Storex StoryDisk Ultimate

The Storex StoryDisk Ultimate is the new "high-end" model in the StoryDisk range, (if we're to go by Storex's own publicity). And indeed, on paper, it has all the ingredients to make it a good product: digital HD tuner, HD video compatibility, SDHC card readers and a display at the front. Is all this enough to knock the best digital boxes off their pedestal? Answers in the test.

As soon as we turned it on, we could see that we had already come across this media centre before. It has exactly the same interface as the MediaZapper HD also sold by Storex. The difference between them is that the StoryDisk has an internal hard drive and a VFD display.


We're not going to go over what we've already written on the MediaZapper HD but just detail the differences between the two products and do a rundown of the serious drawbacks:

- We weren't able to play HD 1080p files (x264/MKV) of higher than 10 Mbps speeds. A big black mark against full HD video then;
- The device is slow, the menus come up slowly;
- Videos which aren't standard in height (576p, 720p or 1080p) are stretched vertically;
- HD video is displayed as 1080i only (not 1080p);
- There's a fan which is clearly audible;
- During recording, you hear the hard drive scratching. Really annoying if you're in the vicinity;
- USB copies are extremely slow: 2 MB/s!
- The screen doesn't allow you to browse menus when the TV's off
- There's no network socket:
- It takes 19 seconds to start recording after you press record.


Two positives nevertheless: you can pause while recording live, and recorded files are named by channel and hour/date of programme. For the rest, everything is identical to the Storex MediaZapper HD. We invite you to look there for more detail.