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 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 24fps1920x1080i at 30fps1280x720p at 60fpsIf 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.mkvDefiance - 1080p.jpgOther 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