Western Digital quietly intros WD TV HD Media Player
By Darren Murph 
posted Nov 1st 2008 6:51PM
posted Nov 1st 2008 6:51PM
[Thanks, Anonymous]
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cool, my 360 does this but to have a less noisy and dedicated HD media streaming device sounds like a must have for me... not to mention when i upgrade from 720p to 1080p my 360 won't be able to stream 1080p (i'm 99% at least)...
I dont see why it wouldnt be able to.
There are no specs for this device anywhere on the internet, so one should reserve judgment. However, the Xbox 360 has pretty good codec support. It's not perfect, but it's probably the best there is. It will be interesting to see if this little device can best the Xbox in the codec department.
Its not even close to the best there is - its not even the best amongst the consoles. PS3 has better codec support as they support x264 with dolby digital 5.1 audio. This is very important to streaming aficionados, but it is trumped by proper matroska x264 dts support.
If they make the PS3 capable of handling the .mkv container as well as level 5.1 x264 streams and 1.5 Mbit DTS audio, it'll be worth the purchase just for that feature. I don't like having to downconvert DTS to DD 5.1 and then remux to M2TS.
Ps3 natively supports x264 mkv ? o_O
no, ps3 does not support mkv at all. unless you're talking about ps3 linux. but i don't think you are. :)
In order to play all your x264 mkv vids that are readily available over the interwebs (hopefully you're grabbing them from places like SceneHD & HDBits), you need to remux the vid. Remuxing is not like converting, it merely changes the container format from extension (.mkv) to another (.m2ts, .vob, .mpg, etc.). This is a very short process taking less than a minute. If you are not very fluent with what I am talking about, then you will need to use a one-click program called mkv2vob. This will work for vids with dts audio as well, but since ps3 does not support dts, the program will have to convert the audio, which will take time.
You're Welcome, enjoy the internet :D
@Engadget
You need to consider offering 'The Engadgeter' a job the next time a position becomes vacant. He managed to answer questions and follow-up questions i had ahhhaha.. Great stuff!
well, I don't mind remuxing (I use tsmuxer for that), I don't even mind lack of SMB streaming support (I use a DLNA server) but I DO mind SUBTITLES.
No subs are visible on M2TS. Great job SONY. How do you expect viewers (e.g. non native English speakers) to watch foreign movies? Psychic link?
You want to hear another joke? Linux support.
I'm sure they'll screw up this device and not make it support mkv's as well. Looks like the only true player in town remains the popcornhour. Just ordered another one. Got almost every tv in the house hooked up with them. Haven't streamed a single byte to my PS3 or 360 since getting them.
What are you guys talking about? The 360 handles every codec I've thrown at it. Tversity lets me stream mkv. I'm sure Tversity works for the PS3 too but the fact is the PS3 doesn't support more codecs.
in before the whiny bitch waiownsself trolls me some more
People only troll you because nobody like you.
lol...
Great Success at not feeding the troll.
He says as he, uh, feeds the troll.
Just 845 more to go phanbouy, keep it up. It'll take me at least 3 years to catch up.
Holy shit. Phanbouy sucks so fucking bad he has single handedly resurrected the "lowest ranked" status. Congrats on being the most hated pre-teen on Engadget, man.
I had to copy and paste his text into Word just to see what it said since it was so low ranked.
Yay Phanbouy! Boo haters!
sounds pretty cool. i have a hdtv and my passport hdd, but nothing to connect the two like this does. i'll deffinite give this a look when its uk-bound.
although i was thinking about getting a ps3 soon so maybe not...
Saw these in store at Best Buy 2 days ago. Did a google search for it and it came up on Best Buy's website only. No reviews yet online at that time. Kinda interested to see how it fairs.
Even LaCie has a new media drive with a HDMI port and a small remote... I like that one as its very small compared to this one... And comes upto 500Gigs of storage...
@Jash Sayani
Are you talking about this LaCie media drive?
http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/26/lacie-unveils-500gb-silverscreen-multimedia-hard-drive/
http://www.lacie.com/uk/company/news/news.htm?id=10352
If so:
a) it looks *much* bigger - the WD is only 5" wide and the remote alone on the LaCie looks longer than that i.e. WD=portable, LaCie not
b) it supports divx. Yesteryears technology. Literally. Where's 1080p? Can it do mkv? No mention...
c) there's no mention of support for music or photos *other than* for mp3 or jpg, which is very limited file support
d) no mention of hdmi, depite your post, only upscaling component out, which ain't as good as 1:1 mapped 1080p over hdmi
e) yes it has a 500GB harddrive but with the WD you can choose your harddrive and it's separate therefore portable and allows friends to plug their USB drives/sticks in easily, all of which are big advantages for me.
