I have the hard wired Freecom 3.5 and it works well (well now it does!) this is my 3rd one! The first 2 died very quickly from an unknown illness. It appeared that the hard drive would not engage although it could be accessed through the usb connection but would not play on the TV.

Although I watch stuff directly through the medial player direct to the TV, I also watch stuff from my pc through the LAN. The quality of the movies (ave 750mb film) on the tv are very good with no obvious pixelation. The films do not freeze or jump and the sound quality is also good.

The user interface is straight forward and idiot proof (hence why I use it). In between the breakdowns I did try an alternative make and model (I cannot remember which make and model) and found it to be of inferior picture and sound quality for the same movie I watched on the freecom. I also found the user interface cumbersome and slow. The reuslt is that I persisted with the freecom media player and have no regrets about.

hope this helps

pitbull