WD TV HD Media Player

I researched this item quite a bit before pulling the trigger. I read many, many reviews, factored in cost, considered the "good" as well as the "bad" - along with other media players - and found this to be the best of what's available. After using it for a couple of weeks now there is nothing that has changed my opinion. I had been using my notebook to view my videos and listen to my music. The WDTV makes this a much more pleasant, and controllable experience. I use it with a WD 500GB Passport connected to a 46" Sony Bravia LCD HDTV via HDMI which is then connected to my Panasonic 1000w Surround Sound system using the standard dual RCA audio out jacks. Granted, nothing is ever really "perfect", and the WDTV has a few shortcomings as have been noted in previous reviews. The menu structure could use some work, but is wholly functional as it is. Certainly something that could be remedied through a firmware update should WD choose to do so. The lack of external controls on the case means you need to take care of that remote! The remote is simple and comfortable to use, but I finally programmed its functions into my learning remote and put the WD remote away for safe keeping. The picture and sound it creates are quite good. I have not viewed any hi-def material yet, but judging from the quality of standard def I doubt there would be any disappointments in that regard. I have a lot of my video (movies, etc.) ripped to 320x240 (saves space) for my Ipod Touch 2G (mp4 format), and the picture quality from the WDTV is what I would expect from that format - entirely suitable. Some material that is in a higher pixel format is understandably better. I was pleased enough with it to give my opinions through this review. One interesting thing I found is that although it will not play protected m4v movies purchased through itunes, it will play non-protected m4v's - I watched some podcasts I downloaded - I was pleasantly surprised to find that it would play the music albums downloaded from itunes, in protected m4a format I assume. It's really great to have my music library available at my fingertips this way! Although it supports a number of different video formats, I have found some files that it cannot play even though they are in the proper formats; AVI WMV MPG, etc. This is simply due to the variations in encoding formats. If you're into digital video you should already be familar with transcoding formats, so that is just more of the same. Not everything you get off the Internet, or even have previously created yourself, is going to be ready to "Plug and Play" in this device, or any other. Not a real issue. There is software supplied for this purpose, although I have not had to use it yet. Out of about 1200 or so videos it will take a bit of time to find them all! Overall, it does what it's supposed to, and does it well enough to make my cable box start to feel a little lonely! UPDATE: The Hi-Def video clips that come on the supplied disc look phenomenal! The same difference I noticed when first watching hi-def channels on my cable box. I had begun ripping my movies in AppleTv format (640x480 mp4) and the clarity was much improved. I then began ripping to AVI in 640x480 and found the same high quality. The switch to AVI was because I noticed that the few AVI's that I had did not "skip" after fast forwarding or rewind as most of my mp4's do. VOB's also don't skip. Playing VOB's does give a true DVD picture, but the files are much larger - 4 GB's or so. I find a 1 GB mp4 or AVI gives a very acceptable picture in a minimum of space. The Arcsoft conversion software that comes with the unit is a bit tedious as it converts in real-time, recording the video as it plays it into the new format. A bit too slow for me. I don't find that a negative since they do GIVE you conversion software! Nothing has changed my opinion of this little wonder. It will even play recordings made in Windows Media Center, which I use when I can to record movies and TV shows since I can't get them out of my cable box DVR without recording them to a DVD then ripping them. Being able to just copy over the Media Center recordings to my Passport and play them on the WDTV is a gift in itself!

