MaximumPC 2002 09

94 |MAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC| FEB 09 | http://www.maximumpc.com

IN THE LAB^

REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

W

estern Digital’s WD TV HD Media

Player is missing two components

commonly found in digital media

players: a display and storage. What the de-

vice does have is two USB ports, HDMI and

composite video outputs, digital and analog

audio outputs, and the ability to play almost

any digital media.

Since you provide the storage media,

you can never fill up the WD TV. You plug

the player into your TV and connect your

USB drive or digital camera to the player;

it then creates thumbnails for all the digital

movies, photographs, and music it finds

stored there. If you connect storage devices

to both USB ports, the WD TV will index the

contents of both drives as if they were one.

The device delivers much higher video

resolution than most media players, all the

way from 480i using the composite video

port to 1080p using HDMI (576p, 720i, 720p,

and 1080i are also supported via HDMI). The

WD TV supports a host of video formats, co-

decs, and containers, including AVI, H.264,

QuickTime, VOB, and Matroska. It does not,

however, support DivX.

The player supports most digital photo for-

mats, including BMP, TIFF, PNG, and GIF at res-

olutions up to 2048x2048; JPEG is supported

at resolutions up to 4096x4096. Video quality

via HDMI is excellent. High-res photos stored

on the 250GB WD Passport drive we used took

an average of 3.7 seconds to appear on the

screen, which is plenty fast for slideshows, but

the device’s browser soft ware is ploddingly

slow about generating thumbnails. And while

it can play slideshows while simultaneously

streaming music, you can’t queue up the music

and start both at the same time.

Speaking of music, the WD TV supports

almost all the popular file and container

formats, including AAC, FLAC, MP3, Ogg,

and WAV. We do wish, however, that it sup-

ported WMA Lossless. The player displays

album art and artist, album, and track name

information stored in id3 tags, but it doesn’t

inform you about the codec and bitrate used

to encode the track. And it’s a good thing the

player has an optical S/PDIF output, because

it has an atrociously bad DAC.

The WD TV is a ripper-friendly solu-

tion for anyone who doesn’t have an HTPC,

media-center extender, or other type of me-

dia streamer—and doesn’t want one. It’s also

useful for taking media on the go (provided

there’s something to connect it to when you

get there). – M I C H A E L B R O W N

WD TV HD Media Player

Well played, Western Digital

Western Digital designed a

very good remote control for

the WD TV HD; it’s comfortable to

hold and includes all the appropriate

functions for the user interface, including a

Home button that takes you to the root menu.

+ -

VERDICT

$130, http://www.westerndigital.com

8

Supports a host of

popular media for-

mats, codecs, and

containers.

Awful DAC; doesn’t

support DivX, WMA

Lossless, or any

encrypted media.

RIP

WESTERN DIGITAL WD TV HD

TRIP