The thing (WD TV, not Seagate) is small, powerful, affordable, HDMI out, 1080p, tons of codec support. Hackable, but even out of the box it’s great.

I’ve got a pair of WD Passport 500GB hanging off of it (WD partially b/c of reputation/reliability, partially to ensure compatibility, and partially to reward them for making the WD TV) and it’s a miracle I ever leave the house. I’ve spent a lot of time ripping/converting my DVDs, and since most of them are TV series, that’s a bit of work…. now they’re all on tap at my fingertips.

You’ll see the Seagate thing at WalMart & Costco by summer, they’ll clear out the inventory/manufacturing run & that’s it. WD was early, is better and cheaper.

Seagate business executives, whoever’s in charge of this also-ran product, hand him his ass.

The only downfall to this is that it doesn’t handle DTS… but whatevs (the pioneers of the firmware workings say it is coming once WD get’s off their buns)! I just paid $120 for a device that is worth $300 after some tinkering! Popcornhour eat your heart out. On top of the network support, the codec support WITHOUT hacking is amazing. TS m2ts, mkv, and all general formats. I have not tried .mov… Even after adding on a 320gb WD My Passport USB drive you’re only at $200.

Other coming features that are likely for WD HDTV hacks are: Hulu feed support, YouTube support, etc, etc..

After looking at prod page, it is important to note that the WD player is cheaper, smaller by far it seems, HAS HDMI (is Seagate serious?), the UI is sexier, and it plays FULL 1080p, rather than “i”.

So there it is. peter knew what was up ;-)