One of the most common questions we get from photographers who just purchased an HDTV is: "How do I show my photos on the big screen?" Seems like there should be an easy answer, right?

Well, there are a couple of simple ways to do it, the simplest being if your camera comes equipped with an HDMI port—just plug the cable into the back of your TV, turn on the camera, and that's basically it. The other option is if your HDTV has a built-in SD card reader—some have them, some don't. The main problem with that set-up though is that most pro cameras these days still use Compact Flash cards, not SD.

But what if, like most photographers, you have thousands of images stored on an external hard drive and you want to show those on your photo studio's new high def Jumbotron? Unfortunately, that's not as easy as it should be since hard drives don't have built in HDMI ports (yet), and not many HDTVs are USB/Firewire-capable.

Western Digital's come up with a simple and inexpensive solution to this problem—the WD TV Media Player. Just connect your external drive to the small WD TV unit, plug the unit in to the wall and connect it to your TV by either HDMI or RCA, pick up the enclosed remote and scroll through all your images via a simple but elegant menu/thumbnail system.

Best of all for anyone who's been shooting a lot of HD video with the latest DSLRs, the WD TV Media Player will play clips on your TV in full HD (1080p) resolution. The downside is that while WD TV can handle many different audio, video, and image formats, there are a handful it cannot, including RAW. To view those shots you'll have to convert your photos into either JPEGs or TIFFs.

One other logistical issue with the WD TV Player: to cut down on clutter you'll probably want to use it with a portable, USB powered hard-drive rather than a large, clunky plug-in drive. And for that we recommend Western Digital's My Passport series of mini drives.

Cost: $130 Further information: www.wdc.com