I want to talk to you about the HDD Player. For about $30 or less, you can buy a HDD or Hard Disk Drive Multimedia Player Encolsure that will blow your mind! These external enclosures can be either Sata, eSata, or IDE – and they even have wireless and wired LAN versions. You won’t find these in a brick and mortar store anywhere – usually only on eBay or an online gadget shop? Why? Well, the big electronics giants would never want to see you have something this cool – EVER!

This post of part of The Smorgasbord Tech Reviews series!

Because it’s keeps you buying their clunky, proprietary garbage. They want to tie you into DVD burners that won’t backup your legal store bought DVD’s, that don’t support ripped and burned DVD’s, and devices that use HDCP and DRM to limit what you can to with your own electronics! Your dvd player might only play DVD’s coded for North America – and you want a region free player that will play DVD’s from anywhere in the world!

What if you could have a device that would allow you to store all of your ripped DVD’s and movies, YouTube, MySpace and online video, your entire mp3 collection, in addition to the thousands and thousands of digital pictures you have accumulated!? You need a storage device – and entertainment storage device at the center of your house! With 500GB hard drives at an all time low – the time is right for a device like this! I’m telling you – it works great for me because I am so tired of plugging in my laptop to our 42″ flat screen just to watch some video I edited or something from our digital camera or camcorder.

The HDD or Hard Disk Drive Enclosure Multimedia Player

Most of these hard drive enclosure boxes will do the following:

• Play mp3’s
• Play mp4’s
• Play Divx movies
• Play AVI videos
• Play DVD’s
• Play Audio CD’s
• Play VCD’s
• Play SVCD’s
• Play JPG pictures (slideshow)

Most come with a remote, some even play AVI and Windows Media WMV and WMF formats. I’ve even seen quite a few new ones that EVEN have a memory card reader slot. Also, many have optional connectors for either a TV (AV cable or s-video) or PC (VGA connector). You can usually use up to a 80GB+ hard drive, and depending on which case you get, it can be either 3.5″ PC form factor, or a notebook HDD. The one I mentioned with the memory card reader, it even has a one-touch button to copy everything from a memory card to the hard drive without having to hook it up to a PC at all. Most also have 5.1 channel digital audio output support as well. These things work with Windows PC’s from 95, to 98, 2000, Windows XP and Vista, in addition to Mac and Linux, and NTSC or PAL formats. They even have handheld ones with an LCD screen – so you don’t need to hook it up to anything!

You can get an AWESOME deal on one of these on eBay. As always, but from reputable sellers with lots of positive feedback, know how much shipping is in advance (usually $10-$30 depending on there it’s being shipped from and it’s weight), and read all the details to make sure that your HDD player does exactly what you want when you get it. Ask the seller questions in advance so you know what you’re getting.

Also, if it’s still not clear – let me point out why this is one of the coolest things out there. You can put your pictures on it. Put your music on it. Convert and rip movies and dvd’s to it. Watch them on any PC you take it to, or any TV you hook it up to. Copy pictures from your digital camera flash card with the touch of one button, and watch them on your television in seconds. No more figuring out how to burn downloaded movies to DVD, VCD, or SVCD. Imagine all the money you’ll save on blank DVD’s and CD’s alone. Just copy to this drive and watch on your TV, then delete when you’re done. If the hard drive dies or is too small, just replace it with another one. These are cool, you will use yours all the time ( I know I do ).

I’m going to show you some HDD player auctions ending on eBay soonest below. If you want to see everything, just…

Click to view all HDD Player auctions on eBay right now

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here’s even more hdd players on eBay now:

also – if you’re looking for region free dvd player for your home entertainment center, or a region free portable dvd player – here are bunches of options new and used on eBay right now: