There is a new kind of portable devices that are basically external hard-drives enhanced with media playback electronics.

Sigma Designs a leading manufacturer of media signal processing electronics announces that AL Tech, DTS Infocom and Dvico introduce portable media devices powered with Sigma Designs technology.

The TViX from Dvico was already in the news and is available on Amazon.com in different hard-drive configurations.

These portable media devices typically operate as external PC storage, offering 50 to 250 GB of storage capacity using a USB 2.0 interface. As such, they can be readily loaded up with video files (MPEG-2, DivX, MPEG-4, etc.), audio files (MP3, WMA, etc.) and image files (such as JPEG). Once loaded, they become portable media players that can be used with televisions in the living room, in the car, or while traveling. Common video outputs (composite, S-video, component) and audio outputs (stereo, SPDIF) enable the device to be easily connected to any television. Users access content and control playback in a manner similar to a DVD player, using a convenient remote control that enables set-up, browsing, and playback control (play,-pause, rewind, fast-forward, etc.).

I rather have a wireless accessible DivX video player located in the living room to download movies and watch them on the TV like the D-Link DSM-320. If those portable media devices would have wireless access they would be interesting.
More details in Sigma Designs press-release.