Western Digital WD TV Mini Launches

Author	Hugo Jobling
Published	19th Aug 2009

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There's a new WD TV on the scene, but not the rumoured/leaked successor you might have been hoping for. Rather, the WD TV Mini is a downsized, slightly less feature-rich but cheaper alternative to its predecessor.

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The main sacrifice is the lack of 1080p video output, with the mini limited to 1080i. Format support is lessened versus the WD TV. The Mini bests the WD TV by playing RealVideo, but it won't work with MKV files and h.264 and AVC are a no-go, too. Subtitle display is featured, at least. Audio is better taken care of, with all the common offenders catered for, namely MP3, WAV, WMA, AAC, FLAC and OGG. JPEG, GIF, TIFF, BMP and PNG images can be displayed.

Some criticism is probably deserved for the lack of an HDMI output, but if you really need that, the fully fledged WD TV is probably more up your street and if you don't, composite and Component should be perfectly fine. A digital optical output is featured, enabling multi-channel sound to be passed to an AV receiver - the unit itself will only cope with stereo.

The US MSRP is $99, so UK pricing should hopefully hit £60. We're still waiting for confirmation the WD TV Mini will launch here, though.

Link:
Western Digital.

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HDRE said on 19th August 2009

@WD Are you mad or just misguided? I can't decide.

I doubt it would have cost any more to leave the compatability with MKV files and h.264 alone (if the same chipset... more

drdark said on 19th August 2009

Original model is now £64.35 at Amazon. Quick, before they sell out!

jopey said on 19th August 2009

@drdark There are offbrand DVD players for around that price which do 1080p, have a usb port and do divx. A friend of mine got a Sumvision something which did all that. Does anyone... more