The LaCie just seems to fail on every count
I'll give it a week before Netflix announces they are on it...
Well, it sort of needs an Ethernet or Wi-Fi to get to Netflix. I'm hunting for specs but got nuthin'. I guess is not a streamer.
Otherwise, keep these devices coming. I can't wait for Netflix AND Hulu to become de facto standard apps.
Okay, so no LAN connectivity for sure. This needs to be around $80 if all it can do is play files from your hard drive.
I'll take that bet...
if it plays .MKV 's im sold!
That's the one thing that the Xbox 360 can't do, though I wish it could. However, I don't really know of any other media players that support MKV, and I've never seen MKV used for legal purposes, so I wouldn't count on many commercial products supporting MKV playback anytime soon.
Mike, the Popcorn Hour can play mkv files :)
popcourn hour has a horribly slow and buggy interface. If this has wide codec support such as x264 dts in the matroska container, then it is an immediate winner. I await a proper description engadget!
The Conceptronics CFULLHDMA does MKV as well, although I do not know if it's available in the US, and I can't say anything about the speed of its interface.
SOLD! To nedilespaul...
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
First player of its kind I've seen support MKV. Cheap way to play all those HD rips.
this don't beat the PopcornHour A-110
yeah it plays MKV - From mwave.com.au
http://www.mwave.com.au/newAU/mwaveAU/productdetail.asp?sku=29030259
- Video -MPEG1/2/4, WMV9, AVI (MPEG4, Xvid, AVC), H.264, MKV, MOV (MPEG4, H.264)
Knowing codec and container support would be nice. .mp4 and/or .mkv along with h.264 might make this a candidate for my DVD/HD jukebox project. I may give it a try... if codec/container support and a decent UI are there, this might be a nice simple alternative to Popcorn Hour, sans network connectivity .
From Buy.com: http://www.buy.com/prod/wd-tv-hd-media-player-usb-2-0-hdmi-composite-a-v/q/loc/101/209975073.html
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
BMP support!? I'm definitely getting it now...
Yeah Orpheus, now we can all watch slideshows of the drawings we made in MS Paint as kiddies!
Actually, having checked out that link and looked at the 'Compatibility' section, I'm not sure I want it any more. Apparently it only plays "Dull HD (1080p)".
hmm all it needs now is wireless+wired networking.
Thanks RogeR. I am sold. This is exactly what I was waiting for though I sure as hell expect this to have a _nice_, fast linux based interface. Price is really good considering it plays H264 etc etc, and I really don't want it to have WiFi, provide SMB access or make cheese sandwiches. Play my media files, that's all I want.
Engadget can you please review it? Please?
it's like the Sandisk TakeTV done right (imo, lack of HD & limited & fixed flash storage killed it)
it's also much cheaper than AppleTV & other streamers.
wow! they have these in my local store. I'm going to go buy one tomorrow and check it out. I was about to order a popcorn hour but this might be a decent replacement.
let us know how it is!
Does this look like an OEM'd Roku box to anybody besides me?
Not really. It's in the same little case as the rest of the WD mybook series.
Not advocating piracy, but can anybody say Welcome To Blu-ray Ripping and NetFlix.
This is absolutely useless, I thought it had a built in hard drive with it!!!! no, it is just a separate thing that puts the stuff on the TV. it does not make any sense, I am not coughing up $130 just for that. I will stick with my PS3.
I'm surprised you expect that much for that kind of price, specially since you bought one of those PS3 that costs at this time 4x times the price, and it used to be way more expensive before...
How does that compare to http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/
I have the popcorn and it play pretty much everything I throw at it, and it has torrent and usenet support.
I think the WD TV is still better & cheapers but the going price for us is around $185.95 AUD at online store http://www.mwave.com.au/newAU/mwaveAU/productdetail.asp?sku=29030259
So does the hard drive have to formatted to fat32 or NTFS? I would prefer if this can handle NTFS
Yes, it works with NTFS, FAT32 and HFS file systems no problem.
I would hope that it would automatically detect the videos on the attached HD and add them to the menu for selection. I'd hate to have to scroll through the directories of my drive - I'm lazy that way. Looks like I'm gonna be playing with a new video toy.
Pass the popcorn please.
I would totally be in for one, if I didn't already have a 360.
Hopefully it can play from any format hard drive, as the 360 can't access my NTFS or HFS+ ones
Definitely would like to see more specs & reviews on it, but no matter how good they are I don’t think that I can get away from my Philips divx player
TVIX still makes the best media streamers hands down.
They're way too fuckin expensive
Apparantly this unit doesn't support DVD ISO playback. If not, that's a definite show-stopper.
