WDTV : HD Media Player

[g8terh8ter_eric]

WD TV HD Media Player ( WDAVN00 )
Newegg.com - WD TV HD Media Player - External Hard Drives
Western Digital - WD TV HD Media Player for USB Storage Devices - WDAVN00BN

Finally have gotten to mess around with one of these little buggers and I am impressed to say the least. I am buying it for my uncle who has a bunch of mp3 discs that he has to change out when he wants to listen to something different.

Here's my setup with it.....

WDTV
500GB My Passport USB
Dynex Optical Cable (Audio to Receiver)
Dynext HDMI Cable (Video to TV)

All I had to do was to drag and drop all the mp3 folders I wanted onto the hard drive. Here's something important I learned though, for some reason if you try and format to NTFS, you can't upgrade the firmware. If the My Passport you get comes pre-formatted (and they all do), then lake sure it's Fat32 and leave it alone or you will not be able to upgrade the firmware.

As far as playback goes, I have only tested mp3's, but it supports many other file formats music, video, and photos as well. It's a bit frustrating that it's not networkable, but for the price difference it's acceptable. It also supports folder art so you can have all of your folder art jpgs in the folders and it will show up in a couple of different views. You also have a list view, which is pretty consistent with all of your dvd players that play mp3 discs.

All in all, I give it 4 out of 5 stars. The sound quality is amazing, but the networking issue is what takes away from it. Great product from Western Digital and hopefully they have a second generation with networking support.