Media Players - a godsend for the travelling movie buff

As you might have been able to guess from this blog title, and from my profile, I travel a fair bit for work, and I also happen to enjoy movies. I love watching movies of all genres, and can usually get something out of watching anything, from a trashy piece of straight to DVD, to an absolute classic. The ultimate though is when I come across a movie I have never heard of before, and find a real gem.

There are few things that beat catching a really great piece of film for the first time with people I am close to, be it my wife, my kids, good friends or a great bunch of mates. I sometimes enjoy my movies on a very basic primitive level, reveling in the action, gore or comedy. Other times I get more involved at a cerebral level and consider the characters, the story that is being told and the point being made by the screen writers, directors and producers. Last, but not least it can be a real joy seeing actors apply their craft and breathe life into a character.

I try to watch movies whenever I can, but this is harder when I am travelling. Yes, I can catch the odd movie on planes, but it isn't quite the same on a small screen. I also sometimes will go out of my way to catch a movie in the local cinema somewhere when I am overseas. As long as the feature is shown in English, it can be a lot of fun to sit amongst people from another country in their home city, and enjoy their reactions/participation in the cinema as well as the movie itself. (I saw Braveheart in Scotland, which was one of those experiences I will never forget.)

Lately though, I have been travelling with a media player, and it has quickly become an essential part of my luggage. I have travelled with an iPod classic for years, and I used to regularly keep a few movies encoded on it so that I could plug it into a hotel TV and watch a movie when I needed a break. It worked well, but it relied on me being organised and having some movies on it, or re-encoding something to watch via my laptop, which was a pain. I would sometimes watch something on my laptop instead, which can also work quite well, but it is never as comfortable as lying back and watching it on the TV in my room.

I now have a WD TV Mini, which is a small media box with a remote control, into which you can plug in a USB drive and watch media files on a TV. It can play virtually anything that is not encoded in an HD resolution. I always have heaps of files available as Xvids, Mpeg2, DVD isos, VOBs, H264, MKVs (SD only) and the Mini can play all of these without even thinking about it. If the screen you are using supports it, you can even use component inputs and the Mini will upscale into 1080i. We need to be clear here, the Mini can not play back HD files, for that you need one of the other WD media players, but it can upscale your SD media nicely. If subtitles are your thing for catching your favourite foreign flicks, all the common soft subtitle formats are supported as well.

Any downsides? I wish it did support HD playback as I also have a bunch of bluray rip MKVs which I can't take on the road with me to play on the mini. I have plenty of other format files though, and in the end I am prepared to give up HD for the nice small compact size of the mini. Also, if your files have a DTS soundtrack, it can only pass the sound through to a DTS receiver through its TOSLink port. It will readily downmix AC3 and others into stereo but if you are stuck on a trip and your file has a DTS soundtrack, there are plenty of free utilities that can take a DTS soundtrack and remux it into AC3 in a few minutes so you can then watch it.

If you travel, and you love your movies, one of these, or another similar spec'd player for under $100 is a bargain, and it will become a permanent part of your travel kit.

My new found love for WD media players does not end here. I do also have a WDTV HD Live player for home, which absolutely kicks butt. It does everything the Mini does, plus it has HD and network streaming, but I'll perhaps rave about that another time.

Enjoy.

PS: In case you are wondering, I am not sponsored or have any commercial ties to WD, I simply came across these media players by myself and felt they were worth mentioning.