Digital Stream DPS-1000 BBC iPlayer set-top box

IPTV and DLNA for sub-par tellies

Pleasing playback

This lack of joined up UI construction is compounded by playback flaws. Some of the pre-programmed video feeds only pop up a terse "Function not supported" message when you try to play any of their listed videos. I got this with some Blinkbox offerings too.

Very good media format support... almost

Playing content through DLNA and USB showed mixed results. DLNA doesn't mandate a wide array of video formats, but it happily served up Xvid AVI and H.264-encoded 720p HD .M4V files without hitch. Likewise 1080p H.264 off a USB stick, though it wasn't happy with Reg Hardware's 720p MKV test file.

If metadata is present, it will present videos by their title rather than their filename. But it didn't seem to want to present the contents of my DLNA-accessible Shared Music and Share Pictures folders, though.

OMB's web browser, desptite a section in the manual and a WWW button on the remote, is absent too, though to be fair the box isn't being promoted as being capable of surfing the web.

Verdict

For 90 quid, the DPS-1000 is a passable way to get BBC iPlayer and Lovefilm on your TV if it doesn't have them anyway, and you get good local and network media playback too. It's not as good looking, but it has more features than the Apple TV 2, for example. But it could have been so much better if a bit more effort had been put into the otherwise clunky UI design. ®

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