TV HD Media Player Gainesville FL

Today we take a look at the Western Digital WD TV HD Media player. The WD TV HD Media Player is a device about the size of an external hard drive that plays A/V content from USB storage media. The WD TV HD Media player is optimized for the WD "My Passport" line of hard drives but it will work with other USB devices (we'll discuss this later). The player supports 1080p for content and menus navigation.

Features

• Thumbnail and list views - Browse your content by filename or by thumbnails of photos, album covers and movie cover art.
• Media Library - This unique feature lets you view all your media by media type in one menu regardless of its location in folders or drives. You can view your content by categories such as genre, album, artist and date.
• Search - Search by genre, title, artist, filename and partial filename.
• Access two USB drives simultaneously
• HDMI and composite video connections
• Includes free media conversion software - ArcSoft MediaConverter™ 2.5
• Ultra-compact design

File Formats Supported

• 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)

Notes:

- MPEG2/4, H.264, and WMV9 supports up to 1920x1080p 24fps, 1920x1080i 30fps, 1280x720p 60fps resolution
- An audio receiver is required for surround sound output. AAC/Dolby Digital decodes in 2 channel output only
- JPEG does not support CMYK or loss less.
- BMP supports uncompressed format only.
- TIF/TIFF supports single layer only.

Setup

Setup was trivial. There is no network support so setup consisted of connecting power, HDMI, and plugging in an external hard drive. There are also composite connections available nor SDTVs. The player is actually setup for HDTV as default. So many devices are setup to be 4:3 right out of the box.

Performance

The WD TV HD Media Player worked quite well. The menus were more polished than we expected. They looked good displayed on a 65 inch 1080p TV. Navigation was simple and intuitive. Once a drive is plugged in the media player scans it for content and organizes it by type. You don't have to go hunting for photos, music or video. You can even search for a file by name. We attached a universal card reader, an iPod, and an external Western Digital Hard Drive. All three were recognized. The iPod had limited functionality; it was attached just for fun. The devic...