Western Digital's Elements has always been the company's budget line. You won't find anything fancy or flashy here, just plain, simple solutions. WD's Elements Play is no exception. The
Elements Play is basically a media player set-top box with either a 1TB or 2TB 3.5" drive enclosed. When we said about simple, Western Digital has skipped Netflix, Flickr, YouTube or any other cloud-based media services altogether as there's no Ethernet and Wi-Fi on the unit. There's no way to 'stream' media to the box over the network, so that leaves USB the only way to feed media to the Elements Play.
This works just like
first generation of WD TV HD except the Elements Play features a built-in drive. As a media player, it should satisfy most movie buffs with the usual support for MKV, H.264, RMVB, VOB/ISO, TS, M2TS, FLV, etc. The on-board HDMI out should take care passing through multi-channel Dolby and DTS to your amplifier. There are two USB 2.0 ports: one of right hand side and one on the back. The one on the back is a mini-USB that allows you to transfer files directly from your PC or Mac. There you can format it to NTFS, FAT32, or HFS+ (no journaling). The other USB port is for copying media from USB hard drives,
flash drives, digital cameras or camcorders. For those who need to bring this type of device around,
LaCie LaCinema Rugged HD is also something you may consider.
Via HotHardware
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