The Roku M2000 is as distinctive in the flesh as in all the magazine articles and websites we'd seen it on, the unit measures 17 inches and its tubular design makes sure it looks quite unlike any other gadget in your home, like the SliMP3 its dominated by a huge vacuum fluorescent blue display on 12 inches! this makes it simple to read even from the other side of the room with a 512 x 32 readout.

Making to most of your digital music collection has be tricky until now, perhaps persuading the wife to allow you to install a PC in the living room (always a fine art) the 802.11b Roku M2000 takes away the need for your music server to be anywhere in sight, perhaps tucked away in an office or bedroom the 11mbits connection is ample even for high bit rate MP3.

To run the Roku you'll need to install the server software on your music server, this seems to be a fairly lightweight piece of software which after its initial scan of your music drive needn't be touched again, as far as we could ascertain from our UK Roku owner the software is stable perhaps more so than the application supplied with the Netgear box.

Music file format is not an issue for the Roku M2000 as it supports MP3, WMA, ACC, WAV, FLAC and the increasingly popular ogg vorbis format, there are issues with DRM ACC files downloaded from the iTunes site so do beware if your music collection has originated from there. The input to the Roku can be cabled Ethernet or WiFi the Wifi is supposedly an option be we'll have to wait for the official UK release to see if it gets bundled as standard.

The Roku is also a great piece of engineering the solid state design means no fans wiring away to ruin the quiet passages of tracks and it sports a range of connections from gold plated RCA for analogue audio to optical and coaxial digital outputs.

Driving the Roku reminded us of the SliMP3 its large fluorescent display has a number of layouts to browse your music collection by album, artists, genre or tracks and you can build and replay pre stored playlists. Driving by the simply styled remote worked well giving access to all the Roku features from your armchair and the player can be controlled over the network connection from your PC. A nice feature is the ability to control a group of M200's from the server software, this way you can synchronise playback of a master playlist from each of the Roku devices connected to your music server, this would be ideal for parties and the ultimate in showing off too!

The unusual shape of the Roku means it looks great but could be a sod to mount, luckily the box contains a mounting kit which can either act as a desktop stand or enable it to be fastened to a wall or cabinet, perhaps ideal for concealing your Roku under a kitchen cabinet for some chic sounds while you rustle up lunch.

Our brief chance to play with the Roku impressed with the very clear and balanced sound from its output (we were listening to the analogue output) and it seemed to cope well even with a weak wifi signal from our music server, looking at the sever software it looks suspiciously like the Slim server software which we rated highly perhaps when its released in the UK we can confirm this on UK release. A little extra and one which is lacking from the Netgear MP101 is a clock / alarm clock, the Roku M2000 displays the time when in standby and can be set to wake you with a beep or any track on your server if desired.

Now for the possible bad news we expect the Roku M2000 to retail for around £350 with WiFi CF card included and about £300 without this puts it at the top end of the spectrum and way over the £90 for a Netgear MP101 but it is in a different class and the price is set for early adopters. There is alos due to be a smaller M100 which sound retail at a significantly lower price. Currently Roku expect to start international shipments for direct sales at the end of May (yes UK readers can buy online) and we have yet to hear when Amazon.co.uk will stock the Roku for LP's sake we hope its soon!

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[ Squeezebox 3 ] [ Sony MZ-NHF800 Mini Disc ] [ Sony MZ-NH700 ] [ Roku M2000 ] [ Linksys Wireless B Music System ] [ Linksys Wireless Media Adapter ] [ Creative Labs Jukebox 3 20gb MP3 Player ] [ Netgear MP101 Review ] [ Pinnacle Soundbridge Review ] [ Roku WiFi Radio Review ] [ Belkin Tunestage ] [ Acoustic Energy Internet WiFi Radio ] [ Philips SLA5520 ] [ Logitech Wireless Music System Review ] [ Pure DRX 701ES DAB Digital Radio ] [ SliMP3 MP3 Network Player ] [ Rio Volt MP3 CD Player ]