Digital convergence has been talked about for years but only now can off-the-shelf products bring computer video and audio to your home theatre.

A little while ago I placed a warning on an Internet forum that was discussing a particular DVD player.

This player was fitted with an HDMI output, but it also had big problems with its de-interlacing. Consequently, the picture quality was lousy.

After my warning, the discussion of this unit continued, and virtually all of it was about how well the unit played DivX files from flash memory cards plugged into its USB port.

Perhaps that tells us something: many people are less concerned about ultimate quality than they are about greater capability, particularly when it brings the world of the Internet into their home entertainment equipment.

Let’s look at three products offering precisely that. They don’t require media to be dumped onto a USB mass storage device. Instead, they connect into a home computer network and can directly access files from a computer – photos, music and videos.

One interesting thing about these devices is that this functionality is extra. In each case they have a primary function that alone can justify their purchase.

Beyonwiz DP-S1 HD PVR digital set-top box

Price: $1,599
Distributor: Digital Products Group
Primary function: HD PVR/DVD player

This unit seems to have it all. In addition to being a network media player (wireless and wired networks supported), it is also a twin-tuner high-definition digital TV receiver with 200GB hard-disk recording and a DVD player.

Well, you can forget about the latter function – it has HDMI output and poor de-interlacing. You’d do far better with an Oppo Digital DV-981HD player.

But the rest of this unit is excellent. The twin-tuner HD personal video recorder (PVR) will output video up to 1080p, works reliably and has great picture quality. Life is made easy for the TV hound by the inclusion of support for IceTV, a full seven-day electronic program guide automatically accessible by the unit through your computer network. This usually costs about $3 a week, but a three-month subscription is included in the purchase price.

But how about network connectivity? That, too, is excellent – within the constraint that seems to apply to all such devices.

That constraint is an awful slowness in accessing computer files, and the problem resides in the interface. In many cases, hundreds of files must be examined to extract identification information so that the on-screen display can be presented.

That seems to be an inevitable problem with network interfaces and could in the end prevent widespread consumer acceptance – at least until protocols are developed for pre-storing indexing information on the computer or the consumer player.

That aside, the performance of this unit is excellent. It can play WMV, AVI, MPG, VOB, MP4 and ASF movies, MP3, WMA, AAC, OGG, WAV and AC3.

Oh, it also supports BMP, JPEG and PNG image files. There isn’t much on a computer that it doesn’t support – apart from music files burdened with digital rights management.

The AC3 playback is bit of a surprise. You may recall AC3 as the older name of the codec now called Dolby Digital. You can find a few surround tracks encoded in this format in the broad world of the Internet, and these will be fed by the unit from your computer straight through to a home theatre receiver for high-quality surround sound.

I was also surprised that, using the Wi-Fi connection to my network, standard-definition MPEG2 files (captured from a HD set-top box) would play without wobbles or interruption. However, I did have a very high-quality connection.

High-definition MPEG2 files (averaging about 12Mbps) wouldn’t work this way, but they did fine over a wired network connection. The playback of test high-definition files downloaded from Microsoft is rather ‘iffy’. The unit seemingly had a little trouble achieving reliable performance with the WMV Media 9 format.

Pioneer BDP-LX70 Blu-ray player

Price: $1,999
Distributor: Pioneer Electronics Australia
Primary function: Blu-ray player

Pioneer has made a splash with its first Blu-ray player on the Australian market. It offers a feature not included in the Samsung or Panasonic predecessors: 1080p24 output. That is something I look forward to dealing with in more detail in a future column.

In short, it allows super-smooth playback of movies with fully compatible display devices. Unfortunately, such displays are rare.

Not too much needs to be said about Blu-ray. As with HD-DVD, it offers the highest-quality home entertainment experience yet available, with extraordinarily sharp pictures and improved sound.

But more relevant to this discussion, the player offers network connectivity to provide access to the contents of your computer. As with the Beyonwiz unit, it can play a broad range of video files, plus MP3 and WMA music and JPEG photos. These encompass most of the sources that people will need.

The Beyonwiz player seems to be more computer-oriented than most such devices, because it can access directly any and all ‘shared’ folders on a networked computer. However, the Pioneer player needs server software running on the computer. In particular, it requires Windows Media Connect (a free download from Microsoft).

The playback is flawless, with the unit extracting every bit of quality available from the source files. Especially impressive are some of the high-definition files from the Microsoft website. But it also works well with standard and high-definition MPEG2 video files.

Photos are top notch. I have never been a fan of the ‘ability’ to display photos on a TV. What’s the point of having a six-megapixel photo delivered in a heavily down-sized 0.4 megapixel version, which is the most that standard-definition PAL can manage?

Like the other two units, the Pioneer renders them at full 1,920 by 1,080 pixel resolution, or about two megapixels. Even on a big screen, the Epson EMP-TW1000 1080p projector I was using produced superb quality. These media players make you want to set up slideshow folders in the computer with which to bore your relatives.

But you do have to be careful with this unit. Never hit the ‘All Songs’ option in the display list. I have about 3,800 songs on my computer (from legitimately owned CDs). Selecting this by accident (it’s the top item on the options list) causes the unit to hang while it loads, over many minutes, the names and details of all songs. The only way to interrupt it is to power down the unit.

Teac HDRM7250 HDTV PVR

Price: $1,299
Distributor: Teac Australia
Primary function: HD PVR/DVD Player

This is the cheap way in, and it isn’t a bad way at all. The main function of this unit is as a twin-tuner HDTV receiver, with recording on its 250GB hard disk. But Teac has loaded it with fun stuff, primarily support for media.

The twin-tuner PVR function works well, the picture quality is excellent and it has a most unusual time-shift arrangement.

You can pause live TV, as with the Beyonwiz, and even rewind live TV without making any special arrangements beforehand.

Unlike the others, it doesn’t purge its live TV buffer. So you can rewind all the way through your various channel changes, and even to stuff that you were watching the day (and days) before, up to the capacity of the buffer, which seems to be many hours.

Even if you are using the unit’s network playback features, it is still recording whatever is on the tuned station.

One way of accessing this is by plugging a hard disk drive into the USB port and playing the files thereon (the Beyonwiz has this capability as well). But the better way is by plugging it into your network.

As with the Pioneer, you need Windows Media Connect media server software running on your computer. Oddly, it seems not to communicate its identification information back to Windows Media Connect, which lists it as ‘Unknown Device’. No matter, it works fine.

Like the others, you get photos, videos and music. It works well with even the WMV files downloaded from Microsoft, and seemingly well with MPEG2 high-definition files. But it wouldn’t play back the Dolby Digital soundtracks recorded on these.

Music worked well too, except that during the brief gap between tracks it would switch the sound momentarily to whatever TV station was tuned in. Disconcerting.

And when a couple of recordings were being made, its processor seemingly ran out of oomph, introducing an occasional cracking sound into the music.

Nevertheless, used with a modicum of care, this is a competent network media player.