You can directly play video and music files without a PC and watch them on a TV monitor or listen to them on audio equipment. It's an old machine, so it doesn't support the latest file formats, but it can play files without a PC, be operated by remote control, and has repeat playback, so I think there are situations where it can be useful. I will send you a set of two. ============================ This unit's DVD drive can play "files" on DVD media. Via the network, it can play "files" in shared folders on PCs, servers, and NAS devices. Wireless LAN compatible. It can also be used as a regular DVD player. Files on USB memory are supposed to be playable, but the USB interface transfer speed is slow, so it doesn't seem to play very well. ============================ The DVD drive is excellent, supporting DL (dual-layer) and reading most DVD formats. ============================ As expected for an old machine, it doesn't support recent encoding formats. Supported video formats are: WMV, DivX, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Supported music formats are: WMA, MP3, MP2, PCM, AAC, OggVorbis DVD Video format ISO files can be played directly.