The WD TV
About a month ago a friend and I where out looking around some area electronics stores. We came accross the WD TV. It is a little media player, you hook a hard drive up to it and it will scan the hard drive and play back the media files it detects. My friend picked one up for about $100. At the time i just laughed, a 100 dollar media player that could play 1080p and played just about every common unprotected media format. Right! So about three weeks ago I was over at my friends house, and he asked if I wanted to watch a movie. He starts up the WD TV, The picture was very clear. The interface was very responsive and easy to use.
The WD TV supports a wide variety of formats. For video, it supports MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, WMV9, AVI (MPEG-4, Xvid, and AVC), H.264, Matroska (MKV), and MOV (MPEG-4 and H.264). For audio, it supports MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV, PCM, LPCM, AAC, FLAC, Dolby Digital, AIFF, and MKA files – plus PLS, M3U, and WPL playlists. For photos, it supports JPEG, GIF, TIFF, BMG, and PNG. It also works with SRT subtitles.
For HD playback, the Western Digital WD TV supports MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, and WMV9 video at up to 1920 by 1080p at 24 frames per second (fps), 1,920-by-1,080i at 30fps, and 1,280-by-720p at 60fps. The Apple TV, by contrast, supports H.264 video up to 1,280-by-720 at 24fps or 960-by-540 at 30fps. MPEG-4 videos on the Apple TV can only be 720-by-432 at 30fps.
After seeing the WD TV in action I got one. And after about two weeks of usage there are a few things I would like to point out. One, there isn’t a network adapter to transfer files with so you will need to have a large portable hard drive and use it to store the files. Since there isn’t a network adapter you don’t have the ability to see streaming video played back. no netflix streaming. The box doesn’t play protected media files so those rentals from Apple are not going to play. Again the WD TV reads MPEG1/2/4, WMV9, AVI (MPEG4, Xvid, AVC), H.264, MKV, MOV (MPEG4, H.264), JPEG, GIF, TIF/TIFF, BMP, PNG, MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV/PCM/LPCM, AAC and FLAC files; 40x100x125mm; 302.5g. So most common media formats are covered, and as long as the media file is encoded at a good bitrate, the display is very clean.
The WD TV comes with a remote and batteries, and a composite video/audio cable. HDMI and optical cables are not included. The WD TV has 2 USB ports.
Verdict:
The WD TV is a very capable media player in a small package. This product should fit most users needs, just be aware that there is no network connectivity and no protected media playback. With all the features in such a small package, and a low cost, the WD TV is a great package.