Multimedia Contraption?

Ok, so...

I am planning on purchasing a new portable harddrive to store all music and movies that are on my pc. I am kind of reaching here, but I am just wondering if there is any kind of electronical device that would be capable of hooking the portable hd up to a television and playing selected files other than a computer.

 

I may be way,,,, off base here, but isn't the new tivo suposed to be able to do something like that. I thought I heard something about it having a usb adapter, after all a Tivo is a simple computer with a semi big hard drive in it. Personaly I want to build a super tivo, into a slot mount DVD case (so it looks like the rest of my rack mount system) and use it as a media pc, but then again apparently I'm a bit of a geek, who knew.

 

Yes there are a couple. Check out http://www.g-technology.com/Products/G-PLAY.cfm
to play video formats including MPEG 1, MPEG 2 and MPEG 4 (DivX, DivX VOD, etc.). G-PLAY also plays your personal DVD movies (ISO format) as if they were playing from the original DVD at full quality and with full DVD functionality.

And http://www.iodata.com/usa/products/products.php?cat=HNP&sc=AVELK&ts=2&tsc=&sc=AVELK&pId=SRDVD-100U