REVIEW: $99 WD TV HD Media Player

The WD TV HD Media Player. Wow, what a name. Basically, this little $99 gadget from Western Digital (yeah, the hard drive people) lets you hook up an external usb hard drive or usb flash drive full of movies, TV shows, whatever, and play them on your TV. It has composite out (the yellow, red, and white RCA cables) as well as HDMI and optical SPDIF (for surround sound). So far, every file format that I have tried running on this beast has worked (see the list below). It runs a lot of files that my Xbox 360 can't even handle -- for example, Xvid movies with 5.1 ac3 will play on the 360, but the video will skip every 30 seconds or so. The same files also glitch on both of my Philips DVD players that support Divx/Xvid. When I run them on the HD Media Player, playback is flawless.

(the menu)

A few months ago, I was mulling over turning an old PC into a HTPC (home theater PC), but I knew that this type of thing can get VERY expensive. Sound cards that support Dolby Digital pass-through to a receiver are $50-100, basic video cards with HDMI are at least $50-100, etc. This media player (in conjunction with a 1tb internal and a hardrive dock) has all the perks of an expensive HTPC, at less than $100. A gift certificate to Best Buy made the offer all the more enticing.

Tested formats (all played perfectly):
- Xvid with mp3 sound, Xvid with 5.1 ac3 sound, Xvid with DTS sound, and Divx.
- h.264 mkv 720p movie with DTS sound, h.264 mkv 1080p movie with DTS sound
- Full DVDs saved as iso's
- Full DVDs saved as multiple VOBs and ifo's in a VIDEO_TS directory (it recognizes the separate VOBs as one movie, and never skips between VOBS)
- Mpeg-1 files
- Mpeg-2 files
- Wmv

The media player allows you to hook up two USB drives at the same time. It supports music, video, pictures, and the menus are easy to navigate. It has RCA out for basic TVs, and HDMI out for your HDTV. Some people have griped online about this unit, claiming that it doesn't support 5.1 sound, only stereo. THIS IS NOT TRUE. If you hook the HD Media Player up to a dolby receiver with a spdif cable, the receiver will do the decoding, and the result is perfect surround sound. This is no different than any DVD player or an Xbox 360 -- if you want surround sound, you need a receiver that supports it. If your video file has 5.1 ac3 audio, the unit can downsample it to stereo if that is all your TV setup supports. NOTE: One caveat is that if the video file has DTS audio, the HD Media Player can't downsample to stereo. For these files, you are going to need to run the sound through a receiver (or watch your movie with no sound!).

In Short:
- It plays MANY different file formats, even movies in 1080p.
- Future firmware updates will add even more file format compatibility.
- It's only $99, and it has all the functionality of some HTPCs
- You should buy it.