Western Digital (WD) has introduced a way for consumers to play their
stored digital content on their HDTV in Full-HD 1080p resolution. The
WD TV Media Player connects to a user’s TV or home theater and plays
digital movies, music and photos from WD’s My Passport portable drive
or other USB mass storage device. The WD TV Media Player is available
now at WD’s online store (http://www.shopwd.com) and select retailers.
According to research firm IDC, 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 research firm expects that to
increase to 400 million GB and 5.8 billion GB, respectively, by 2010.
These large personal digital libraries are all but trapped on users’
computers, says Jim Welsh, senior vice president and general manager
for WD’s Branded Products and Consumer Electronics Groups.
In order to play their content on their TV, consumers have struggled
with clumsy solutions such as copying onto multiple CDs and DVDs or
connecting their computers to their TV via wires or complicated home
networking solutions, he says. The WD TV HD Media Player enables
consumers to access their high-definition content on the biggest
screen in the home.
Users leave the WD TV HD Media Player connected to their TVs and
simply plug in up to two My Passport USB drives or other USB mass
storage devices loaded with HD media. Using the included remote
control, they can navigate and play their content with the media
player’s high-definition on-screen menu. With My Passport drives now
available in 500GB capacities, users can build large collections on
multiple drives, all playable by WD TV.
Navigating content on USB drives is fast and easy with WD TV HD Media
Player’s remote control and on-screen menu, Welsh says. Content can
be viewed either by file name or thumbnails of photos, album covers
or movie cover art. In addition, automatic media aggregation lets the
viewer see all their media by media type in one menu regardless of
its location in folders or drives.