Mede8er MED500X Media Player

Gone are the days of having to find a unit big enough to house your gargantuan media collection. Thanks to the new era of media players, your entire media library is housed in a little black box and is accessible with a few clicks.

The Mede8er MED500X is one such media player that has become a highly coveted item. For an unassuming box it packs plenty of ports: HDMI, component, composite video, optical and co-axial digital audio, USB and Ethernet. There’s no Wi-Fi or storage, but the room inside the case for a hard drive makes up for that.

The user interface is bright and bold, with options that are clearly labelled and sensibly arranged. The MED500X also connects seamlessly to both shared network drives and UPnP media servers. Photo handling is adequate, same goes for its music playback. Video playback is equally fuss-free and the feature of thumbnail previews for files selected in the browser makes it easy finding the file you’re after. Support for almost every video format, save for QuickTime, makes the MED500X a versatile performer.

It retails at around R1800.