Western Digital quietly intros WD TV HD Media Player

Well, what do we have here? With no fanfare whatsoever, Western Digital has apparently strayed from its platter-based roots and delved into the wide, murky world of HD media streaming. The WD TV HD Media Player purports to "turn your USB drive into an HD media player, allowing you to watch your favorite HD movies on your TV." For those still befuddled, look at it like this: it enables you to plug in your USB key or USB hard drive and play back multimedia clips up to 1080p on your HDTV via the HDMI / composite outputs. The 1.6- x 4.9- x 3.9-inch box ought not bog you down too much when looking to take it on a journey, and the $129.99 price tag isn't too painful either.

[Thanks, Anonymous]

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 6th 2008 8:12PM]

monoprice.com for some good and cheap cables

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 6th 2008 9:51PM]

Waldek: that's great and all (hopefully everyone knows about Monoprice by now), but did you even bother to look? AFAIK, Monoprice doesn't sell what consumer_q was asking for.

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 6th 2008 11:04PM]

Anyone figure out how to get dvd cover art to work yet. I have tried everything. Also anyone else have the magnify x2 back to normal issue to get the picture to format to screen properly.

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 7th 2008 8:06AM]

Ok, Saw this article and purchased. Why, because I need another device for my bedroom TV. I have the PS3 for the living room.
This device is practically idiot proof. Has a VERY simple interface and plays the recorded movies great. Purchase price was right and it installed without any hassles. Great Low cost alternative to the PS3.

However, I would like to see some interface changes or be able to support the the XBMC interface. I guess I will wait for a good hacker to come along.

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 7th 2008 1:34PM]

Help Please. I have a PS3 connected to my AV Receiver through HDMI and a PC (with video/audio files) connected to my LCD TV through the monitor cable & to the AV Receiver through toslink. Can someone tell me if there is any advantage to owning this Media Player if I already have the setup I mentioned? I am guessing that the video quality will be much better?

Oh, Also, I have a DVD Recorder with a USB input which upscales to 1080p, is that kind of the same thing as this media player? can I hook up a PC or Hard drive to that and will it do the same thing?

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 7th 2008 7:02PM]

Just picked this up and started testing.........


1. It does read my HFS harddrivers I use with my Xbox360.

2. It doesn't play the wmv files I've been using with the 360. They are 720P and 1080P ranging in size from 4.5G to 12G.

3. It does read NTFS harddrivers.

4. It played all the mkv files I tried on it.

5. It plays dvd in iso format

6. It supports dvd subs and can be switch to each available sub or turned off.

7. It upconverts the video to your selected format but I think the picture could be a little cleaner.

[Bran Posted Nov 10th 2008 4:27AM]

VIDEO COVER ART:

Cover Art/Thumbnails must be in the metadata of the video file. At this time, pictures in the video's folder will not work.

After researching, I've come across the following link from matroska's site.
http://www.matroska.org/downloads/shellextension/index.html

For other file formats, I've come across this post which offers a number of options that *MAY* help.
http://www.reelseo.com/add-infile-metadata-video-files/

Hopefully, a firmware update will allow for folder.jpg or something similarly simple.

[bruckwine Posted Nov 11th 2008 9:41PM]

this is sweet..i want~

[asus389 Posted Nov 22nd 2008 11:24PM]

Does it pick up the tags on the movie files like the AppleTV does? ie Actors, Date, Genre, etc.. and allow you to sort by this?

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 29th 2008 5:21PM]

Just got this thing from buy.com ($99)

I have a Archos 605 --- WD should have just license the Archos OS/software instead of developing their own. (or copy the design)

UI: kind of "sluggish", non customizable.
Likely Bug: Play sequence setting in Video setting does not work as expected.
No FLV support ???!!!???!!! (hey WD ! some of us like to watch short web clips from time to time instead of full-length AVI movies, y'know)

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 9th 2008 4:10PM]

I have had it for 4 days now. Plays al MKV's. One problem, audio on DTS cant play, AC3 (dolby digital) does play.

Can anyone give me pointers on how to convert the DTS audio on MKV to Dolby Digital (AC3). I tried popcornhour motska software, its been remuxing the audio since last 3 hrs :((

is very small n portable, i didnt have a HDMI on my comp, so this was the cheapest and best soln i found for it. Clarity at 1080 p is good.

