Orange County Register

Problem: Lots of high-def videos and movies stored on your home computer or external hard drive but no simple way to play them on the big TV in the living room. 

Answer: The Western Digital WD TV Media Player. The Lake Forest hard drive maker just announced its new gadget that stays connected to the TV. When you want to play video files from a hard drive, just plug in the hard drive to the Media player, select the file and hit play — up to two USB drives at a time. 

This sounds much neater than wiring up a laptop to the TV for that cluttered home electronics look. But then again, it’s not perfect. It’s not a networked gadget so you’ll need to transfer all those PC video files to a hard drive instead of trying to access the files on your home network. And too bad it’s not wireless. It appears to be much like many other media players that have been on the market for years, but this one allows you to plug in a hard drive or two. Plus, it’s HD — up to 1080p resolution. 

The system comes with a remote control and will let users watch photo slideshows and listen to music too. It also comes with ArcSoft MediaConverter 2.5 to convert photos, video and music into formats optimized for the WD TV HD Media player. It’s available now at shopwd.com for $129.99.

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