Western Digital quietly intros WD TV HD Media Player

Well, what do we have here? With no fanfare whatsoever, Western Digital has apparently strayed from its platter-based roots and delved into the wide, murky world of HD media streaming. The WD TV HD Media Player purports to "turn your USB drive into an HD media player, allowing you to watch your favorite HD movies on your TV." For those still befuddled, look at it like this: it enables you to plug in your USB key or USB hard drive and play back multimedia clips up to 1080p on your HDTV via the HDMI / composite outputs. The 1.6- x 4.9- x 3.9-inch box ought not bog you down too much when looking to take it on a journey, and the $129.99 price tag isn't too painful either.

[Thanks, Anonymous]

[Spiza Posted Nov 1st 2008 6:57PM]

They should have put an Ethernet port on it and hooked up with Netflix.

[kcmurphy88 Posted Nov 1st 2008 7:00PM]

DivX? If not, who cares?

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 1st 2008 8:28PM]

MKV support?

[EatingPie Posted Nov 1st 2008 8:23PM]

Composite doesn't do HD. Unless something has changed.

Component, OTOH, does do HD.

I can't see how you confused the two, they are not at all similar!

-Pi

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 1st 2008 8:57PM]

Deets found on Engadget...

Media Formats
MPEG 1/2/4, WMV9, AVI (MPEG4,Xvid, AVC), H.264, MKV, MOV (MPEG4, H264), JPEG, GIF, TIFF, BMP, PNG, MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV/PCM/LPCM, AAC, FLAC, Dolby Digital, AIF/AIFF, MKA

http://www.buy.com/prod/wd-tv-hd-media-player-usb-2-0-hdmi-composite-a-v/q/loc/101/209975073.html

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 1st 2008 9:55PM]

No lan connection...NO SALE!

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 2nd 2008 12:15AM]

Looks pretty sweet. I'll be waiting to hear some reviews on this device!

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 2nd 2008 3:07AM]

What is so sweet about this? It is a homeless man's Popcorn Hour.

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 2nd 2008 1:29AM]

Seems to be on sale for $99 at Bestbuy: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8993217&type=product&id=1218008588808

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 2nd 2008 12:14PM]

This looks alot better then a software nightmare failure on the the popcorn a-110, thats correct popcornhour killed alot of a-110's with a software update including mine. I am going to pick one of these up after I see it play 1080p dts in mkv or mp4. I am sure it will be able to be updated by usb thumb drive, looks great for half the price then the popcornhour a-110!

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 1st 2008 12:35PM]

Dear Sir/ Madarm,

We are an E-commerce and Trading company, An Nguyen Co.,Ltd, in Viet Nam. We are looking for suppliers of HD Network Multi-media Player product. We just have found your Western Digital quietly intros WD TV HD Media Playeron website and were interested in it. Thus, we suggest whether we should be one of your distributor in Viet Nam.
Could you please tell us the way in which we can cooperate as partner? Your price list, payment terms and the terms for transportation? Is there any policies to support us in Viet Nam market?.

Prompt reply could be highly appreciated.

Your sincerely,

Anh Linh

Vine - director