Xenta PDM05H HD Mini Media Player Review: Small, Mighty & Magnificent

The era of television media players passed up by very quickly. This was most due to the incredibly quick development of 'smart TVs' which enabled us to view and stream media from external devices, networks and the internet.

The Xenta HD Mini Media Player is simple. You plug it into your television using a HDMI cable or the supplied AV cable; plug in a USB drive or memory card with some media loaded onto it; pick up the remote and press play. It will let you view all your favourite movies, box sets, pictures and other media without any need for additional conversion or decoding.

The Xenta PDM05H supports a huge range of file formats that allow you to simply drag and drop to view, They include:

• MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-3, MPEG-4
• AVI
• MPG
• DAT
• VOB
• DivX
• XviD
• WAV
• WMA
• MP3
• BMP
• TIFF
• PNG
• JPEG
• SRT
• SMI
• SSA
• TXT

The list is huge(!) and includes almost every popular file format. Given that you are not breaking any local copyright laws, you can download from your favourite online store; transfer the file to a USB and watch it on your big screen - in HD!

The Mini HD player features Xenta's upscaling technology which automatically scales non-HD content to HD size to ensure it fills your screen for optimal viewing pleasure.

Compared to other alternatives out there from the likes of Western Digital and Maxtor - the Xenta PDM05H gives the best value for money. With a recommend retail price of only £24.99 from the manufacturer it blows away competition in terms of value for money.

The UI is very clean and simple to use and there are plenty of options for customization and settings tweaks to suite you. Each Xenta PDM05H is shipped with a remote control, power lead, instruction manual and AV cables. That's everything you need to get started minus your favourite film!

The only thing that disappointed me was that it was only 720p HD and not the full 1080p HD some of its newer rivals offer (for 3x the price, mind you!). But this flaw is easily made up for by it's low retail price (even cheaper on eBay and other outlets) and small design no bigger than a credit card.

The Xenta PDM05H HD Mini Media Player really is one of the best value-for-money HD media players out there - even though it's a few years outdated. I would definitely recommend it for anyone looking to get more out of their big screens within a tight budget.