Why Are Digital Media Players Not Popular?

A month ago I was sitting in my uncle's living room in Kronstadt. He wanted me to see the pictures he took with his family in Prague or Stockholm, I don't remember. Instead of bringing his laptop he turned on a little box next to his 50" TV set and there they were, a clear image gallery of his family adventures on TV. I asked him, 'What is it?' - 'An external media player!' How nicely convenient, I always wanted something like that.

I returned back to the States and went straight to Walmart, Target and Radioshack. Not only none of them had such devices but they had never even heard of those. I eventually got one through Amazon.com.

I know xBoxes can basically do exactly the same things: playback your mediafiles through USB. However, for people who don't play computer games, like me, there's no need to pay $200-300 for xBoxes when you can get smaller multimedia players for the price ten times less. So why they are not so popular over here is beyond me.

A digital media player or multimedia player is a device that allows one to playback on TV most digital formats that you have on your computer: you can watch your family photo gallery, listen to mp3s, WAVs, videos (AVI, MPEG, mp4) and other formats. Basically it's a mediator between your computer and your TV, just like an xBox. Even better if you have an external/portable hard drive or a mighty memory card where you keep all your media files (music and video); in this case you avoid the hassle of connecting your computer to the TV and jump right to watching.

It's especially cool to watch digital photos on big TV with your family members, so no one would have to crowd over your little laptop. If you download movies, nothing can be better than to store them on a littler portable hard drive and watch them straight from there on your TV. If you have music, it works the same way. In fact, I converted my entire CD & LP collection to 320kb mp3s, so my records stand now honorably and quietly on the shelves barely troubled. I did the same with my DVDs, BlueRays and my family home videos. By clicking a few buttons I can choose what I want to watch or listen to, without coming to my CD player or going through the mountain of DVDs.

It's connected as 1-2-3, where 1 is your computer / portable hard drive / memory card, 2 is your digital media player, 3 is your TV set. Instead of connecting the audio cords to the TV set, you can connect them to your home theater system to enhance the sound. Computers or portable hard drives are connected via USB ports, while memory cards can be inserted straight into memory card port. The player is operated via the remote control.