Conclusion

Just as the advent of the WD TV media player heralded the end of the era of DVD players, multimedia drives (or media players with integrated storage) like the Western Digital Elements Play could very well herald the end of the media player. The convenience of having 2 TB of storage integrated into the player is something you will never realize you missed until you tried it.

This is likely to be the future of digital entertainment for the family. Everything you need can be stored and played on such a media player - movies, music, video clips recorded using your camcorder or mobile phones, and even pictures from the recent family trip.

With that said, we have to be frank and say that this is far from being the perfect media player for the family. Transferring files from a computer to the WD Elements Play, for example, is not only inconvenient but also tediously slow. Seagate is on the right track with their FreeAgent Theatre+ player, which features a removable 2.5" hard disk drive. The WD Elements Play also doesn't support DTS decoding - a big minus in our book.

However, the WD Elements Play has some strong points. Aside from its gargantuan storage capacity, it has a very intuitive user interface and a well-designed remote control. It doesn't take very long for a non-techie user to quickly figure out how to get it running. Even copying files from an external USB drive or devices like a digital camera or camcorder is pretty straightforward.

The Elements Play also offers a very easy way to update its firmware. Instead of requiring you to access the firmware update utility via the settings menu (like older WD TV models or the Seagate media players), it automatically detects the presence of any new firmware when you insert an external USB drive to the player. You are then asked if you wish to update the firmware. It cannot get any easier than that!

Best of all, the WD Elements Play is backed by an excellent 3-year warranty in the APAC region and a shorter but still pretty good 2-year warranty in the EMEA region. That's really hard to beat, as most media players only come with a 1-year warranty.

This is ultimately a combination of the original WD TV HD media player and a 2 TB hard disk drive. If you do not need DTS decoding and don't mind the slow USB transfer rate, then this media player offers a great deal of convenience in a nice package. Otherwise, you should consider HD media players that can support DTS decoding, like the WD TV Live, or the Seagate FreeAgent Theatre+.

For the lowest current prices on Western Digital media players, click here!

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