Toshiba BDX2100 Blu-ray player: USB powers explained

The Toshiba BDX2100 Blu-ray player, needless to say, is a dab hand at playing high def Blu-ray movies. It'll spin all your discs, no questions asked, and even upscale your old DVD collection to give it a new lease of life.

But did you know that it doesn't just accept discs? Tucked away on the bottom right hand corner of the front is a USB port, into which you can happily shove a memory stick - which opens up a whole new world of video viewing for you. Read on, and we'll explain why it matters.

USB option
While many laptops and PCs will allow you to burn your digital video collection onto Blu-ray and DVD discs for playback on your telly, it can be far less time consuming to simply pop them on a USB memory stick - after all, they're cheap, quick to transfer files on to, have more storage space than a regular DVD, and are reusable. Thus, having a USB port on the front of the Toshiba BDX2100 for you to plug a key or USB hard drive into is a handy option to have: especially since you can then use the BDX2100's remote to browse through all the files on board too.

Codec fiesta
Of course, digital video comes in a myriad of file types and codecs - how the date is compressed and decoded in playback - so this option would be of little use if the Toshiba BDX2100 didn't support them all. Conveniently, it supports a host of popular video types, including the commonly used DivX, and increasingly popular HD MKV container - plus AVCHD from Blu-ray discs.

MP3 and WMA audio files are also supported, as well as JPEG image files, so you'll be able to open just about anything on your hard drive on the Toshiba BDX2100 if you so choose - with no wires required.

Internet video
The Toshiba BDX2100's USB powers gives you plenty of scope to play any video already sitting on your computer, but it also lets you grab many more and watch them on your flatscreen TV too. For instance, you can download videos from popular video sites such as YouTube and play these back via a USB memory stick, so even if your TV isn't internet connected, you can still enjoy online content on it.