I've thought of building my own media player. After researching for barebones pc, it can easily cost $550 and above. Finally, I decided to look for a media player. I found this one with the right price, and it is HDTV too. It is a small box that easily sits next to all my other equipments (note: it has a picture clearly says do not put it on other video/audio equipments for fear of overheating). This player works really well. It plays all my MP4 in HD. AVIs that are in lower resolution plays well too. I tried playing MKV files, which are in HD. However, it doesn't play the whole "container". I played the anime files that contains translation. It plays video, audio but not the translated text. I like for the fact that it takes whatever USB drives that I attach to it. It can easily switch between the 2 USB ports. The remote that comes with it is responsive, albeit a little slow. I don't consider it a deal breaker. There are 2 negatives I've seen so far. When I try to locate the video files, I need to read the filenames on the bottom screen. It would be nice for the player to automatically generate thumbnails from the video files, like the JPGs. The other negative is that you have to control everything from the remote. There is nothing to push on the box itself. I've multiple remotes in my living room and I can tell you that the remotes have legs and they run off and hide. If I lose this remote (I have 3 young kids), I do not know how to operate the player. Otherwise, this is a great product and I highly recommend it. June 17, 2009 Addendum to my previous review Western Digital released a firmware update 1.1.07 which resolved some of my negatives I noted above. The update includes ability to show thumbnails of the movies using JPG saved in the same storage unit. For example: Movie.avi will show thumbnail of the movie if Movie.jpg exists. Showing the thumbnail is slow though, which I'm OK with. Another update is to play MKV files with subtitles. I have yet to test this to give my feedback. I've seen a lot of criticism of this player being slow and not able to play movie files correctly. I am totally satisfied with this player because of its flexibility. If you can sit down on a sofa to watch a movie, you are not in a hurry to do anything else. The responsiveness of the player is not an issue. I purchased a car inverter that enables me to plug in this player in my car dvd player using the Aux input. Instead of lugging 80 DVDs for my kids, not I just need this small player. This is the best product I ever bought.

I OWN AN IPOD, PSP, ZEN VISION W AND A PS3, AND LET ME TELL YOU THAT I HAVEN'T TOUCHED ANYONE ONE OF THESE BABIES SINCE I GOT MY WD HD. I HAD NOT BEEN ABLE TO PLAY MY MKV FILES THROUGH MY HDTV UNTIL I BOUGHT THIS PLAYER. REASONS WHY I LOVE MY WD HD TV MEDIA; 1. IT CAN SUPPORT LARGE 720P & 1080P HD MKV FILES (USING AN HDMI CABLE). NOTE: I FORMATTED MY EXTERNAL HD TO NTFS (FROM FAT32) SO THAT IT WOULD BE ABLE TO HOLD INDIVIDUAL FILES >4 GB . AND YES, THIS PLAYER READS IT. JUST GOOGLE A TUTORIAL FOR STEPS ON HOW TO FORMAT. IT IS CAPABLE OF DISPLAYING SUBTITLE IF YOU NAME THE SUBTITLE FILE EXACTLY AS YOUR MKV FILE. WITH THE LATEST FIRMWARE UPDATE (VERSION 1.01.02), THE SUBTITLE NOW STAYS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SCREEN (USED TO APPEAR HIGHER WHICH WAS ANNOYING). VIDEO RESOLUTION OF BOTH 720P AND 1080P FILES IS UNBELIEVABLY CLEAR AND CRISP ON MY SAMSUNG 120 HZ LCD TV!!! 2. IT CAN READ AVI & MP4 FILE SUBTITLES WITHOUT CONVERTING IT TO ANOTHER FORMAT (I WATCH FOREIGN MOVIES BIG TIME), WHICH MY PS3 CANNOT DO. 3. IT PLAYS VIDEO FILES (I HAVE ONLY PLAYED MKV, MP4, AVI, DIVX, MPEG-2/VOB FILES SO FAR) WITH DTS, AC3 OR 5.1 SURROUND SOUND THROUGH MY A/V RECEIVER. YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO HEAR A THING FROM YOUR TV SPEAKERS WHEN YOU PLAY MKV FILES WITH DTS AUDIO OPTION (A CON FOR SOME), UNLESS YOU CONNECT THIS THING TO A RECEIVER. MY RECEIVER HAS NO HDMI CONNECTION, HOWEVER, PROBLEM SOLVED BY CONNECTING THE WD HD TV UNIT TO THE RECEIVER USING A TOSLINK OPTICAL/DIGITAL CABLE. 4. IT CAN PLAY MY WMA/MP3/MP4 AUDIO FILES. THE SOUND IS CRISPER THAN EVER, WHEN I SWITCHED TO TOSLINK DIGITAL CABLE (NEVER THOUGHT OF THIS CABLE BEFORE, 'COZ I HAVE LOTS OF RCA CABLE). TRULY A HUGE DIFFERENCE IN SOUND CLARITY WITH THIS CABLE TYPE. NO NEED FOR THIS CABLE I GUESS, IF YOU OWN A NEWER RECEIVER WITH HDMI PLUGS. BUT THEN, IF YOU ONLY HAVE 1 HDMI PLUG, THIS WOULD BE AN OPTION. 5. I AM NOW ABLE TO ARCHIVE MY SIZEABLE CONCERT DVD COLLECTION AND PLAY THESE WITHOUT SCRATCHING MY ORIGINAL DVDs. AND YES, EVEN MY "CONCERT FOR GEORGE" AND "DAVID FOSTER AND FRIENDS" DVDs WHICH ARE ABOUT 6.5 GB EACH IN SIZE(UNCOMPRESSED), WOULD PLAY FLAWLESSLY. I USED DVDSHRINK AND TWEAKED THE VIDEO SETTINGS WHERE IT WOULD NOT COMPRESS THE DVD FILE AND CHUNK THE FILES SEPARATELY IN 1GB SIZE. THIS ALLOWED ME TO PLAY THE WHOLE FILE CONTINUOUSLY. AGAIN, FORMATTING THE EXTERNAL HD TO NTFS MADE THIS POSSIBLE. 6. TWO USB CONNECTIONS. 7. THE PRICE TAG OF COURSE!!! $99.99 IS WELL WORTH IT, CONSIDERING WHAT THIS PLAYER CAN DO FOR ME. WHAT DON'T I LIKE ABOUT THE WD HD TV MEDIA PLAYER? 1. MY EXTERNAL HD WON'T TURN OFF WHEN I TURN UNIT OFF. I HAVE TO GET UP, ZONKED AND ALL AT NIGHT, TO UNPLUG OR TURN MY SURGE PROTECTOR OFF. 2. NO CONTROL BUTTONS ON THE UNIT. EVERYTHING IS CONTROLLED BY REMOTE CONTROL. I GUESS I HAVE TO GET A UNIVERSAL REMOTE TO PROLONG THE UNIT'S REMOTE LIFE.

