Western Digital releases WD TV HD Media Player

[Kaido]

Just a quickie review:

Pros:
-Plays HD files great (including x264 MKV files)
-Nice minimalistic design, menu, and remote control
-Supports FAT, NTFS, HFS+ (DOS/Windows/Mac)
-Plays pretty much anything (music, movies, photos)
-2 USB ports
-Works on SD or HD TVs, 4:3 or 16:9 (unlike the AppleTV)
-Can stream HD from a USB stick without stuttering

Cons:
-No skip feature on remote (only FF/RW - 2x/4x/8x/16x)
-Only supports SRT for subtitles, if you're into anime you'll need to convert your stuff
-No network plug - have to manually hook up a drive to the player

Notes:
-FAT32 doesn't allow files above 2GB (or is it 4GB?), so most HD files won't load if you've formatted your drive to FAT - you'll need NTFS or HFS+
-Gives me an error about reading HSF+ formatted drives, but still plays the file anyway

imo this is the perfect portable media box - you can take it to your friend's house or do an outdoor movie night with your projector, no problem. The biggest glaring problem it has is the lack of a skip feature. I REALLY hate not having a skip feature. The D-Pad should control skip - forward 10 seconds and forward 10 minutes, and maybe even some customizable values. The firmware is updatable, so I would expect to see that feature in the future.

For Version 2.0, I would like to see a 2.5" SATA notebook drive tray - it's $110 for a 500gb notebook drive, would would fit just perfect inside of the WD TV HD unit. I would also like to see an Ethernet jack for both streaming and copying content to the hard drive. Custom skins would be nice, and of course the skip functionality.

All in all, a great little player. The most glaring feature (skip function) can be fixed in a future upgrade, and once that happens I would recommend this unit to anyone.

Update: The manufacturer was chiming in on a Macworld article thread, so I posted the Skip feature request over there and also asked for better subtitle support. Hopefully we will see this in the next firmware update!

 

[Kaido]

Does seem a tad skipping on cheapo USB sticks. Full Blu-ray is 40 MB/sec I think, and then encoded movies are all over the place, from 5 MB/sec to 20 MB/sec usually, so you have to make sure your USB stick speed supports that. For high-bitrate stuff, you'll need a speedy drive, like one of the dual-channel models.

 

[AzNKiD]

Looks like bestbuy is out of stock and bump the price to 129.99. Has anyone tested this with an external hard drive with usb and ethernet? in theory, it should work correct? have the hd attached by usb for the player and ethernet to push the files to the drive within the network. imo, i prefer this player + hd + network than the popcorn hour since the total price will be similiar now, but with this method, you can take your collection with you, and doesnt require another computer to be on to stream. so if anyone found a cheap working external hd with network support and works correctly with this player, please speak up on brand and model.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: AzNKiD
Looks like bestbuy is out of stock and bump the price to 129.99. Has anyone tested this with an external hard drive with usb and ethernet? in theory, it should work correct? have the hd attached by usb for the player and ethernet to push the files to the drive within the network. imo, i prefer this player + hd + network than the popcorn hour since the total price will be similiar now, but with this method, you can take your collection with you, and doesnt require another computer to be on to stream. so if anyone found a cheap working external hd with network support and works correctly with this player, please speak up on brand and model.

I just have a regular USB external drive, but I'd love to see if a dual-interface with Ethernet would work.

The WD TV HD does NOT handle high-bitrate 1080p files very well. I tried a 10,000kbps 1080p MKV movie and it was a disaster. The entire movie looked like when you skip forward in VLC and it takes a moment to catch up...the decoder on the WD just couldn't keep up. I had to bring up my computer to watch the movie.

 

[Kaido]

New firmware:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/wdtv/

Details:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products...DTVreleasenotes101.pdf

10-minute jump support added, whoohoo! 😀

 

[Epic Fail]

Interesting device, this is a good replacement for HTPC.

How loud does it operate and can you plug an USB DVD drive to it?

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Epic Fail
Interesting device, this is a good replacement for HTPC.

How loud does it operate and can you plug an USB DVD drive to it?

I don't think it makes any noise.

Nope, it's just a file player.

The only downside is that you have to manually load files onto a USB flash driver or USB hard drive, there's no networking port. You'll need a Popcorn Hour if you want that.

 

[Cremaster]

Just curious, what program do you use to convert video files to use on the WD TV? I haven't had much luck with the one they supplied. No audio mainly.

 

[vfxcy]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: iamtehwalrus
A lot of people are complaining about lack of network capabilities. If I wanted something like this WD media player but with network capabilities (just for filesharing across my PCs), what would be a good option for me? Wireless would be preferable, but ethernet would be fine. Would popcorn hour be my only choice, or is there something else? Is there anything like popcorn hour but without all the fancy features (i.e. cheaper)? I would really only need it to play .avi and .mkv (standard containers/codecs found via BT). Also internal hdd would be preferable to an external hdd but not necessary.

Popcorn Hour
Tvix
Vista Media Center
Xbox 360
Playstation 3

Take your pick 🙂

Add one more:

Egreat EG-M34A.
Check it out www.egreathd.com or http://www.hdtvplayer.info/cat...layers/egreat/eg-m34a/

Priced at about USD139-149. It is like the cheapest popcorn you can find.