Western Digital WD TV HD Media Player

CNET editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 3.5 stars Very good
  Detailed editors' rating
  Design : 8.0
  Features : 7.0
  Performance : 7.0
  Overall score: 7.3 (3.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  David Carnoy
• Edited by:
  John P. Falcone
• Reviewed on: 02/13/2009

There's an interesting new niche market developing in the media player arena as storage companies like Western Digital, SanDisk, and Iomega look for a way to tap the growing number of consumers who have multimedia files stored on their computers and want to bring them to their TVs without the hassle of PC hookups or network connections. In Western Digital's case, the product is the Western Digital WD TV HD Media Player (model number WDAVN00), a little black box that attaches to your TV and reads a variety of audio, photo, and video files. The product is designed to be paired with a portable hard drive that's loaded with media files. Naturally, Western Digital would prefer if you purchased one of its My Passport drives, but you can connect any USB mass storage device--whether it be a hard drive or thumbdrive--to the WD TV Media Player. The WD TV lists for $129, but it's widely available for $100.

The WD TV Media Player comes with a remote and connects to your TV via HDMI or standard composite AV cables (only composite AV cables are included, however). We tested the unit with both a thumbdrive and a couple of external hard drives; all worked without a hitch. While USB compatibility lived up to its "universal" name, it would have been nice to see additional connectivity options: FireWire, eSATA, or flash media readers (SD, MemoryStick, and the like). That said, those would've undoubtedly added more girth to the tiny unit.

You can actually plug in up to two USB storage devices at once and the content on those drives will show up in an onscreen menu system that's pretty easy to use. If there's a small knock against all these types of media players, it's that it takes a short while for the unit to initially recognize and load all the media files. It's not a huge delay, but you're not looking at the same kind of zippiness you've probably come to expect from connecting a drive to your PC or laptop and having the files show up in a few seconds (so long as everything is connected via USB 2.0). It's also worth noting that the stock thumbnail icons all look the same; there's no custom image for each thumbnail to differentiate the file icons. (You tell them apart by their titles.)

Western Digital assumes you obtained all your media files legally, but the WD TV Media Player appears to be rather inclusive in the types of files it plays. The device also ships with ArcSoft's MediaConverter 2.5, which converts photo, video, and music files into formats optimized for use on the WD TV HD Media Player. According to Western Digital, the player supports full HD video playback--up to 1080p--via HDMI, though 1080p files tend to be pretty large (5GB+). Our tests confirmed 1080p playback.

Here's the list of supported file formats:
Video: MPEG1/2/4, WMV9, AVI (MPEG4, Xvid, AVC), H.264, MKV, MOV (MPEG4, H.264), Subtitle SRT (UTF-8)
Photo: JPEG, GIF, TIF/TIFF, BMP, PNG
Audio: MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV/PCM/LPCM, AAC, FLAC, Dolby Digital, AIF/AIFF, MKA Playlist PLS, M3U, WPL

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Western Digital WD TV HD Media Player: $122.11

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Recent user reviews

• Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 26 reviews
• My rating: 0 stars Write review

• Showing 3 of 26 user reviews

• 4.5 stars

  "The best cheap addition to any home theater setup."

  by the_eternal_dark on February 4, 2010

• 5.0 stars

  "Total Greatness"

  by bobbyb0322 on December 12, 2009

• 4.0 stars

  "Good Product/Lousy Remote"

  by claymore2211 on October 3, 2009

• See all 26 user reviews Write review

Reviews from around the WebPowered by alaTest

• alaTest.com

  Editors' rating: 82

  Summary: alaTest has collected and analyzed 1217 reviews of Western Digital WD TV HD Media Player from international magazines and websites. Experts rate this product 81/100 and users 85/100. Comparing these reviews to 0 other Home Video reviews gives this product an overall alaScore™ 82/100 = Very Good.

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• maximumpc.com

  Editors' rating: 90

  Summary: Robust media-format support on the WD TV Live means you can finally leave the time-consuming process of video transcoding behind

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• maclife.com

  Editors' rating: 80

  Summary: Network capability adds a tremendous amount of flexibility to WD TV Live. Easy transfers to and from the device meake it perfect for media freaks who want to take a break from staring at their Macs for a while.

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• macworld.co.uk

  Editors' rating: 80

  Summary: Apple supremo Steve Jobs described the Apple TV media player as nothing more than a hobby. Here in the UK we didn't even get the price cut they got in the US almost a year ago, leaving the Apple TV looking pretty over priced - especially the £195 ...

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• pcworld.com

  Editors' rating: 82

  Summary: Overall, if you want to skip the home networking approach and connect a media-filled hard drive up to your television, the WDTV is a good bet. Full 1080p support and HDMI connectivity makes it an especially viable option for home-theater users

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• smarthouse.com.au

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