Over the past couple of years, more and more users have started to give up on traditional entertainment-related content delivery methods and have gone all-digital. Nowadays, the number of products designed specifically for playing such content on an HDTV is absolutely huge, but relatively few devices provide such a high level of versatility as the Movie Cowboy, which has been recently released by Digital Cowboy from Japan.

What's really interesting to mention about the Movie Cowboy is the fact that it can play files stored onto a wide array of media, whether we're talking about the iPod (since it incorporates an iPod docking unit), a hard-drive (either the built-in HDD or an external unit, via USB 2.0) or a network location (via the built-in Ethernet interface).

As expected, the gadget can play a very wide array of file formats and codecs, such as (MPEG2 HD (ts,tp), DivX HD (avi), XviD HD (avi), MPEG-1/2 (dat, mpg, vob, ifo, iso), MKV (H.264), MP3, WMA, ACC, OGG, WAV, AC3 DTS audio files and even BMP, HD JPEG (non-progressive), GIF, PNG, TIFF still images. Of course, as any modern product of this type should, it also supports Full HD resolutions (1080p) and standard-definition ones.

Besides playback, the device can also be used for recording one's favorite TV programs. Hence, when connected to a video signal source, the Movie Cowboy will be able to record video in MPEG-2 (NTSC 720x480 or 352x480 / PAL 720x576) format and audio in the MPEG-2 (48KHz Stereo 256Kbps / 192Kbps) format.

Connectivity-wise, the Movie Cowboy is actually pretty well-endowed, since, aside from the aforementioned Ethernet connector, it also sports an HDMI interface (for connecting in a fast and easy manner to an HDTV), plus Component and Composite video connectors and audio (analog and digital) interfaces.

The Movie Cowboy will be available for the time being only on the Japanese market, but no precise price point has been provided.


We are just a few, but there are many of you, Softpedia users, out there. That's why we thought it would be a good idea to create an email address for you to help us a little in finding gadgets we missed. Interesting links are bound to be posted with recognition going mainly to those who submit. The address is .