Sony SMPN100B USB Media Player with Built-in Wi-Fi

I purchased this product two months ago as I had moved an old Sony Trinitron set to my bedroom to make way for a brand new Sony Internet TV in the living room. After using the new Internet TV for a few days I realised I had been missing out on a ton of features that new televisions now have built-in. Firstly, the ability to watch a whole range of programmes from on demand services like BBC iPlayer and Demand Five and secondly, the ability to stream music, pictures and video from networked computers in my home. I was so used to using catch-up TV services on small laptop screens that being able to view them back on a TV was a much more comfortable and enjoyable viewing experience.

The problem was the old set in the bedroom did not have any of these services and I was growing tired of channel-hopping looking for something to watch. I then discovered this product which solved that problem. Not only did it add many of the features of my 2011 television to my set from the 90's but it also has wireless capabilities so I didn't need to run internet cables around the bedroom. I've also discovered a cool Sony app for my iPhone which lets me control the device and use the iPhone keyboard to type in text to YouTube and some other services in the device. Very impressive. So easy to set-up and use - recommended.

I bought this device about a week ago, and at first, I wasn't too impressed.

Lets start with the main reason many people will buy this device, Media Streaming. When I connected it to my network, It refused to play media from my PC running PS3 media server (which works fine with my PS3, Xbox, WDTV Live.) I receieved the error alot of reviews mention, not being able to stream movies. After looking around the internet, I found one suggestion to try some software called Serviio. After installing this on my PC, and waiting a couple of hours for my Media files to cache, the device worked without a hitch, and is actually much better than PS3 Media Server. It lets you not only view all your movies and TV shows in a directory but also sort them by actor, director, and many more. If you get this device, make sure you get Serviio (its free!).

Secondly, the internet TV features. Very good I thought, It has YouTube, Love Film, Sky News, iPlayer, and a good few more, including speciality stuff like extreme sports. All of the Apps run very well & quickly.

One problem using a couple of the apps is the fact you don't have a keyboard, but fear not! Sony has very nicely produced a free app for touchscreen devices (tested on my iPhone/iPad). Which lets you not only control your Media Player over the network by swiping to navigate menus but also lets you use an onscreen keyboard. Brilliant for YouTube.

All in all, I am now impressed with this device, but it would be worthless without Serviio, thank god I found it. I hope this solves the streaming issues for everyone who reads this.

(P.s. BestBuy now price match Amazon, so if you go instore, you can get it cheaper than here!)

I bought this to try and get BBC iPlayer and LoveFilm services directly on my TV and also to get videos I had on my computer easily onto my TV. Its abilities to play songs and show photos weren't something I cared about. After using it for a while I am mixed between being very pleased with some aspects of how it works and very disappointed with others. What is good? It is small and discrete, easy to set up. Just plug a cable between it and your TV and turn it on, then if you are using a wireless network go into the network settings and follow the instructions. Then it will download and install the latest firmware. The user interface is simple and easy to use as well as being pretty. There are lots of internet video services available immediately, such as BBC iPlayer, 5 On Demand and LoveFilm, which are the ones I have tried. You need to have a LoveFilm subscription for it to work, which I have. It has other video services such as Eurosport, YouTube, DailyMotion and many more that I didn't try. Sony have also prominently placed their own Qriocity service for hiring films, but I didn't try it as I thought that asking either £3.50 for SD and £5 for a HD film was too expensive. I was very impressed with the video quality and smoothness of playback on both iPlayer and LoveFilm. I thought the audio quality on iPlayer was a bit weak and the choice of titles available on LoveFilm quite limited, but these are problems with the services, not the Sony. So it has done a great job of moving these video services away from your computer and on to your TV.

Where does it fail? Streaming media from your computer is very difficult to set up and even when you have set it up it is close to useless as it doesn't support video. The Sony uses the industry standard DLNA for streaming media, rather than a proprietry system like Apple uses with Apple TV. DLNA is very hard to set up as you need to find a DLNA server on the internet to install and configure on your computer. There are quite a few choices, some free, some not, and of different levels of difficultly to configure. It is all very confusing. Your Aunt Maud wouldn't stand a chance of setting it up. I actually tried four different DLNA servers on my Mac before I realised that the problem wasn't the DLNA server but the Sony. In every case on the Sony I could see the folders on my computer, but nothing in them. If you go to the Sony page for this product and scroll right to the bottom of the technical specifications you find out that it only supports streaming audio via DLNA. So I unplugged my external hard drives with my films on and plugged it directly in the Sony. I could then see my videos, but couldn't play them as they weren't in a supported format.

Now your mileage may vary as to whether it supports your video files. I suspect that if you download films illegally over the internet it will probably be fine, those seem to be the formats it supports. However I have been ripping my own DVDs trying to make a video library like I have already done with my CDs. I have a Mac and I use the most popular program for this, Handbrake, and use its default settings. The films it encodes are perfect for both my iPhone and iTunes, but unplayable by the Sony. I also tried playing videos I'd taken with my digital camera, but again these could be seen but not played. The only thing I had on my drive that it could play were some raw DVD .vob files that I had ripped but not yet deleted. Now this might all change in a later version of the firmware or maybe not. I was using version M05.R.071.

So in summary, video services like iPlayer and LoveFilm work great. Streaming from your computer is hard to set up and doesn't work with videos. If you plug a flash drive or similar into the Sony then you can play videos, but not in any formats that I had.

I think I am going to have to buy an Apple TV as well, as I believe that it does stream video from your computer and is very easy to use. Unfortunately it doesn't support BBC iPlayer and LoveFilm, when it does then the Sony will probably be going on eBay.