If you have a large collection of digital media in the home then there's a range of solutions available to help you stream that content from a computer to a TV, or pack a spacey internal hard drive full of all your files.

If you're more of a casual user and are happy with a less permanent solution, though, Western Digital has just released a media jukebox that might be right up your street.

The WDTV doesn't include network support or an internal hard drive, but is still capable of playing back a massive range of digital media formats from connected external storage. This might be a portable hard drive or simply a USB flash memory stick, and there are two USB 2.0 ports on-board for just this purpose.

After connecting the device via HDMI or composite to your TV, the WDTV automatically sorts any content stored on these drives into video, music and photo categories, with a range of view modes available to sort by folder, recently viewed or date created. In the case of music this also includes artist, album, genre and playlist views and all of this is beautifully handled by an intuitive interface that's both responsive and well designed.

If you do have a large collection of files stored on an external drive, these can be searched or filtered using keywords or letters to narrow things down, and a choice of thumbnail or list views make even semi-permanent connections to an external library easy to manage.

File support is perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the WDTV, and despite the prevalence of formats such as MKV, H.264, MOV, and FLAC and OGG for audio in the current market it's rare to see a device that includes all of this straight out of the box. It takes care of all these formats and more, while offering an excellent degree of control over most media including slideshow creation, zoom and pan, subtitle support, audio track support and repeat and shuffle options for relevant media files.

Performance is good with very little buffer time required and hardly any lag when searching back or forth through files or pausing and resuming playback. The WDTV can handle HD resolutions up to 1080p and even at this level its performance is rarely affected.

Unfortunately it doesn't support protected content from online services such as iTunes and Amazon, which may be a drawback for some, but with so few other devices able to handle this in the current market we're reluctant to knock off too many points.

The WDTV won't be for everyone, since we can see many users requiring network support or at least capacious internal storage as a prerequisite for this sort of device. Western Digital makes no excuses about the fact that it doesn't provide this and prices the WDTV accordingly, allowing people to save a bit of money on the high street and use their own storage media instead.

The well-designed interface, impressive degree of media control and compact design make this far more than a half-baked solution, however, and we found it more enjoyable to use than many alternatives in today's market.

Verdict
We were extremely impressed by how easy the WDTV was to use and how hard the company has worked to provide an excellent degree of format support and a great way to control your digital media. Those who desire network support or internal storage may look elsewhere, but the WDTV's strengths put it in line with the most effective solutions in today's market and it should be considered a capable product for these reasons alone.

Company: Western Digital

Tags: western digital universal serial bus hard disk drive itunes usb flash drive television hardware storage