Western Digital WD TV HD Media Player
by Western Digital
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Our Price: $312.75 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $59.00 (click here) Category: Home Theater See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Western Digital WD TV HD Media Player
Customer Review: Uniquely perfect for music
Summary: 5 Stars
Updating the update: I didn't mention the WDTV's HDMI output and how easily it facilitates music selection from a big screen TV. If your music is well organized on your hard drive (mine is now updated to 1.5 TB!), a big screen TV display is great for easily browsing your collection of albums, artists, compilations, etc. Also, by installing a 1>4 HDMI splitter (duplicating the one HDMI output of my WDTV or receiver into 4 HDMI cables), I've hooked up several remote TVs to the HDMI output of the WDTV through my receiver. As noted in my prior review, I'm using Universal Remotes' excellent radio frequency (RF) remotes in each room to control the system through the walls, from anywhere in the house. Thus, the Universal Remote controls in each room can manage the WDTV music player. And the HDMI splitter presents the WDTV's music lists, menus, album art, - and the music output itself - at any TV in the house. It's a great whole-house music solution. Another item I wanted to update is that the WDTV can be placed in a non-indexing mode, so that it doesn't initiate the time-consuming reading and indexing of every MP3 tag in your collection. Instead, the non-indexing mode of the WDTV displays, on screen, your organization of music into folders and subfolders on the USB drive. A great system.
This is an update to my previous review, having purchased a second unit for a second home, and having greater experience with the unit(s). I use my WDTVs solely for music. If you're looking for a video review, check elsewhere. The WDTV is an ultra compact plug-n-play replacement for the CD megachanger in my home music system. It's advantage for me is basically limitless capacity via replaceable external 1 Terabyte USB hard drive. The WDTV has two USB inputs, and in the second input I've placed a small 16 gig flash drive that contains my favorites. I use the HDMI output to place the WDTV's mp3-player-like display on the big screen TV. I also prefer to use Universal Remote's RF20 learning remote, with repeater package, which allows me to operate the WDTV from anywhere in the house. Both WDTVs work flawlessly. Slight downsides: The WDTV's reactions to remote input are a little slow; I'd prefer immediate recognition of a command, if not immediate execution. Also, as in all mp3 players, initialization of a BIG drive can take a LONG time, I mean, over an hour, while the WDTV reads mp3 tags of artists, titles, genres into its search database. This is normal to all mp3 players; its just that this is a really big mp3 player. Thus the value of the smaller 16 gig flash drive. I often change the music on the smaller drive, but the WDTV only takes a minute or two to initialize it after the change. Fortunately, once a drive is initialized, the WDTV retains the info in a file on the drive. The WDTV seems to be the only device of its kind with features like an HDMI output, and I expect it to be the predecessor of$ the next generation of players for home music source material. I hope Western Digital stays on its game with the WDTV. Wish list? Immediate recognition of remote commands as previously mentioned, and a volume control in the remote. Fabulous, highly recommended.
Customer Review: Awesome!
Summary: 5 Stars
This thing is great!!! I've only had it for a short while, but so far it's amazing. I debated between this and the Apple TV (and IOmega, but IOmega was out of the running soon), and decided to go with this because you can hook up an external HD and it reads many, many different formats. While Apple TV does have a better interface (they've been doing this a lot longer), it only reads the H.264, MPEG-4 and MP3. Plus the Apple TV has pretty small HD (40GB for the one that cost $225)and is essentially meant to stream stuff from your main computer which means it's not portable. People have been able to connect HDs to Apple TV, but anytime you alter an Apple product, you risk voiding the warrant, and I think one of the best features of Apple is their warrant [By the way, I own both Apple (laptop)and PC (desktop) and I like them both for different reasons]. Anyway, back to WD - I love it and think it's great. So far, it has played everything flawlessly. If it dies within a year, it's covered under warrant. If it breaks after a year, I've gotten a year out of it and it was less than half the price of Apple TV. Besides, by that time there may be a better one out (hopefully by WD because I am their fan, I have 3 My Books and 2 Passport Elites) with an interface similar to Apple's, with pretty icons and fun ways to view them. Good luck to you, whatever you choose, and thanks WD for making this product - keep up the good work! Thanks Amazon for a good price and free shipping!
Addendum Sept 16, 2009:
I feel the need to add to my prior review. I do still like the product, but I've had to return it - twice. The first one would freeze-up after being left on for a period of time. I called WD support which was useless as they told me to change the batteries in the remote (duh! already did that). Amazon replaced it, but the replacement had a flaw - normal and widescreen setting were reversed (i.e. if you want widescreen, needed to set it to normal and vise versa). Not a fatal flaw, but definitely annoying. I called WD and they offered to replace it, but with a refurbished one. Since I bought it new and it was only 2 days old, I didn't think I should have to settle for a refurbish unit. I called Amazon and I returned the replacement.
I am very disappointed, mostly in Western Digital Customer Support. As I stated above, I have 5 WD HDs and I very much liked the media player, but I'm not sure I will buy WD again. I haven't had a problem with my HDs which are all fairly new(less than 1 yr old), but based on my 2 interactions with Western Digital Customer Support regarding the media player, it would seem that if you have a problem with any of their products, it too bad for you. I may have been able to overlook their lack of support if the media player had been more than a nano-second old, but it was brand-new and they should have offered me a new replacement. It's not a high-end piece of equipment, but it's not unreasonable to expect to get a years worth of use out of it.
Customer Review: AWESOME MKV FILE PLAYER
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Customer Review: I give it a 10
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Customer Review: Best media player
Summary: 5 Stars
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.