Western Digital TV HD 1080P Media Player

This fantastic little unit turns your USB connected drive into an HD media player! It has full HD video playback and navigation - up to 1080p quality.

In the box is the Media Player, Remote control, some leads and a CD.

The unit is really quite small (about the size of a large hedgehog! - 10 x 12.6 x 4 cm) and light (just 304g).

There is a 92 page User Manual on a CD - you don't get this as a hard copy in the box but can ask the nice people at Western Digital to send you one.

I've hooked my 1 Terabyte Hard drive up to my TV via my Media player and now have a huge number of films, music and talking books I can play when I fancy. Download some jpegs of movies and put them in the same folder as the movie and hey presto you'll get a thumbnail pic of it...

With this new HD Media Player you can play a huge number of different file types.

You will need a HDMI cable (i.e. one is not supplied) unless you are happy to connect via a Composite AV Connection (for Standard Definition).

It has an excellent navigation system - which obviously shows up on your TV and is accessible via the remote control (batteries included)

This "Advanced Navigation" offers the following Options:
* Thumbnail, list, and preview modes - browse your content by filename or by
thumbnails of photos, album covers, video preview, and movie cover art.
* Automatic Media Library - lets you view all your media by media type in one menu regardless of its location in folders or drives. You can filter by categories such as genre, album, artist, and date.
* 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, pan, and rotate

Movie Viewing:
* Fast forward, rewind, 10-minute skip, pause, zoom, and pan
* View subtitles
* Multi-audio tracks support
Music Playback:
* Fast forward, rewind, pause, shuffle, and repeat

Also, the price of this second generation media player is coming down all the time. Amazon have slashed almost 10% off it in the past two weeks. There is an earlier version you can buy for around £69 if you check its technical spec and see that it plays all of the files you want to use it for.

If you want to play HD files from your hard drive on your TV then this really is a superb unit which does the job expertly!

In short, this unit is great. I work in broadcasting and have access to lots of digital content in all sorts of formats. So far I have not found a format this device will not play. The menus are great, it is so easy to use and if you don't need network access to shared drives why pay extra? I have a 500GB USB2 drive on mine which I disconnect as needed to upload new files, which is fine by me. Colleagues of mine suggested I get a PS3 to play my movies and files, but I don't want a games machine and I am happy with my DVD player - all the HD quality files this can play at a fraction of the price.

Buy one.

All in all, a fantastic little unit.

It really is as simple as plug and play. I took this out of the box, and was pleasantly surprised by the size, it was about the same size as one of my hands, when i expected it to be much larger. Once i had got over this, i took it out the box and plugged it into the mains and linked it up to my TV with a HDMI cable and another optical cable going to my surround sound, and i instantly had a great picture up on my screen.

Updating the firmware is simple too, there are easy to read instructions on the website. Once it was updated with the latest firmware, i plugged both of my USB sticks in, it took a second to analyse, and it showed me all my music and films. Easy as that!

The user interface is extremely user friendly, its nice to look at and easy and responsive to work with. The remote is small but simple, with clearly labelled buttons.

If you are someone like me, and have many of your films / videos in a digital format and spend ages hooking the laptop up to the TV to get a mediocre picture, this is the unit for you. It makes life so much simpler, in so much better quality. The disc it comes with comes pre loaded with high quality photos videos and music to let you see what the player is really capable of.

My opinion, a fine little player, extremely useful and extremely easy to use. Great value for money, and well worth a buy.