Western Digital WD TV Mini Media Player Model WDBAAL0000NBK-NESN

Pros: Plugged this into the SDTV in my son's room via composite. Ripped his cartoons and movies to .mpg and copied them onto an old USB HD I had laying around. It works like a charm. Now I don't need to worry about his DVDs getting lost or scratched. It also plays his music, with support for playlists. Remembers where you left off with any video file, and asks if you want to resume or start over from the beginning. Drop dead simple to operate. My son is 4, and he has no problems using it, because video thumbnails make it easy to select the file you want. A little wider than a deck of cards.

Cons: Despite what some reviewers have said, this model does NOT have HDMI. Composite and component only. (Another WD TV model has HDMI) You'll need to pay more for a true HD solution, but for my old home movies and all my VHS tapes I've converted to .MPG, this thing is superb.

Overall Review: None

Pros: Hardware seems to be OK.

Cons: Incredibly bad firmware. If you don't have a big screen TV, you'll need binoculars to read the tiny fonts used for file names. Unit doesn't recognize Rosewill SDHC readers. Search function operates on entire drive instead of the subdirectory you're in. You can't terminate a search without unplugging the power. Search crashes after about 10 minutes on 500 gig drives. No searching for directories, only files. Directories are alphabetized only by the first two characters, after that it's random, causing you to scroll through a huge number of essentially unordered directories (only partially displayed) to find the one you want. Search function can not be made case insensitive. Playlists only work on the subdirectory level they're written in and then they pay the files in alphabetical order only.

This firmware should never have made it through testing. I don't believe that it was tested by anyone using it for playing large drives of MP3 files.

Overall Review: Nearly useless for any drive with more than a gew gigs of MP3 files.