On the outside at least, this media player offers a fairly understated design that does little to separate it from the competition. 

On the front, there are a handful of navigation buttons but no LCD screen, which is a shame for people who like to listen to music without having to navigate using the on screen interface.

The remote control is pretty mini--more or less the same size as you'd expect to find on a portable DVD player.

Great for using on the move, a tiny little remote like this a lot less handy for navigating through huge amounts of multimedia content.

A final point to note in the introduction is that this system only ships with the enclosure--you'll need to provide a hard drive yourself, be it IDE or SATA.

On the other hand, it does come with a handsome selection of cables, including RCA, component video, coaxial audio, and--something of an exception here--an HDMI cable.

First Generation HD Video

Unfortunately, ICY have got something of a reputation for using entry-level chips that struggle to decode as other models on the market.

Here, they've gone for Sigma Designs EM8621L-LF, which is already a good sign--we've seen it do well on competing products.
The end result is a media player capable of reading some High Definition formats (WMA HD, DivX HD and XviD), but not others (H.264, MKV).

As for Standard Definition video, a classic line-up of MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 (DivX 6, XviD), WMV and MP4 is on offer.

A whole host of audio formats can be read, including MP3, WMA, AAC and OGG; Dolby Digital and DTS are both also supported.

Photos can be either JPEG of BMP, though the former is by the far more likely to be of use.

Testing subtitles, this device gets a nearly perfect score, only faltering with SUB files.

Excellent connectivity, from HDMI to WiFi

If this model supports plenty of different file encodings, then its outputs are equally impressive.

All of the standard possibilities are there, including RCA, S-Video and component video, as well as coaxial and optical outputs for audio. 

More noteworthy is the presence of an HDMI port, as well as WiFi, Ethernet and two USB ports.

Using the WiFi and Ethernet connectivity allows you to connect this player to your home network, allowing you to read multimedia files
directly from another computer without having to copy them onto the hard drive you install in this enclosure first. 

This works in the other direction too, and means you don't have to cart either your other computers or your media player around.

Two USB 'host' ports allow you to add extra storage, either by plugging in a USB key or by daisy-chaining more hard drives.

It's a useful addition, but, irritatingly, both ports are at the back of the box, which is hardly convenient if you have it stashed at the back of your TV cupboard and a friend brings round some photos on a flash drive …