Review: Belkin AC 1200 DB

Great coverageGood media supportExtremely user friendlyFuture-proof

Up until recently, wireless N was the top of the Wi-Fi range for home users. However, 802.11ac wireless AC - which the new Belkin AC 1200 DB router is compatible with - has entered the ring, offering almost three times the speed of wireless N, theoretically reaching heights of 1GB/s.

With the number of devices we have in our houses that stream media from the internet increasing, routers capable of the increased bandwidth offered by AC wireless are increasingly desirable.

Competing with the Netgear R6300 and the Buffalo AirStation 1750, the Belkin AC 1200 DB is a router for cable and fibreoptic broadband connections that specialises in two areas - media and user friendliness.

Media-wise, along with dual-bands (both 2.4GHz and 5GHz), the Belkin AC 1200 DB comes with a built-in media server for streaming content to DLNA devices, and two USB 2.0 ports for attaching hard drives or printers.

Belkin's 'Intellistream' Quality of Service technology identifies media and gaming connections and gives them priority bandwidth to avoid any pauses or disruptions.

Belkin hasn't always been our favourite router manufacturer, but for a while now it has been producing some great routers, and the Belkin AC 1200 DB is no exception. It handled simultaneously streaming to a variety of devices really well, without a hiccup.

As for user friendliness, the Belkin AC 1200 DB takes this to new heights, since not only is each cable clearly labelled, but they all come already plugged in to the right ports of the router. The step-by-step setup wizard is straightforward, and in just three steps we had the router up and running.

Norton Parental Control is also pre-installed on the router, making it easy to block inappropriate content, regardless of the device your children use to access the internet.

With more impressive processors being included in the routers, we'd like to also see full antivirus protection included in the routers in the future - something that Symantec has been looking into.

Elsewhere, four gigabit ports are included for wired connections. The range and speed of the Belkin AC 1200 DB is certainly an improvement - especially when you're connecting an 802.11ac compatible device or adaptor.

The Belkin AC 1200 DB is well built, with a design that doesn't look out of place in the living room, and air vents for keeping it cool when it's working hard. Overall, it's a very good user-friendly AC modem router.

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Review: Belkin @TV Plus

Easy to set upOK performanceRecord functionalityRemote control performance issuesNo HDMIIs it really needed anymore?

The Belkin @TV Plus is designed to stream video from your home to anywhere in the world. It's got a set of video inputs, so you'd plug something that's already decoded the broadcasts into it, such as a Sky box. It's also got a set of video outputs, so that you can then pass that video to your TV to watch there as well.

The @TV Plus box connects to the network over Wi-Fi or Ethernet to stream the video it receives to the Belkin TV apps. The apps are free to download for desktops and iPad, but iPhone users will have to pay £12.99 for the privilege.

When you consider that the comparable SlingPlayer apps for Slingbox streams cost £20.99 for iPhone and then another £20.99 for iPad, this doesn't seem such a high price.

Setting up the @TV Plus was easy enough - it needs an Ethernet wired connection to your router to begin with, though, which can be inconvenient. It's a step-by-step process after that, in which you tell it what set-top box you have and create an account to connect your client apps to, and can choose to switch to Wi-Fi for future use.

The reason you need to tell it what type of set-top box you have is so that you can control your TV service from elsewhere. The @TV Plus uses infrared transmitters to take the place of your remote control, with you using on-screen controls in the apps instead.

This is where the @TV Plus hits its first hurdle - we used it with BT Vision, and the remote control it offers for that set-top box just doesn't have all the buttons it really needs. It's fine for watching live TV, but you can't access anything you've recorded, for example, or see BT's on-demand service.

It's also often frustratingly slow to respond to input. The time between hitting a control on the screen to it changing in the video was often 10 seconds. That's an incredibly long time to wait for a button press, especially if you're flicking through an electronic programme guide.

The actual on-screen remote is fairly easy to get to grips with, though. It's divided into offering different functions in different tabs: one for changing channels, one for the menu and one for DVR functionality. There's also a popup control panel for when you're watching video, which features the @TV Plus's extra little trick: a record button.

You can actually record the video stream from your @TV Plus at any time directly to your device. Alas, it's less helpful than it sounds. You can choose to record for a set length of time, but on iOS devices, it can't do this in the background, so you'd have to have the show playing anyway. Still, there's also a pause button, which is more useful.

When we tried recording shows, we noticed that the audio slipped slightly out of sync on one of the clips, but in general, the @TV Plus does a good job of streaming. There tends to be a lot of buffering near the start, but once it gets going, the quality and integrity of the video can be good.

Though the @TV Plus has its niggles, it ultimately works. We still have a problem with it, but it's the concept, not the execution. It feels stuck out of place to us. It doesn't have HDMI, for example, so the one-cable convenience we've all gotten used to is out of the window. It's literally an analogue box in a digital world, and the result is that it seems like more hassle than it's worth.

We were already watching TV online through TVCatchup, Sky Player and the like, and we didn't have to buy an extra box to do it. The Belkin doesn't put up enough of a case that we should be using it instead.

But, as we said, it's easy to set up and works fairly well, so if you want to stream from your settop box, it's worth a look.

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