Yeah... I bought one at Best Buy and the first thing I did was check for .ISO and .VOB playback. It works great! The UI is awesome and is actually 1080p.
Has Western Digital ever heard of COMPONENT outputs?
That is weird, HDMI and Composite when the big deal is supposed to be its HD playback ability?
No High Def audio support, even for pass-through?
FAIL.
It does support DTS passthrough. It also has an optical spdif out.
He said HD audio, ie. DTS-HD or Dolby TrueHD
i wouldn't want this box to decode my HD audio. I would much rather have my av receiver do it. this is what these devices are made for. quality would be much better.
i have read it does pass through on multichannel dolby and dts. my guess is it can also passthrough HD audio. can someone give it a try?
Just got it at best buy.
Played a 720p .mkv x264 entourage episode off a USB key and it ran great. It froze 3 minutes into a .avi file from a Canon SD750.
Failed to play a 1080p .mkv x264 sample of Kill Bill that was encoded to dxva specs. It also failed to play a 1080p .mkv x264 sample of Terminator.
It came with arcsoft mediaconverter 2.5 but I didn't try it.
Your tales of failure make me a sad panda :(
No dxva means no eureka releases, was the 1080p you tried also dxva? Your input is very much appreciated
Sorry, I meant to ask, was the Terminator release you tried using DTS audio?
would anyone who bought this thing be so kind as to post some screenshots of the interface? also, does it look nice at 1080p or is it crappy like popcorn hour's interface? if it has smooth fonts etc like ps3 it might be a real nice christmas gift. thanks in advance for the info!
Can't tell. The filename was
the.terminator.1984.1080p.bluray.x264.sample-hv
I can confirm that this release only uses AC3 (dolby digital) 5.1 audio, and so this player can be officially deemed a failure. If it doesn't even support AC3 5.1 audio, then a PS3 is far superior :(
... so we continue to wait for proper streamers to pop up
Most likely it failed to play because that file is encoded at HIGH@L5.1, correct me if I'm wrong but Blu-Ray spec max out at HIGH@L4.1, probably nothing to do with DTS or AC3.
My goal was to try to find a format that would break this thing and haven't found one yet... I just finished running a .MTS - AVCHD from my Sony HDR-CX10 and it ran flawlessly. I've tried 1080p .MKV x264/AAC of Kung Fu Panda and had no problems. I will try and locate the Kill Bill .MKV and see if I have the same issues. I am not running from a flash drive though... Could that be the issue?
Hmmm, 4 posts that are all very informative and supportive of this device... And you are a member as of today? Do you work for Western Digital? Seriously, what gives?
yeak! this is the most horrible thing i ever saw, plase WD, hire a industrial designer, or fire the one you have! Look at the remote, look like it was created in the 80!
First of all, to all those xbox360 / PS3 / (and popcorn hour to some extent) owners who don't get it - this thing is tiny! It's largest dimension is only 5 inches so, unlike with those consoles, I could very easily take this on holiday with me or round friends or my folks home to watch HD movies on their HDTVs (they don't care for blu-ray or expensive HD satellite/cable content and plugging a laptop in is painful, if it even has hdmi out, which is rare), and be able to watch my *entire* 1080p / DVD / xvid film library via a small portable HDD or even USB stick. And with hdmi out and remote it's extremely convenient. And it can play mkv which the 360 can't (hell it can even play FLAC - good stuff!). And it can replace my ageing xbox (original) with xbmc, which is bulky and can't play hi def anyway. Sure no component out but pretty much all HDTVs in the UK have hdmi anyway and the composite out also allows SD out (dvd rips) for SD tvs too. All in all, it's actually unique I think (because 'quite unique' or 'pretty unique' don't technically make sense). The fact that it doesn't stream media is ok with me as it's actually quicker to *physically* walk across the room and connect a removable HDD with content already downloaded onto it, than to stream or transfer media across anyway... In fact, if you can live without live tv, like I can, it's a very cheap media centre!
Me want... when is it out in the UK?!!
you nailed pretty much everything i was thinking.
Except that you're wrong. This thing + an external hard drive is not going to be much small or more convenient than a popcorn hour with a hard drive already in it. Here are the dimensions of the popcorn hour:
Width 10.5"(270mm) x Depth 5.25" (132mm) x Height 1.25" (32mm)
Pretty tiny if you ask me...
The size doesn't matter. If it needs an external hard drive..it's an automatic fail. The external hard drive looks horrible sitting on top, or beside the streamer. PLUS, it doesn't have an Ethernet port..that's an epic fail right there!.
Also, with the hard drive being outside the device and near the entertainment system, it's susceptible to the magnetic field of the speakers..which will eventually ruin the hard drive. Even though USB flash drives are not affected by magnets in the speakers, they simply don't hold enough. Can a USB flash drive hold even 1 Blu-Ray rip? No...not unless you're willing to spend a lot of money on one.
