WD's Elements Play: Storage, Media Player in One
Combine a huge HDD and HDMI output and you have the WD Elements Play.
Hard drive manufacturer Western Digital quietly announced a stand-alone device for HD media playback. Called the WD Elements Play, the device packs either a 1TB or 2TB internal drive, component, composite, and HDMI connections. This makes it ideal for media storage and easy playback for any standard or HDTV.
"An easy, affordable way to supersize your movies and photos on your big-screen TV, and play your music collection on your home entertainment center," the company said. "Simply connect the drive to the TV and you’re ready to enjoy all your digital media in Full-HD 1080p resolution."
The WD Elements Play provides Full HD video picture quality (1080p) and DTS 2.0 digital audio. It also has several USB 2.0 ports and supports popular formats like RMVB, H264, MKV, PLS, M3U and more. Automatic Play lets the user select a media file to play when the unit boots while an easy, intuitive interface provides DVD-like navigation, photo slideshow capabilities and more.
So far Western Digital hasn't provided pricing or availability.
I have a Patriot Box Office that I got from newegg for $140.00 total with a 500 gig 2.5" HD and it works great. I think the only thing that is needed now is the availability of Hulu, netflix, NBC Universal plugins etc. These are the things that Boxee Box was going to change but that has been delayed until november.
The beauty of these devices is that if they are network capable, they are seen as a drive on the network that can be copied to etc. So, the answer to your question is that mainly you move files through the usb connection but you can also transfer them over the network if you have a box with a network connection.
Boxee FTW!!!
The Boxee Box is not going to be a good media player for those that like to watch HD movies with high bitrates. It has been reported that it will either not play or have trouble playing anything over > 10Mbps. So if you are a torrent person that downloads high bitrate .mkvs or you want to rip your bluray collection and be able to play them back, forget about it. Stick to the decode engines of the Sigma Design processors in the WD TV Live/Plus and the Popcorn Hour line of players if you value high bitrate play back.
This product should be called a media storage player because that is all it can do, play back movies stored on the internal HD. No internet, no network, no ability to play back your movies stored on network shares = fail.
WDTV uses a barrel plug with four contacts for component video. That's why you aren't seeing the typical trio of RCA connectors.
It would be awesome if they used a port multiplier aware sata interface internally so that we could hack in multiple drives. The current WDTV Live makes a decent media server but can only use USB drives locally.
Buy a wdtv live/wdtv live hub. Do not buy a "wd elements play". Hope this saves you my pain.
You do not know what you are missing out on if u are using one of these, this is western digitals worst player ever. Don't believe me google "wd elements play not showing thumbnails"