Hi Readers,

This time I present you a Media Player from Western Digital. Before that let me give a briefing so that people who are new to computers or people with computers who have no knowledge about movie files.

Nowdays movies are available in many websites. Some are ripped from DVD in DivX format. Current trend is such that BlueRay movies are ripped to .mkv(Matroska) format. Both the formats replicate the DVD's and BRay's as it is onto our computer harddisks. These formats helps us to treasure our favourite movies in lesser space and no need to collect CDs and DVDs. Just a large internal or external hard disk is sufficient to store 100s of such movies. All the while we are limited to computers to watch the stored movies on the computer itself. Now DivX and BRay players have come out but with expensive price tag. DivX players are less then 3k and the BR players are between Rs.10,000 - 30,000. Also consider the amount of cds we need to burn to watch the movies on these players.

Since 2005, I have been collecting movies from friends and websites and the very lazy though of burning a cd and watching on the TV has limited me to smaller computer monitor. I decided to surf the net in search of a suitable layer where the movie hardisk is directly fixed to the TV and view all the movies. I came across lot of chinese and korean players which were either not within reach in my city. Also the performance is doubtful if it is brought over from a near foreign country like Singapore.

At Hyderabad, CTC or Chenoy Trade Centre is our computer market. I came across some media players but most of them are compatible with DVD and DiVX formats alone. Finally I was show this player and which is just a converter and does not contain a hard disk. It is capable of playing Audio files like MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV/PCM/LPCM, AAC, FLAC, Dolby Digital, AIF/AIFF, MKA and Video files like MPEG1/2/4, WMV9, AVI (MPEG4, Xvid, AVC), H.264, MKV, MOV (MPEG4, H.264), MTS, TP, TS. I was really surprised at the compatible formats and that too on a Branded product. WD is well known for Hard Disks and their entry into media players is really suprising.

Now coming to the testing part. I fixed the player to my 32 inch LCD tv. I copied movies and songs of different formats onto a portable 100Gb 2.5inch external haddisk and fixed in to the USB port of the player. A small but powerful remote is provided along with the player. I switched on the player and the display screen was excellent and quick to display the menu. I selected a large 4.5 Gb .mkv file to see the speed of processing. I was literally surprised to see that it took just 3 secs to play the movie! My Philips DVD player with DivX compability took over 30 seconds to read a 1.3GB avi file on a DVD!

One drawback is that the sound output is just 2 channels and requires an audio receiver for more surround sound output. The rest of the features definitely knocks you out.The only feature I had wished for was wifi. Wifi would have made me access my PC and retrieve a movie file in a wireless mode!

The player costed me Rs.7100 at Hyderabad. The price is definitely on the higher side but the features are really worth. Just imagine the player compatible with all formats which you cannot find in ordinary electronic players.

For more specifications or information visit: https://wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?DriveID=572

I hope this article helps people who are struggling to travel between the TV and PC :).