Western Digital debuts HD TV add-on
Western Digital has introduced a gadget that'll turn an external hard drive into an HD-capable media player.
Western Digital's WD TV HD: sits between your telly and your hard drive
Dubbed WD TV HD pulls content off a USB-connected hard drive such as WD's new My Passport external drive and presents it on an HDMI-connected HD TV. The WD TV HD has two USB ports for two drives.
Remote control and drive stand included
The small box supports resolutions of up to 1080p and essentially includes the circuitry and connectors drive makers like Iomega and LaCie build into their media-oriented drives.
The 12.3 x 9.8 x 4cm unit also has a composite-video interface and comes with a composite cable, an AC adaptor and media conversion software. A My Passport HDD stand’s thrown in and there’s also a remote control too.
The WD TV HD goes on sale today for £79.
COMMENTS
A review of it here. actually probably more of a first look
This is not mine - just found it trawling for info.
http://maddhat.com/?p=31
I am planning to get one.
Network connectivity would be nice, but for me not a big issue.
I don't do a lot of downloading of movies, so when I rip my DVDs I'll just rip them to an external drive which will be plugged into this device.
All done and happy.
No 5.1 support
"AAC/Dolby Digital decodes in 2 channel output only"
Suppose you get what you pay for ... Back to getting the Popcorn A110 from Santa
Netgear EVA8000
Given the recent price reduction of the Netgear and the better Beta firmware, i'd go with one of those personally (well i already have one and am waiting for the EVA9000) It'll upscale to 1080p and only really fails with full 1080p HD rips (rare) and occasionally with DTS audio, other than that it's better than any of the other ones i've tried!!!
http://theregister.pgpartner.co.uk/search_getprod.php/masterid=35917302
specs and limitations
Here are some published specs.... not USB2 is often considered insufficient for "serious" HD playback
http://www.buy.com/prod/wd-tv-hd-media-player-usb-2-0-hdmi-composite-a-v/q/loc/101/209975073.html
ISO files?
Does anyone know if this drive will be able to run ISO images of DVDs stored on a HD?
