Now showing on WD TV Media Player

It was only a matter of time before I decided to get a media player for my TV. I was spending at least 5 hours a week watching shows on my laptop and the 13″ screen wasn’t really good enough, especially when friends wanted to watch also. Thus I needed something that could easily connect to my LCD TV, support all the file types I had in my library of videos, and have an easy to use interface with remote. Enter Western Digital’s WD TV HD Media Player.

WD TV Media Player

The WD TV can connect to a TV using component, composite or HDMI cables and supports up to 2 USB storage devices. The unit itself is small and unobtrusive and the remote is very simple and easy to use. Like the remote, the menu system is user friendly, however if you have a large amount of media files on your storage device(s) it may take a minute to scan when first plugged in.

I bought this media device primarily for watching video files. The majority of the videos I have are in AVI (XVID) or MPEG4 formats and the WD TV handles them well. It can even support some subtitle files. The quality of the picture is great but depends on the particular file you’re watching. This model can handle full-HD 1080p resolution and DTS 2.0 digital audio.

Aside from videos, this gadget can also slide-show pictures and play music files. This is good when you have family or friends over and want to go through some pics from a recent holiday or outing in the comfort of your lounge room.

I purchased the WD TV for $160 AU, which at the time I thought a bit expensive, but after using it for almost 6 months without any problems I’m happy I bought it. In the future I would go for something with network capabilities so I can transfer media wirelessly to the attached hard drives. I did look into setting up a computer for this purpose running a program like XBMC but at the time didn’t have a spare computer to do it on…and it also didn’t look as good next to the TV as the little black WD TV box.

The device will not play protected content such as music or movies bought from the Apple Store. For this, something like Apple TV may be better suited but I’ve never used one so don’t know if it can handle other popular media formats.

You can read more about the WD TV at WD TV Live Community