This product is a multimedia, multicodec, multicontainer USB HDD player. Is it flawless? No. Does it do all of what it is supposed to do? Most of it. Is it worth it? Maybe: I bought this reasonably priced device to play my personal > 4G/each mini-DV ripps, and my DVD back-ups (I started doing this when my some of my DVD went to the garbage can due to scratches). It should also be future proof since it is supposed to play high def formats. So here it goes (bear in mind that I'm using the latest 1.02.06 BETA FW): PROS: 1) STRONG SUPPORT BY THE WD FW DEVELOPMENT TEAM, AND UNOFFICIAL FW SUPPORT FOR ETHERNET AND DVD-ROM. 2) Is this device HDCP HDMI compliant? Must be because it is hooked up to my Yamaha HTR-6160 receiver which will not support any non-HDCP compliant devices. 3) Does this device upconverts to 1080P? Yes, and it does a great job at it. Video quality is definitively better than in my lousy HDMIless XBOX360 that will not upconvert though component output. 4) Does this device play MKVs? Yes. I've transcoded some of my files to MKV and they play. AND, IT SUPPORTS CHAPTERS IN MKV CONTAINERS!!! (this is a big plus since I though this device did not support them at all). 5) Is the remote any good? Yes. It is small, good quality, and very responsive. 6) How about the audio? I get Dolby 5.1 out of my receiver beautifully, and my MP3s sound great. It does not remix DTS to two channels, but you can get DTS through optical into a receiver. 7) Subtitles are supported in VOB and ISO in the latest 1.02.06 BETA FW. They are by default turned on by the device. An issue is that sometimes the subtitles don't seem to start. This can be solved if you press pause and play again. 8) ART COVER SUPPORT FOR MOVIES AND MUSIC with the latest 1.02.06 BETA FW. For video files like ISOs download the cover art jpg and rename it with the same title of your ISO. For VOBs rename the covert art folder.jpg and place it in your VOB directory. 9) Unofficial USB hub support! 10) Unofficial FW support for ethernet usb dongles. 11) Unofficial FW support for usb DVD-ROM drives. CONS - ISSUES: 1) One particular movie (VOB files) stuttered 4 times. The file may had issues, but it played fine using Windows Media Player 11. If the file had issues, then the device may not have the error correction capabilities similar to WMP11. MINOR-ISSUES (My opinion) 2) One movie got somehow corrupted and would not play using FW 1.01.02: So, I deleted it and ripped it again from my original DVD. Tried to play it again and the WD somehow deleted it. So, I ripped it again under a different folder and things solved right. Nope, somehow the corrupted file reappeared under found000, and this time was playable! So after removing it yet again, it did not come back. This is not an big deal to me, since it only happened once (but I know somebody else had this problem through the forums). Not sure if this got fixed in 1.02.06 BETA, but it only happened to me once. 3) WD is HDMI 1.2 so no HD audio. However, I'm happy not having to pay extra for this feature. I'm very happy with Dolby 5.1 Surround sound through my receiver, and almost all if not all DVDs and Blu Rays have Dolby 5.1 in them. VERIFIED THAT IT SUPPORTS DOLBY EX, AND DTS PASSTHROUGH TO MY RECEIVER using optical cable. So there you have it. I gave this device 4.5 stars but given WD support team I would give it 5 start now. Alternatives to this device are (among many others): Popcorn Hour and the EVA 8000 (~2-3x the price), both of which support ethernet. Popcorn Hour supports HD audio, and the EVA8000 has a nice movie interface with movie art cover and synopsis. There is also the M6500 TVIX for 4x the price though. There is an Egreat device out there a little pricier though that doesn't seem to have some of the HW limitations, this device has. But not sure about their support. COMMENTS: There are DVD players (Philips) that can play HDD, but so far they are limited to FAT32 and have limitations as far as the number of files they can support. Obviously no M2TS support and severe codec limitations.

