Devices that are designed to bridge the gap between IT and AV equipment are big business.

Until now wireless media adapters have hogged the technological limelight, enabling you to stream content from a PC to a TV via an inconspicuous set-top box. These 'middleman' gadgets work well enough, but they require the host PC or Mac to be constantly switched on. Unless you've got a dedicated system acting as a media server, it's not an ideal solution.

But there is another way. The On3 is one of a new breed of entertainment-focused NAS (network attached storage) devices. FIA's compact blue/silver unit is essentially an 80GB hard disk designed to act as a vault for all your music, video and digital photo files. More importantly, the On3 can also play back or display these files independently of an active PC. With its own built-in GUI and support for a wide array of media formats, this is half 20th century data archive, half 21st century media player.

Despite its NAS origins, the On3 is surprisingly easy to set up. It can be connected directly to a PC/Mac (where it will appear as a network drive) or plugged into a router/switch via a straightforward crossover cable. The supplied software automatically detects the attached On3 box, whereupon all you have to do is assign a manual IP address to the device or let the software suggest an appropriate one for you. The On3 drive is formatted with three pre-defined folders - Music, Photo and Video. Compatible files just need to be dragged and dropped into these folders to be recognised by the On3's software.

For hooking the On3 up to a TV, FIA has incorporated component audio and video outputs (for 1080i and 720p), composite video and audio outputs, plus S-Video, S/PDIF and co-axial audio connections. But the On3 will succeed or fail according to the number of video/audio formats that it supports. Fortunately, it seems to have a clean sweep of video formats, embracing MPEG-2, DivX and MOV files. Audio support extends to MP3, Ogg and AC3, while the On3 can also display JPEGs, GIFs, animated GIFs and PNGs.