Western Digital offering HDTV Add-On Media Player

Been eyeballing a Home Theater PC solution lately ? If all you need is the basics of playing back some video and audio, Western Digital has an affordable solution with its new WD TV HD Media Player.

Western Digital’s new external HD Media Player, when coupled with a ‘My Passport’ external hard drive or ‘any’ other external USB storage device, gives the user the ability to playback video, audio, and view photos from the connected storage device up to full High Definition 1080p resolution.

The WD TV allows two USB storage devices to be connected at one time, so expanding your storage capacity can be as simple as just adding a second external drive rather than going through the process of copying all your files from the old drive to the new one, a process which can take some time with large amounts of data.

The device will automatically sort your media files for video, audio, and photos, appropriately for easy navigation with all the standard expected controls. Taking from the Western Digital Site itself, we have the following descriptions :

Advanced navigation : Thumbnail and list views – Browse your content by filename or by thumbnails of photos, album covers and movie cover art.

Search – Search by genre, title, artist, filename and partial filename.

Photo viewing : Create custom slide shows with a variety of transitions and background music Zoom and pan Search by filename, partial filename, most recently viewed and date

Movie viewing : Fast forward, rewind, pause, zoom, and pan View subtitles Search by filename, partial filename, most recently viewed and date

Music playback : Fast forward, rewind, pause, shuffle, repeat Search by filename, partial filename, most recently viewed and date.

The WD TV has HDMI and composite video connections for compatibility with older television sets that do not have HDMI available. The package also includes ArcSoft MediaConverter 2.5 – an easy-to-use application that allows the user to convert photos, videos, and music files, into formats that are more optimized for the WD TV HD Media player.

NOTE : This the above does not mean that all your media needs to be converted before you can play it back with the built in media player, the WD TV device supports all of the most common file types without any conversion needed. File types supported according to Western Digital are as follows :

Music - MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV/PCM/LPCM, AAC, FLAC, Dolby Digital, AIF/AIFF, MKA

Photo - JPEG, GIF, TIF/TIFF, BMP, PNG

Video - MPEG1/2/4, WMV9, AVI (MPEG4, Xvid, AVC), H.264, MKV, MOV (MPEG4, H.264)

Playlist - PLS, M3U, WPL

Package Contents include the WD TV device itself, a stand for WD ’My Passport drives’, A remote control, ArcSoft MediaConverter software, Composite AV cables, AC adapter, and installation guide. The WD TV looks to be a simplistic, affordable solution, for those that do not require the full functionality of a full blown Home Theater PC – or for those that lack the knowledge of building one themselves or do not wish to spend a lot of money just to have access to functions they are most familiar with.

Expected pricing is to be around US$125.00. According to the Western Digital page for the WD TV device, it should will be available through all major retailers – a list is available on their site here.