I love this product. Gone are the nights where I was the only person in the house capable of plugging the laptop to the HD TV with a 12ft miniDV<->HDMI cable and launching VLC -- dangling cords everywhere, draining batteries, and an inquisitive toddler. What sub $100, 1.5"x5" device can you get that sips electricity, is whisper quiet, boots instantaneously, auto-indexes 500GB of media files on FAT32, NTFS, HFS+ in < 2 minutes, and plays almost every file format including H.264, MKV, WMV9, FLAC, OGG, and DTS? None. Ages ago I used to rip divx and xvid movies onto a DVD and play them on a Philips DVD player. But now with huge HD file formats and oodles of cheap available external SATA USB storage I no longer have the patience to rip countless DVDs or encode movies such that I can play it on a BluRay player. There are other options I considered: configuring a MythTV box (no time), hacking an AppleTV with VLC, XBMC or Boxee (AppleTV chokes on 1080p), Popcorn Hour (shoddy reviews), etc. This is by far the easiest for my family and I to use. The system uses a Sigma SMP8635LF chipset. Sigma Designs is an American company based in California that makes system-on-a-chip (single integrated circuit) semiconductors for a vast array of media systems including 50% of all BluRay players on the market. This chip is responsible for decoding all the audio video codecs the Media Player supports. The chip handles 1080p fine with limitation (mentioned below). The unit is not perfect but I still give it 5 stars because of the price and out-of-box simplicity: Some issues (and some fixes): - Doesn't stream content from the net (without effort). There are other cheap devices for this -- a Roku, for example. If you run out of HDMI ports get an HDMI switch. - Initially had a problem with MKV with DTS audio not producing sound. The issue is that the unit can only decode in 2 channels and DTS has 5+ channels (depending on the variant). To-date the Media Player can't down-mix 5-channel to stereo. Resolution for me was output the DTS over the supplied optical port to my receiver (composite red-white cables won't work) and let the receiver handle the decoding. If this option is not available one could convert DTS to AC3 (a quick Google will yield easy recipes for both Mac, Windows, Linux users). - Frames-per-second (fps). WD is clear about what the device can handle. These are the limitations for MPEG2/4, H.264, and WMV9: 1920x1080p at 24fps 1920x1080i at 30fps 1280x720p at 60fps If you breach that then movies will pixelate and skip frames. Solution for me is to re-encode the movie using Handbrake at the max fps supported by the unit. For example, if I had a 1080p movie at 29.97 fps I would just reencode it at 24fps. Problem disappears. - Thumbnail images. "Thumbnail mode" is more attractive and polished looking than "list mode" which simply lists the movie title. While it's relatively easy to embed images in, say, mp4 or avi, it is not possible with mkv. As such all my mkv movies initially had a lame default thumbnail assigned to them. Luckily the latest firmware addresses this. Place a jpeg image in the same directory and with the same name as the mkv file and the Media Player will display the thumbnail. I grab DVD cover art right from our friend Amazon. Works perfectly. For example: Defiance - 1080p.mkv Defiance - 1080p.jpg Other miscellaneous things I can think of: - Works great with my Logitech Harmony remote. - Handles (2) WD Passport drives with power over USB just fine. - Plays BluRay streams perfectly - just copy the .m2ts file over to your usb drive and enjoy! - To-date, chapter support is only available with MKV files. Adding chapters to a file can be accomplished using a tool such as MKVMerge. Otherwise, aside from fast-forwarding rates at 2/4/8/16x, it is possible to skip forward (not reverse) in 10-minute increments by first selecting fast-forward (>>) then skip (>>|). - The unit has problems indexing HFS+ with journaling enabled (I have a Mac). It will still play the media but it's easy enough to turn off journaling. With the USB drive plugged into the Mac type: $ sudo /usr/sbin/diskutil disableJournal /Volumes/Your_Drive

