Media streamers have been around for a while, and Kiss-branded players have been around longer than most.

The Kiss 1600 is a Wifi media streamer with a DVD player bolted to the front, in a compact box with a huge number of connections on the back.

The wireless aspect isn't perfectly intuitive to set up – the box couldn't work out what type of encryption our network had, but once that step passed, setting up the box was a breeze, and it fills the missing gap between PC and TV nicely.

A Scart socket ensures there's support for older TVs, and there's an HDMI port and component outputs for high-definition TVs (supporting 720p and 1080i resolutions). Linksys neglected to supply an HDMI cable in the box, but it does include component and Scart cables.

The basic PC-Link software installs in seconds on Windows and Mac computers and is used for managing files. Once the files are catalogued on the PC they can be chosen on the Kiss 1600 using the supplied remote control.

The 1600 is fully certified to play DivX-format files, but will also play Mpeg versions 2 and 4, Xvid, Nero Digital, H.264 and WMV high-definition files. It can't play Apple's .mov files but otherwise file support is the most comprehensive of any media streamer we've seen.

Playback of high-definition movie files over a wireless connection was distinctly stop-start, because the player only supports the relatively slow 802.11g wireless networking standard, rather than the faster Draft-N technology.

Connecting the Kiss 1600 to a wired network via the network port is a must, then, for high- definition video streaming, but the wireless link was fine for standard-definition videos. One good alternative is a Homeplug device that connects computers over the mains network, such as the Devolo dLAN 200.

An online services section provides access to online newspapers from around the world, along with town-specific weather forecasts and some basic games. A huge list of internet radio stations is another impressive feature: 13,000 from around the world but most are smaller stations – there's no sign of the BBC, for example.

Disappointingly, though, there's no video content in the online services section and no web browser either for accessing websites such as Youtube or Channel 4's on-demand service 4OD. This means the box is perhaps best suited to those who already have a large digital video and audio collection.

While this is a good media streaming product, we look forward to the next version, which will hopefully have better access to online content, rather than relying on people having to store their own collections.

Also consider:
Apple TV
Kiss DP-600
Philips SLM5500