get one of these and u can watch anything, .ts, mkv, avi, x264 even rmvb
just hook it up with a USB Bluray drive,DVD drive, HD-DVD drive or even external hard drive to the box
http://www.olevia.com.hk/product_det...&productid=436

Sony S350 bluray player was $99 on Christmas day in Blockbuster. Hard to beat that price. Insigna was $79.99 on Boxing day.

Bluray player plays DVD as well. I had co-worker bought a new DVD player recently instead because he thought Bluray player won't play DVD and he has a big collection of DVD movies. :p

the problem with media players is the limitation on audio decoding/bitstreaming and handling of video bitrates or fps etc

the spec sheet of that unit u linked says it only supports files up to 720p@30fps

it will upscale to 720p or 1080p tho but that's not the same

and say u download those blu-ray mkv files... well the audio on that is usually DTS audio, and i don't see anything about that unit or the western digital player being able to decode DTS or bitstream it
and if you want something representative of blu-ray u'll download the 1080p file and that player doesn't support it... etc etc

+ those units are a $100+ if u get an external blu-ray drive.... thats hella expensive

PS3 gets my vote, here's why:

-price, it's fairly cheap for all it does
-upconverts beautifully, the PS3 does the best job I've seen yet
-load times, not sure if BR players have improved, but a bit back the PS3 was supposed to be among the fastest
-network connectable, not only for updates, but you can stream to this sucker. combined with its upconversion this is godly
-updateable, for future codec support and such

supposedly coming to the PS3, but you can stream to a PS3.

ps3 would be best bet after rethinking about it.
BR is like $150, PS3 can do much more for the price of $299

PS3 hands down...if you burn movies, you'll stop because you can just STREAM THEM to your big tv and delete em after or keep them on your HD. I used to burn a ton of movies...now I couldn't be bothered.
PS3 all the way...

and someone said it plays games..?

Laserdisc FTW!

oh i didn't see your post but here's mine if you didn't see it yet
there are, and aside from the Oppo they're pretty cheap