The WD TV by Western Digital is a media player that plays audio, video and image files from connected USB devices on your TV in HD resolutions, including 720p, 1080i and 1080p. It plays the latest popular file types like MKV and H.264 encoding. The player can be connected to your TV by HDMI or composite. It has 2 USB ports for connecting external storage (hard discs, portable media players, digital cameras & camcorders).

The WD TV features a simple user interface with library functions, which can be controlled with the included remote control.

It's compatible with MPEG1/2/4, WMV9, AVI (MPEG4, Xvid, AVC), MKV, MOV (MPEG4, H.264), JPEG, GIF, TIF/TIFF, BMP, PNG, MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV/PCM/LPCM, AC3, AAC & FLAC files. It has an optical output to pass DTS or AC3 5.1 digital audio to specialized audio gear.

The footprint of the media player is very small with these measurements: 40 x 100 x 125mm & it weighs just 303g. The WD TV costs $99-129 in the US, and about 90-120 euro in Europe (Jan 2009).

In the media player market segment, it is at the time of launch (Nov 2008) one of the cheapest device available with a similar feature set (especially MKV, H.264, 1080p). Competing products, like the Popcorn Hour A-110 (and its predecessor A100) tend to be designed with a more elaborate feature set, including network (LAN / Wifi) connectivity and built-in storage, but end up costing 2-3 times more. The WD TV is thus marketed at a public that wants a no frills "play (almost anything) from external storage" HD media player for the latest main codecs and containers.

The WD TV is based on Open Source software, and a Linux operating system. Discussion is going on about custom firmware with the hope of adding certain features like USB copy and WLAN support.

Key features

(adapted from the WD website)

- OGG and FLAC are not supported in video file containers