China Electronics Wholesaler

Turn your old hard drive into a media centre

Japanese gadgetspecialist Evergreen always does a nice line in cheap gear with a little extraon top, such as its latest hard drive enclosure, which doubles as a digital mediaplayer.

The ¥4,000 (£19) DN-HMP218 is basically a 2-5-inch drive case with extra circuitry for decoding MPEG-1/2/4video, MP3 audio and JPEG stills, buttons for controlling their playback and connectorsfor getting the goods out and onto a screen.

Supply your own medium

At that price, weneedn't spell out that you'll have to supply the hard drive yourself, butprices for those too are low and dropping all the time. You're limited to 20,40 or 80GB drives, although there is an SD card slot as well.

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Connections are reasonable - USB 2.0 for hooking up toa PC, analog VGA and coaxial digital audio. Still, throw in a remote controland we're looking at one heck of a basic digital home-ents system.