Western Digital HD TV Media Player

Western Digital announced immediate availability of the WD HD TV Media Player with a SRP of S$199.99 . It does Full HD 1080p and supports a variety of formats including MKV, OGG, AAC, AIF, AVI (MPEG4, XVid, AVC), H.264 and more. Why so affordable? Well, the unit is only the media player with no storage. Designed to work directly and conveniently with WD’s own Passport series of 2.5-inch portable hard drives. It connects seamlessly to either of the two available USB ports. The device will obviously also work with other USB storage devices like 3.5-inch My Books, Flash Memory USB sticks or other external portable storage.

WD TV™ HD MEDIA PLAYER BRINGS DIGITAL MEDIA COLLECTIONS TO THE BIG SCREEN

New Product Turns WD® My Passport™ Portable Drives into HD Media Players
SINGAPORE – Nov. 06, 2008 – WD® (NYSE: WDC), the world’s leader in external storage
solutions, today introduced a simple way for consumers to play their stored digital content ontheir HDTV in Full-HD 1080p resolution. The WD TV™ Media Player connects to a user’s TVor home theater and plays digital movies, music and photos from WD’s My Passport™ portable drive or other USB mass storage device. The WD TV Media Player is available now at select retailers.

According to research firm IDC, nearly 334 million GB of photos and more than 3.1 billion
GB of video will be stored on consumer desktop and laptop computers in 2008. The research firm expects that to increase to 400 million GB and 5.8 billion GB, respectively, by 2010. These large personal digital libraries are all but trapped on users’ computers. In order to play their content on their TV, consumers have struggled with clumsy solutions such as copying onto multiple CDs and DVDs or connecting their PCs to their TV via wires or complicated home networking solutions. The WD TV HD Media Player enables consumers to easily and elegantly access their high-definition content on the biggest screen in the home.

Users leave the WD TV HD Media Player connected to their TVs and simply plug in up
to two My Passport USB drives or other USB mass storage devices loaded with HD media. Using the included remote control, they can navigate and play their content with the media player’s high-definition on-screen menu. With My Passport drives now available in 500 GB capacities, users can build large collections on multiple drives, all playable by WD TV.

Navigating content on USB drives is fast and easy with WD TV HD Media Player’s remote
control and on-screen menu. Content can be viewed either by filename or thumbnails of photos, album covers or movie cover art. In addition, automatic media aggregation lets the viewer see all their media by media type in one menu regardless of its location in folders or drives.

“As leaders in external storage, we have become the trusted brand for storing and backing up large media collections for consumers around the world,” said Jim Welsh, senior vice president and general manager for WD’s Branded Products and Consumer Electronics Groups. “Our bestselling My Passport portable drives help customers carry their media library with them anywhere but until now, there has been no easy, affordable way to access and play all that content in their living rooms. The WD TV HD Media Player effectively unlocks all that content from the storage device and lets people enjoy it on their biggest screen and best sound system.”

Features of the WD TV HD Media Player include:

• Designed for WD’s My Passport portable drives, it also plays content from WD My
  Book® family of drives and most popular USB drives, digital cameras, camcorders, and portable media players that can be recognized as mass storage devices;
• Full HD video playback and navigation – up to 1080p – to experience the spectacular picture quality of HD video and crystal clear sound clarity of digital audio;
• Remote control to navigate through entertainment choices using the crisp, animated HD menus;
• Dock and play convenience: just plug in a My Passport drive or other USB storage
  device with HD content to play it on a TV or home entertainment system;
• Collect without limits by adding more USB drives for more accessible content;
• Advanced navigation options such as thumbnail and list views; WD’s Media Library™ feature lets users view all media by media type in one menu regardless of its location in folders or drives; ability to search by genre, title, artist, filename and partial filename;
• Photo viewing features to create custom slides shows; ability to zoom and pan; search photos by filename, partial filename, most recently viewed and date;
• Movie viewing with ability to fast forward, rewind, pause, zoom, and pan, view subtitles and search by filename, partial filename, most recently viewed and date;
• Music playback with fast forward, rewind, pause, shuffle, repeat and search by filename, partial filename, most recently viewed and date;
• Two USB ports on the player connects up to two USB mass storage devices and access them simultaneously while the Media Library feature aggregates the content on both drives into one list sorted by media type;
• High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI®) port connects to the highest quality
  HDTV or home theater; additional composite (RCA) outputs ensure compatibility with virtually all television sets;
• Free ArcSoft MediaConverter™ 2.5 software to easily convert photo, video, and music files into formats optimized for use on the WD TV HD Media Player
• Ultra-compact design that fits easily into a home entertainment center; and,
  - 1-year limited warranty.

Pricing and Availability

The WD TV HD Media Player is available at Dufry (Changi Airport Terminal 2),
Challenger, Harvey Norman and selected retailers in Singapore. The recommended retail price for WD TV HD Media Player is S$199.99.