Had it a couple of days and I have to say that even a Level 2 tech didn't know all the answers. For example, he said .VOB files are not supported with the new firmware 1.01.02. He was wrong. So far, it's the best resolution I've tried. I also recorded to DivX (.AVI) and others. Not as good quality.. One main beef I have with the unit is that if you turn it off and leave the external drive on (such as my Seagate 1TB Free Agent Pro, which has no on/off switch), and go to sleep or work, when you again turn the unit on, it does not find the external drive because the eternal drive has gone to sleep. Most external drives (if not all) awaken when a computer activates it by searching for files. The WD box does NOT activate it when searching for files. This means you have to unplug both units, plug them back and then it works. Also, if you have a 1TB drive or larger and it is even only half full, it will take several (yes several) hours to find all the files... I was disappointed by the claims that the video quality is unbelievable. Not so... Even at uncompressed .VOB files off a DVD, the quality is NOT as good as the DVD. But for $99, you can't cry a river of tears. If I would have spend twice or three times as much, I would have sent it back. New firmware is coming out which may rectify some of these problems. It did reproduce well the 5.1 digital audio. Other beefs are that the remote has no lit buttons at all, and you cannot add a marker to find the spot of a movie you stopped at after you turn the unit off. One big beef is the awful Fast Forward. Even at the maximum 16X speed, it's agonizingly slow to get to a spot even 15 minutes into the movie. So there it is.... Update: I found that this unit works best (and probably was designed for) the WD Passport drives. I say this because with my Seagate 1TB external hooked up to it, it took a long time to search files, even though there were no more files on there than my 500GB WD Passport. I transferred all the files to the Passport and the files were available immediately and worked flawlessly. Also, I earlier stated that the quality of uncompressed .VOB files did not show movies as good as DVD's. I now take back that statement. The support guy from India I asked questions to today had no clue of what I was talking about. (this is what we get when we out source to foreign countries with people who don't speak fluent English). At any rate I will reiterate that the best quality for movies so far is uncompressed .VOB files. I will eventually buy another 500GB WD Passport and then have 1TB. I predict at that point I will have over 300 movies at uncompressed .VOB format. Wonderful unit so far, but there are still flaws that will hopefully be taken care of with firmware updates... After a month of use, I find there are some annoying problems. The Rewind feature when watching a movie is very choppy and you don't know how far back it goes. Usually too far. The Fast Forward is okay. Another bad point: I have a Western Digital Passport 500GB external drive hooked up to it. The bad English speaking tech said that when you turn off the Media Player, it automatically turns off the WD drive. He's wrong. It stays on and stays HOT! This may shorten the life of the unit... Still another annoying problem: when you watch photos, there is no way to press a key and go to the next photo, or go back to the previous photo. You have to patiently let the Slide Show feature run...and when you pause a photo, the bar underneath showing the progress stays on the screen, hiding about 1/4 of the photo...

