PCs are widely regarded as the ugly red-headed stepchildren of real home cinema equipment. Huge, wheezing beige boxes, they are better suited to gathering dust in the second bedroom than lounging stylishly next to the flatscreen TV and surround speakers in your living room. Aren't they?

Not in this case. With the Mini PC Evesham has managed to shoehorn a real computer into an amazingly petite box. About six inches square and no more than a couple high, it owes one heck of a creative debt to the Mac Mini.

Unlike Apple's tiny machine, this is designed to be used as a media device. It comes pre-loaded with Windows Vista Home Premium Edition, which features Microsoft's lounge- and remote control- friendly Media Center application, making this both a Sky -style PVR and a hub for storing and playing back all your digital movies, music and photographs.

As well as being small, the PC looks cool, thanks to its blue power LED, brushed black frame and clean lines. There's no disc tray, only a slot that automatically pulls in CDs and DVDs.

Thanks to low fan noise and a vibration- damping rubber 'foot', it runs nice and quiet too. It's not totally silent, but what little noise there is isn't going to be heard over a film, TV show or audio track.

As you might imagine, there isn't much space on the back panel, so connectivity is a little more limited than on the average PC. There are only two video outputs here: DVI and S-video. The former supports high- definition resolutions and a VGA adaptor is also supplied, so hooking this up to a flatscreen TV or projector should be a cinch.

An HDMI output would have been handy, but you could always try a DVI-to- HDMI adaptor (and cross your fingers that your TV supports the right resolutions via HDMI - the Hitachi 37LD9700 screen I used didn't, surrounding the picture with a wide black border).