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It's been a little over 25 years ago since writer-director John Milius first unleashed his action flick Red Dawn on filmgoers, telling the tale of a band of small-town teenagers fighting back against Soviet forces who had invaded the country.

Skyline represents an obvious step-up in quality for visual effects artists-turned-filmmakers Greg and Colin Strause. But this has more to do with the fact that this surprisingly dull alien invasion drama simply isn’t as offensive as their previous directorial outing Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem (although, their commentary makes it clear that this film’s finale was originally heading in a similarly distasteful direction), rather than being a reflection on their growing talents.

Take the optical disk drive out of a recent Blu-ray player and replace it with an HDD compartment. Squeeze the result into a glossy black box with roughly the same dimensions as a Mac Mini (complete with the external power supply) and you have the Eminent EM7080. The Realtek-based device is a flexible multimedia workhorse that sports two front-panel USB ports for Flash drives or HDDs, plus an eSATA terminal.

There’s no shortage of little black boxes on the market these days, Freeview+ HD PVRs included. Kudos to TVonics then for being bold with the HD500. But has it gone far enough with its features?