I want to buy a HDD-based multi-media player for me to have another place to store and play music, photos, and video. I also want it be a more convenient place for my little boys to playback their favorite DVDs on LCD. It can also be a place to backup my large volume of photos taken these few years. The following are three products in my watchlist.

• TVIX M3000U from DVICO — The Original Digital Jukebox — TVIX is a portable multimedia player for digital home entertainment that brings your movies, music and photos to your TV.
• TVIX HD M5000U from DVICO — The newest and most advanced HDD-based Divx player from DVICO.
• MediaMan HVX-3500 — Mediaman HVX-3500 is a versatile multi-media player that allows you to store a plenty of data, music, photos, and even complete movie collections and playback them on your AV systems.

The prices are reasonable: TVIX-M3000U costs around HK$ 1400, MediaMan HVX-3500 costs around HK$1900, and TVIX-M5000U is the most advanced and the most expensive (around HK$ 2600). I have saw the demo of the former two in Hong Kong consumer-electronic shops. The following are the main differences I can notice.

• Both TVIX HD M-5000U and MediaMan HVX-3500 supports DVI, Component, S-video, and Composite output for video, but TVIX M3000U does not support DVI.
• TViX HD M-5000U can be networked with a PC using its built-in LAN port. You can navigate to a file in a PC on and play the file from its original destination without having to first copy it onto the TViX HD.
• TViX HD M-5000U can display images in BMP format in addition to JPEG format.

Do you konw other similar gadgets that I can purchase in Hong Kong? I appreciate it if you can share with me what you know about HDD-based multi-media players suitable for small living room.