Pioneer’s efforts as a speaker manufacturer can often be overlooked in favour of its more widely recognised efforts in electronics and the great – if doomed – Kuro plasma project. Despite this, the Japanese giant has produced a number of interesting designs over the years and, in both construction and performance, its high-end TAD models are on par with most rival high-end speakers. Some of this thinking has been making its way down to less rarefied price points and more than a bit of it can be found inside the S-71 series tested here.

Out of the box, this is a non-networked version of AC Ryan’s PlayOn!HD media streamer, but you can add an optional £20 wi-fi dongle to change that. My sample came with a pre-installed 1TB HDD and there are 500GB and 2TB versions.

The popularity of video downloading means that media players are becoming increasingly essential, even if your PC media source is in another room. But what if the PC is small enough to tuck under your TV? Enter Acer’s super-compact Revo 100.

While a Blu-ray/HDD recorder can cost you around £400, if you have a laptop, it may make more sense to add an external Blu-ray burner to it at half the cost. Buffalo’s 12X external drive is ideal.