We've looked at plenty of media streaming devices recently - they're boxes that sit under your television and allow you to watch video or listen to music stored on a computer in another room.

But they tend to suffer from one major flaw, that of useability. The menu systems tend to be poorly designed and difficult to use, making the experience less fun and more like hard work. Apple's iPod scroll wheel, for instance, is the perfect navigation system for finding music in a large collection, but no-one has yet come up with something similar for this kind of device.

Now two manufacturers have come up with competing answers to the problem: Microsoft's Xbox 360 can be used to stream music off a Vista PC (it's what's called a Media Center Extender), and D-Link's new DSM-330 works in a similar way.

The DSM-330 works with software from video company Divx (which designed the most popular format for internet video sharing). Installation is a case of installing the Divx Connected software from the supplied disc and connecting the box up to the TV. It has an HDMI port (the cable is supplied) so you can hook it up to a flat-screen TV if you have one, and this cable carries audio as well. Otherwise, it comes with a standard Scart connection as well as digital audio outputs for those who have a suitable amplifier.

It needs to be attached to a home network, either using the supplied network cable or by wireless. Pressing the Setup button takes you into the menus (which appear on the TV screen), from which it was a couple of presses to get to the Wireless menu. We were then able to switch on the wireless networking capabilit y, at which point it found our home network and asked for the key.

Typing in the key was the only annoying bit of the whole process - it uses an on-screen keyboard for typing, and if you get a letter wrong, which is easy to do, you must start again. Once we got the key right, it connected fine.

The software installed quickly and painlessly, asked us where we stored our music, videos and photos, and automatically shared them. It is possible to password-protect certain folders within these if you don't want them distributed.

The menus work quickly and look good, which is down to the fact that it uses the PC's power to create the display. That means you need a PC on all the time you're using the DSM-330 - unlike some competitors it can't stream music or video off a networked [hard disk]. Audio and video quality were both excellent. In addition to your own videos, the DSM-330 offers access to a service called Stage6, which is a bit like Youtube, but offers a far smaller selection of videos, sometimes in higher quality.

Vista compatible: Yes