If the device had an Ethernet port, can stream off of a computer, support HD surround sound audio in all formats, then it would be worth it. If it can only take from an external hard drive, has 2 channel audio only, then it's an epic fail.
@Engadgeter and @Mark
First of all, I agree that a 2 units is never going to look as tidy as an integrated machine. For permanent piece of AV-like equipment it fails in that respect. However, it depends what you want it for. I just want it to sit next to my projector so I can output 1080p without trailing 7m hdmi cables from my pc all over the room. And I want to be able to watch 1080p at my g/f's or parents' house easily. It does those things. Also, a friend can pop in their USB drive/stick easily and immediately watch 1080p. Can you do that with integrated players as easily? No.
A 2.5inch HDD is also very small, even smaller than the device itself, and can hold up to 320GB. And USB flash comes upto 64GB, which is enough for a lot of 1080p movies (14 at 4.5GB each, 7 at 9GB) and/or 1080p Heroes or what-have-you. So yes Mark, a USB drive can hold even 1 Blu-Ray rip. Even if you want a full, uncompressed 50GB rip, it can hold it, but most people want compressed @4-9GB last time I looked.
Second, it *is* small Engadgeter. Height is similar to popcorn hour. WxD is 5in x 4in which is a *quarter* of the popcorn hour's 10in x 5in. So I reiterate - that is much more portable and can be chucked into my rucksack before trekking across town, much more easily.
Third, it doesn't stream. That's an epic fail for you Mark, but like I said, that doesn't bother me. Horses for courses.
Fourth, I don't thing an HDD outside the device will be susceptible to magnetic fields if shielded in an enclosure (I don't expect to be plugging a naked HDD drive in!)
Fifth. HD sound is very rare anyway, barely any full media pcs / sound cards even support it. Sure, I welcome it too, but probably couldn't hear much difference anyway. And the HDTVs I'd be plugging it into wouldn't have the speakers to do it justice. The improved picture quality at 1080p is very noticeable however. Also, I and most people I know don't have surround sound setups, so not actually a big deal for me either.
Lastly, you yourself said that "popcourn hour has a horribly slow and buggy interface" [sic] Engadgeter. Maybe the WD does too but if it doesn't, then that's a further advantage.
Like I said, I know it doesn't do everything, but it's a specific feature set with that kind of portability/flexibility really is a killer *for me* - other players don't have that...
Interesting. It would be awesome if someone could figure a way to get xbmc/boxee working on this.
Hopefully it's just a firmware issue and not a limitation on the hardware.
Thats why I love the popcorn hour, great firmware support.
Do these things do Blu-ray .ISO files?
I ran out and bought one tonight at Best Buy (when there were only 3 comments posted this evening). Here's some addt'l info from the product package (yes, its quite small) - playlist support (PLS, M3U, WPL). Subtitle support SRT (UTF-8)... 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.
2 Channel audio is the real deal breaker here. If they add 5.1 AC3 and DTS audio, I think they will have a real winner. Can you comment on whether you're getting any skipped frames with x264 1080p? What about the gui, is it pretty smooth?
AC3/AAC decoding is only 2ch, but 5.1/6.1/7.1 should be passed bitstream over HDMI or SPDIF with no problems. There's really no reason to have on-board decoding. If you have a surround-sound setup your receiver will be doing the decoding.
Have you tried it as a photo slide show device? How fast does it change from the current picture to the next? Does it pre-load the next picture while you are viewing the current one? Does it have any transition effects (fades, wipes...)?
What is the problem with decoding 5.1 in an AVR? If you can not do that you need a AVR more than a media player.
so does anyone know for sure if this does .ISO I was going to buy a popcorn hour but this might be better? I have a ton of movies that are in iso format and dont want to transfer them to divx
video_ts support?
At least it looks sexy. Like every other Western Digital product out there.
My Xbox 360 doesn't recognize when I plug in my computer (tried both XP and Vista) or when I plug in a flash drive or a portable hard drive. Is there a way to force recognition or fix this? Or should I consider getting one of these babies? Thanks.
... Xbox 360 supports flash drive and external hard drive via usb. Try something before you complain about it not working. You don't need to force anything, it just recognizes it. It can't be NTFS, but flash drives never are.
Couple of curiosity questions.
Will it pass DD5.1 or DTS through HDMI to an AV receiver?
Are all outputs live at the same time (HDMI, composite, toslink)
Will it play VOB files?
Good to know it will support NTFS though, that means I can reformat my 400BG Iomega USB drive to NTFS and cram a few more movies on it. Iomega makes a similar device
Thanks for the pics.