Streaming media over a network is difficult. It's that whole networking part that gets in the way, assuming you have one. Even if you do manage to get everything working, it still doesn't mean it will work smoothly all the time. We went over numerous options that are freely available for the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 a while back. None of them are foolproof, and even when things do go right, you're still bound to encounter a random, utterly inexplicable, error. If you're not streaming, you're storing media on an already crammed console or constantly plugging in a new drive via the USB port. And you still have to contend with loads of codec issues.

You could grab a computer and drag it over to your living room, but that seems excessive if you all you want to do is playback media. Cheaper standalone devices like Seagate's FreeAgent Theater and Western Digital's WD TV fill the void easily. We got our hands on the FreeAgent Theater, which by itself costs around $100, and $200 if you get the model with a 250GB hard drive.

Setup is dead simple - plug it into the wall. The player connects to your TV via S-Video, composite and component video cables. Audio routes via RCA jacks, and a digital coaxial connector if you want surround sound. Note the lack of optical andHDMI jacks. (The WD TV, by contrast, has both optical and HDMI, but lacks component video outputs.) The lack of connectivity didn't affect overall picture quality on our 47" LCD HDTV, especially once you take into account the quality of most of the files.

The included remote is passable, but if you have a universal remote you're much better off using that. Seagate's software package makes syncing folders easy, and as a plus - it's not required at all. If you want to drag and drop files using Windows you're more than free to do just that.

The FreeAgent Theater's menu system works well and is easy to navigate. Although, the text can be a bit large and slow to scroll if you're trying to make your way through a large library of files. As a plus, the menu system has a relatively large preview area that lets you see the video or image file before you commit to opening it.

Seagate's FreeAgent Theater supports quite a few media formats: MPEG-1, MPEG-2(AVI, VOP, ISO), MPEG-4(AVI/Xvid), and DivX. The list is far from comprehensive which means you're going to have to re-encode some videos. Surprisingly, the FreeAgent also displays JPGs as large as 20 megapixels, and a decent variety of audio formats like MP3, AC3, WMA, and WAV(do note the lack of AAC support).

The FreeAgent Theater's biggest appeal is its simplicity. As a dedicated media player the FreeAgent Theater works well enough if you don't want to go through the motions of setting up streaming software for your consoles or bother to troubleshoot it.