Western Digital WD TV HD Media Player This is an awesome player, highly recommend it to those that want to watch digital files on TV. I previously used an Archos 604 wifi at 3 times the price, and it doesn't even compare to the WD HD TV Media Player. Pros -Simple set up - takes 2 minutes to hook up a ac power and HDMI cable, then it's ready to play -Plays all common files without skipping a beat. I mostly use AVI and MKV at 720p HD. -Can add subtitles to your files and it will play them too. -Small size makes it portable. -External drives makes it easy to load/transfer files. I've tried wireless before with my Archos and it was a pain to set up and the stream would stutter depending on the file size. Cons -Thumbnail Browser display - This feature is weak. Thumbnails have to be embedded into the file and it doesn't work on MKV files. Looks better in list view. -Media Library - not really sure the point of this feature. Much easier to turn this off and use folders. -No skip Rewind/Fastfoward - There is no skip rewind/forward feature. If you have a 2 hour movie and you want to get to the middle of it, you need to fast forward at 16x. It takes minutes to get there. Very surprising that this awesome piece of equipment would lack such a basic feature that is on every DVD/media player on the market. -Remote Control - slow response -Slow scroll speed in List View - There is no skip up/down feature on the list view. If you have 200 files not in folders, you need to click through each one. Should be able to click a button and jump to next page. Even though this item is missing some basic features, it is still worth the money. It's the best media player on the market and hopefully WD will add some of the basic features in future firmware updates.

I give this 10 out of 5 stars. I bought the IO Omega player because it was cheaper and it played 1 out of 10 of my movie files (I saw it mentioned in one review). Did not return in time for a refund so I am stuck with it. Then I bought this WD. This WD has played at least 100 out of 100 movies. I am converting about 3,000 dvds to mp4 files. Since this works so well I am selling off my DVD players and recorders and giving away my DVDs in order to save space. I bought 6 Dells to do the conversions. I mainly watch mp4s with it, I have played some XVID avi files with it and I think it played an ISO. I have not played DVD files. My goal is to put 1,000 movies on one 1 TB drive. All in mp4 by Nero Recode using their H263; H264 takes too long to convert and H263 is good enough for me (and H264 is HD quality) . The average size of my files is 1 gb. About 800 mb for an old BW tv movie, 1 GB for a color TV movie, and 1200 mb for a movie from a DVD. I am even converting my XVID files (avi) to smaller mp4 files. I would say my average XVID is 1.6 GB. So far I cannot tell the difference between a mp4 and the DVD. I will be moving into a RV or moving overseas so I will take one of these and some 500 gb laptop drives for my entire movie collection. One thing I do not like is the delay with the remote, it seems to take 2 seconds to respond to a key press. This takes awhile to get used to. When power is turned on it comes up in Photos, wished it would come up in Video like when turned off. It remembers where it left off in a movie by putting a small file on the storage device. It says it can do 16x fast forward and rewind but it does not seem so. FF is painful. Wish they would put a 3 or 5 minute skip using the Prev and Next keys, like a DVD player has, this is the only DVD feature I miss. This has 2 ways to display the movie names. One is all and one is by folders. I think one reviewer did not know this. When turned off it still uses power (it stays warm). Also the HD dives kept spinning. I do not want to leave an expensive laptop drive hooked up to this so I bought a used 250gb usb laptop drive that I will leave connected to this. I have used several size USB thumb drives and a 500 GB laptop sata drive no problem. It will not recognize a 80 gb IDE laptop drive that I have. This IDE works well on a Dell doing encoding. You only have to see what used ones sell for on eBay to figure how popular these are. I will be buying more of these as spares. Wished used prices were less than new. The last time I checked a used one was selling for more than I paid ($100 on sale). What will happen to the price if WD stops making these? I have not used this for anything else than movies.

Bought this as a spare to the one that we have been using for years. Tried it out and it works perfectly.

This media player has had a few minor hiccups over the years since we purchased it on Amazon in 2009, but it's still going strong after 10 years, with daily use and multiple changes of external HDDs. We love it! Very easy to use. It doesn't support all video formats, so I've had to convert some over the years; not not a huge deal break for me. The original remote finally kicked the bucket this week and we got a replacement (also on Amazon) for a mere $14 which worked right out of the box. Also, it will only work with a 1T or lower-capacity HDD... but it does what it does very well indeed. I'm a bit shocked at how much this media players costs now, seeing as we probably paid only $110+tax at the time, but it's probably because it's no longer made and a bit of a 'dinosaur'. I hope if/when we have to replace this one that there's a similar media player available for a reasonable price.

If you are looking for one of these, they're great. Ours has never let us down

First Media player I got and it didn't disappoint.Great picture quality and plays any format compare to other products.Remote could be better but for the price it was great purchase.

Quite Happy with my Purchase