Gadget: iXtreamer Hybrid HD Media Player and Streamer with iPod/iPad/iPhone Dock

Your iPod's packed with music, your iPhone's stuffed with photos and your iPad's choca-block with movies. Although you'd be a more attractive pick-pocket target than P Diddy, entertainment is guaranteed. Once you get back to your gadget den this iGear becomes less useful. There's not a lot of point in watching movies on the sumptuous yet small screen of your iPad if you've got a lovely big LCD TV. The iXstreamer claims to solve such a dilemma.

The iXstreamer's feature list is impressive. In a nutshell it's a media streamer with an Apple dock built into the top of it. Let's deal with the media streamer part first. The iXtreamer connects to your home network either via a network cable or the altogether less fiddly Wifi Adapter (20). This means that pretty much any music, photos and videos on your PC or Mac can be wirelessly streamed and played back on your TV. Additionally, the iXtreamer has a series of web-based apps built into it so you can play YouTube videos direct or listen to internet radio. In testing, it played back high definition 1080P H.264 video files smoother than Lionel Richie. The Apple dock is perhaps its most unique feature. Once my iPad was docked the glossy iXtreamer menu system popped up on my TV, allowing easy access to all my music and movies.

The iXstreamer boasts a number of features glaringly missing from the Apple TV, including the dock, OK, It doesn't have the movie and music on-demand functionality built in, but for a docking media hub, the iXstreamer is hard to beat.