I’m really surprised that IO DATA is the first company to come out with an obvious feature in a DVD player that also plays Windows Media, DiVX, etc. It has a USB 2.0 interface so you could load an external hard drive full of media, and then just plug-n-play. No worrying about configuring networks, installing special software on the machine that is going to serve the files, etc.
Unfortunately, this is a Japan-only release for now. Why doesn’t somebody come out with a player like this for those of us in the U.S. I’d buy a couple.