We're all going digital and the best thing is that this increasingly means just needing one li'l box sitting underneath your telly to do the whole multimedia dance. Videos, music, photos; they're all there and ready to be streamed right onto your telly, whether that's in the lounge, kitchen or bedroom. We've got six media boxes, each offering different takes on the media playback conundrum and each at different price and functionality levels. At their most basic you just get a simple little box that will plug into your TV and playback multimedia data from a couple of sources, such as eSATA or USB. Step up a little and you're in the realms of network media players. Plugged into the network, wirelessly or via Ethernet, these players will pull content from other devices attached to the network, such as network attached storage (NAS) devices or from PCs you have in other rooms. Network attached media players are increasingly able to play back video content from the web. Traditionally, this just revolves around the ubiquitous YouTube app many of them come bundled with, which allows you to watch amusing videos of kittens being tickled from the comfort of your sofa, though we can expect more licensed content being accessible via certain devices in the not-too distant future. Some more advanced media players will have built-in capacity for storage, which usually just requires dropping in a standard 3.5-inch SATA drive, while others offer built-in TV-tuners as well.
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