WD (http://www.westerndigital.com) has introduced the US$149.99 WD TV
Live HD media player featuring network capability and Full-HD 1080p
resolution. The new WD TV Live HD media player makes it easy for
anyone to play HD (high definition) videos stored on USB and network
drives, as well as Internet content from popular web sites, on the
biggest screen in their home — their HD television, according to
Dale Pistilli, vice president of marketing for WD’s branded products
group.

The network capability of the WD TV Live media player enables users
to stream or transfer movies from Macs, PCs or a network-attached
storage device such as WD’s My Book World Edition(TM) and WD
ShareSpace network drives to their HD TVs. The WD TV Live media
player also allows users to stream rich content from YouTube, Flickr
and Pandora.

Like the first-generation WD TV HD media player introduced last fall,
the WD TV Live media player connects directly to a users’ HD TV and
plays almost any file stored on a connected USB drive such as My
Passport portable drive. The WD TV Live media player features media
processing, which enables playback in Full-HD 1080p resolution. WD TV
Live media player also will play movies and photos stored on other
popular USB devices such as digital camcorders and digital cameras.

The WD TV Live sports an Ethernet port for wired or WiFi connection
to access files anywhere on the network to play movies, music, and
photos from any computer or drive on a home network. It has two USB
ports for seamless media playback from multiple USB drives and
ability to access them simultaneously while a media library feature
collects the content on all the drives into one list sorted by media
type.

You can transfer files by copying, moving or deleting files stored on
a USB drive, a network drive, camcorder, or a camera to the attached
USB drive using the on-screen menus. The WD TV Live’s Picture
Transfer Protocol support lets you show photos and movies directly
from digital camera or video camera and or any digital imaging device
that supports Picture Transfer Protocol. There’s also an HDMI 1.3
port, composite video and component video output and SPDIF digital
output.