Random Rants & Raves

I’ve been thinking of getting either a multi-format media player or a Windows Media Center PC for my house for a while. This is to play all the HD TV shows that we watch (Lost, Desperate Housewives, The Big Bang Theory, etc.) and all my archived movies and TV shows. The Media Center PC was working out to be a little too expensive and I really didn’t need the Pause-Play-Record TV feature anyway.

I suddenly came across the Western Digital WD-TV device. This is a tiny device that plugs into your LCD HDTV using composite or HDMI cables and plays media sitting in any USB based storage device that is connected to it. For a price of < $100 I went about looking to see if it was available in India.

I luckily found it in Nehru Place from the WD distributors themselves. Available currently at Rs. 7000+tax, it was a steal. I bought it yesterday and connected it up. I also got the latest firmware and upgraded the device. It not only recognized every single format I threw at it (AVI, WMV, MKV and more), it played them without even a hint of a stutter.

I’m now converting all my kid’s DVDs (Thomas & Friends, Tom & Jerry, Noddy, Mr. Bean, etc.) to a high compression MKV format that I can leave attached to the device. Any time he asks for a different thing to watch, we can quickly switch without requiring to physically change DVDs. Also, TV shows that I get from the Internet can also be easily watched without burning a DVD for it. The only thing missing is Wi-Fi connectivity – but it’s really not of much importance for what I need this for. A great buy if you are into a lot of digital media watching on your HDTV.