I don't want to go to the expense of building a media PC and have been wondering if these external 'media drives' are worth the money (pretty cheap at around £100) - the type that you transfer your media files via network, connect to your TV and then use a remote to view them.

Has anyone got any experience or recommendations in this area?

No direct experience but I am using Windows Home Server and an Xbox 360 on my home network for the same job (plus many others) and I am blown away by how good it is. I think a device you have to move around, load things onto and plug in and out of the TV would be more than a little inconvenient. But I had the 360 and a spare PC anyway so this option was attractive to me.

I can second the 360, we watch movies streamed from a desktop pc and music, we also have a philips streamium (cheap but klunky) attached to the stereo which means we can claim back cupboard space that the cd's used to take up

I have the same setup with an old chipped XBOX which Im sure you should be able to buy "chipped" for less than £50. Works fantasically

I have been watching media drives for while, also thinking of dipping a toe in to see if they are any good.
The cheapest way to try one would be to buy a bare bones one from Maplin who frequently have them on special offer. I suspect they will work like NAS drives a DTV recordrer and will partition and format any old hard drive you stick in.

If I buy one myself I would go for one with an ethernet port as well as USB

http://www.maplin.co.uk/search.aspx?MenuNo=12196&MenuName=HDD%20Media%20Entertainment&worldid=4&FromMenu=y&doy=6m3

Thanks for the replies guys

I didn't think about the Xbox and I don't tend to play any games on the TV (although some would be quite impressive on a 50" plasma) and I fancy the minimalist approach so the media drive would fit the bill nicely.

Thanks for the link BT - I had a mooch around PC World yesterday and they also have some similar deals on things like the Litebook which now has up to 1 Tb storage capacity so might be worth a look.

The empty enclosures look like a good deal but when you add the cost of a decent hard drive they end up about the same price and of course the warranty might be tricker if anything went pop.

I bought one of the Sumvision Media players a while back, it's basically just an external 3.5" enclosure, but also has card readers built in etc. It worked ok, but absolutely refused to play back any high resolution XVids, so was of limited use to me. When I find something that will definitely play HD stuff for a reasonable price then I'll go for it.

Its not very clear how they interface with the tv - do they give you an on-screen menu or is it simply a case of pushing buttons?

Must be much the same on screen interface as a digital pvr.

My Thompson PVR seems to have some kind of nix operatiing system.