Western Digital WD TV Media Player

[sunray]

Western Digital has just released a new media player http://www.westerndigital.com/en/pro...sp?driveid=572. It supports lots of formats:

Media Formats:
MPEG 1/2/4, WMV9, AVI (MPEG4,Xvid, AVC), H.264, MKV, MOV (MPEG4, H264), JPEG, GIF, TIFF, BMP, PNG
MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV/PCM/LPCM, AAC, FLAC, Dolby Digital, AIF/AIFF, MKA, VOB (VIDEO_TS)

playlist support: (PLS, M3U, WPL)
Subtitle support: SRT (UTF-8), and DVD subtitle.. no IDX/SUB/subtitles encoded into mkvs support
MPEG 2/4, H.264 and WMV9 supports up to 1920x1080p 24 fps, 1920x1080i 30 fps, 1280x720p 60 fps resolution.
An audio receiver is required for surround sound output. AAC/AC3 decodes in 2 channel output only.
JPEG only supports compressed RGB format files.
BMP only supports uncompressed files.
TIFF only supports single layer files.
DOES NOT support protected premium content such as movie and music downloads from iTunes Store, Cinema Now, Movielink, Amazon Unbox, and Vongo.

Filesystems: Works with FAT32, NTFS, HFS

And it has HDMI, SPDIF and composite outputs. The only drawback is that it has no networking capacity. Everything it displays must be streamed via its two USB ports. If it had network capability it could be a great (and cheaper) alternative to the Sage Media Extender. List price of $130 but Best Buy is selling it for $99.99 this week (Nox 2 2008 - Nov 8 2008).

[pjpjpjpj]

A co-worker saw the BB ad and went and bought one, but has not really gotten a chance to try it yet. I will report what he says if anyone is interested. He's very tech-savvy so I would trust his opinions.

There is a pretty thorough review here: http://maddhat.com/?p=31

As mentioned above, it's basically just a means of playing your pre-recorded videos (from a USB device) on your TV set. It does provide a GUI for organizing them (the review says not a good one), but otherwise it does not do any tuning, recording, or network transmission from a PC.

[jrog]

We bought a couple at my job in place of blu-ray players to use for test and demonstration boxes. Very awesome little device!

Couple of issues with it, I can't figure out how to get artwork to work. It says they have to be embedded, which mine all are, and they don't work. I'm talking video here. Also, I can't resume or fast forward M4V files with standard MP4 Video in them.

On a positive note, it works perfect with HD-PVR files! And, the HDMI port does not add HDCP! which is important for us, as Blu-Ray players enable HDCP even if you have your own video that is not encrypted.

For what it does, it does it well, this little box is very cool.

[gplasky]

There is no standard to embed art in video files or even metadata for that fact. How are they expecting you to do that? Audio files support embedded art files thru tagging. You can't really tag a video file. I think you could do it with DVR-MS files but that format is going away.

Gerry

[PCKid]

Just got one of these to replace my Mediagate MG-25. This is much better quality. HDMi vs Component, Better Hi Res Menu system. Remembers all semi played Videos, Mediagate only remembered Last Played.

FF RW are much better though the response on the remote is not as good. No tactile feel and slow. EG. 2x... Wait...4x...Wait... and so on.

Seems to play almost anything you stick in it. Did play video only (no audio) on all my mkv files that are movie trailers off "Vuze 4".

Biggest downer is that on the Mediagate (because the remote had a number keypad) you could jump to any spot by typing in hours, minutes and seconds.

We've had 2 MG-25s for about 4 to 5 years and don't bother with discs anymore but always found that feature useful. Not so much on short shows but on say a recorded NFL game (4 hours plus) it was handy for skipping forward when the game gets boring.

I've emailed support (such as it is) re maybe in a firmware upgrade allowing you to pause a movie (it shows time elapsed and total time of movie) and drag the slider to the required time and unpause it and Bingo it goes from that spot.

So far I've only had the automated email response.

I too would like to know how to show Picture thumbnails of movie shows as per the screenshots on their webpage. Imbedded audio files do it but as someone else here said you can't tag video files AFAIK.

Ok it doesn't record TV etc etc but at the price it is Australian $199 it is an excellent media player. Fiddling with burning files to DVD and then watching them in the limited, boring looking, DVD players is really a thing of the past.

[mistergq]

I am considering of getting one of these to use outside of my house. Once I saw HD 200, I was thinking of buying that, but since I will be out of the house, I don't think HD 200 will be a placeshifter machine, it comes down to a cost issue.

[Stuntman]

I'm sorry if this has been discussed, but a quick search didn't return any hits..

Western Digital has a new HD media player that looks in some ways very similar to the new HD Extender that SageTV has built.. has anybody seen these and is there any chance one of these could run SageTV?

Here is a link to their product pages at WD..
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=572

Best buy has them listed at $99.99 after some type of rebate..

Just curious!

* merged *

[Larcurtis13]

I just got my WD TV and I love it. I use Handbreak to transfer the files to either an MKV. or an MP4. I have a 1080 P television and a 720 P and the images turn out equally as good in wither format.

Thumbnails are difficult to add, but if you have an apple you can use MetaX to write the file and tag the video with a jpeg. I use PC and MetaX was rewritten for PC by Dan Hinsley. Check out the link below he has an easy to follow tutorial and it worked perfect for all of my video formats.

http://www.danhinsley.com/Products.htm