB hard disk inside it and costs £179, and there’s also a 2TB version available for £309. Read the rest of this entry »
