Netgear's Wireless Digital Music Player, the MP101 is one of the easiest music streamers we've reviewed, but for rich multimedia support you should look further a field especially if you're keen on streaming video to your equipment.

Wireless out of the box, the MP101 supports 802.11b and g networks (as g is backwards compatible with b) and therefore only has the bandwidth to stream audio.
That said, the MP101 is excellent and damn simple to use. Set up is a walk in the park, as the MP101 detects available wireless networks and displays them on the LCD panel. Select yours and it connects easily once you assign it an IP. It also auto-detects WEP and prompts for the key, so you can keep your network secure. The software on the PC side - the Netgear Media Server - scours your machine for your available MP3 and WMA collections and is ready to go after that.

The box itself is really sturdy, if a little retro looking. It offers stereo RCA pots for connecting the unit to your hi-fi, and as it's small you can easily move the player from room to room, stereo to stereo.

What's more, you can also connect it to different PC's on the network, provided they're all running the Media Server application. It also comes with an Ethernet connection that makes for a handy backup in case you get wireless troubles, or for connecting another wired-only PC. Wired or wireless, this allows vastly different music collections on different PCs around the house to be shared on the one hi-fi system.

The drawback is that the Netgear MP101 is relatively expensive considering it's limited to audio streaming only, and similarly priced units also offer DiVX and Xvid streaming, however it's really simple to configure, is 'portable' and is very easy to operate.