National

An unassuming device

CHENNAI: A sleek black box weighing less than half-a-kg, Western Digital’s TV HD Media Player is an unassuming device. But on summer afternoons when you don’t need to work and have an interesting set of movies in your external hard drive, it can be a boon companion.

The 40mm x 100mm x 125.5mm device is designed for the viewing, on High Definition TVs (HDTV), of multimedia content from USB storage devices, including Western Digital’s own My Passport line of hard drives, digital cameras, camcorders and many of the popular USB drives.

One of the advantages it has over the existing media players is the wide range of supported file formats, including JPEG, MP3, MPEG1/2/4, AVI, MKS, MOV and many more. For formats not supported by the device, the supplied ArcSoft MediaConverter 2.5 software can be used on Windows computers (Windows 2000 and later versions) to convert the files into a supported format.

Equipped with two USB ports and a High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI), along with an optical audio port (TOSLINK), the player allows two USB storage devices to be connected at the same time, essentially allowing you to browse through tonnes of files. The Media Library feature organises the media based on content — images, audio and video — for easy searching by genre, title and partial filename.

The animated HD menus, with thumbnail and list views, make navigation easy. Slideshows can be organised with photo zoom and pan features, and viewers can rewind or fast-forward their movies. Also available are repeat, pause and shuffle.

The company claims full 1080p HD compatibility, but most Indian households will not require this function for some time, as HDTVs are yet to break the middle-class price barrier. But the player’s strength is its versatility.

For those who can afford HDTVs, the player will provide a welcome addition, providing content generated from different media for viewing.

As Seagate, WD’s main competitor in the hard drives segment, has also launched a similar media player, both companies seem looking towards using their hard drive technology capabilities in the new arena.

With research firm IDC projecting that nearly 334 million GB of photos and more than 3.1 billion GB of video will be stored on consumer desktop and laptop computers in 2008, the media player is an obvious choice for people who would like to view the content on their television sets.

As Sharad Srivastava, director-sales (India & South Asia), Western Digital, says: “Our bestselling My Passport portable drives help customers carry their media library with them anywhere, but until now there has been no easy, affordable way to access and play all that content in their living rooms. The WD TV HD Media Player effectively unlocks all that content from the storage device and lets people enjoy it on their biggest screen and best sound system.”

The WD TV HD media player (product code: WDAVN00) is available in retail stores in India and costs Rs. 6,500 with a year’s warranty. Included are an AC adaptor, an A/V composite cable, a USB connector cable, the software bundle CD and the remote control.

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