One more problem, I tried to play ratatouille 1080p MKV, it started giving me fringes of broken frame using WD HDTV. I checked it on my comp, and there was no problem with video. Something to look for????

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 9th 2008 4:11PM]

Can anyone give me pointers on how to convert the DTS audio on MKV to
Dolby Digital (AC3). I tried popcornhour motska software, its been
remuxing the audio since last 3 hrs :((

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 25th 2008 8:16AM]

I can play mp4 video (mp4v and mp4a transcoded), but 15 minutes into the video, the video rate slows down or into slow motion. Reverse Forward Play solve it but it reoccurs. Anybody can help advise please? Thanks in advance.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 27th 2008 11:18AM]

Having updated to the lastest firmware:
1)reverse-forward is still laggy, buggy and confuse itself
2)the info shows pause icon, but video is playing
3)my mp4 video plays fine on my PC, but on this device, the video frame rate slow down (still) after few minutes, need to keep resetting it.

Hope WD look into this in next update. Love this device, but the third problem drives me nuts. Will return it.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 28th 2008 11:44AM]

I am having issues with mkv files. I dont have any so i went and found 2 samples and tried them out. the 1st was a dark knight 1080p sample and it was pixelating the other was a house bunny 720p that played ok but i wasnt getting audio. both samples played ok on my pc. ayone have any ideas?

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 28th 2008 6:10PM]

I love this divice!

I work with a xbox 1, with XBMC on it (Works perfect but no HD)
So i bought the WD TV. I love it! it plays all i wan't
Pictures, Music, Movies (I always use .avi and .mkv) NO Problems with this!
Just download a .srt file and past this in the movie folder and your done!
No fan nose! easy to use.

- draw backs are: No windows audio support (protected) exempl: MonstersInc ript with windows HDmedia software:
you get the movie picture, but no sound. (@Ceril)
- I use to get a folder.jpg in my movie folder with exampl: batman.avi and batman.srt
The movie with subtitle runs flawless. But i don't get a thumbnail of the folder.jpg.
WD only use ID3tags. (Maybe the fix this in a update).

If you wan't HD 1080p for a good price. You only listen to music, watch foto's, and watch movie's
You MUST BUY this divice, you won't regread it!

p.s use this divice about 1 mnd now, you must update!

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 6th 2009 8:18AM]

With sound there's a little issue, it doesn't decode DTS. So what you've got to do is convert DTS to AC3 easy as pie it takes about half an hour for a movie.
http://www.digital-digest.com/software/PopCorn_MKV_AudioConverter.html

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 8th 2009 3:50PM]

It does, you just have to get an optical cable. Connect that to a receiver that can handle DTS and you're fine as long that the bitrate isn't too high. That's what I did and it outputs DTS like a charm!

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 12th 2009 6:12AM]

sory..
i need for sub in lang for arabic please >> put i can not have >>

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 16th 2009 8:26PM]

Will it be able to streem from an HP MediaSmart Server EX475. Thanks Guys

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 19th 2009 12:36PM]

I simply cannot get movie thumbnails to work. Does anyone know how to imbed thumbnails into .mkv files? why they cant simply use jpg is beyond me!

seems really half-arsed to release a media device (which is advertised showing movie thumbs btw) and then say "we don’t support software of info on how to get thumbs to work"... am I the only one with a problem with that?

It took me hours of searching before I found out that (their competitor popcorn) has software for converting DTS audio in .mkv files, where as their bundled (and not free btw...wtf?) software does not!

apart from these two HUGE HUMONGOS AND UTTERLY UNFORGIVABLE FLAWS!...this device actually kicks arse!

cheers in advance

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 25th 2009 12:03PM]

I'm assuming there is no advantage of using the WD my passport than any other usb external device?

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 27th 2009 9:17PM]

A podcast about it here:

http://cdn3.libsyn.com/hdtvpodcast/HDTV-2008-11-14.mp3?nvb=20090125172534&nva=20090126173534&t=0256f1d18efe6ad63acc5

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 1st 2009 8:33AM]

Several years ago I was looking for something like this, but the prices on the devices were a bit steep just to avoid the hurdle of using a notebook or xbox media center. For the price I would have snatched it up then.

Unfortunately I really need this to have some kind of network support. I want something that I can have set up next to the tv and never have to touch again. Just have it plug into LAN and let it stream media over the network. My computer, with the terabytes of storage attached to it, would be off in the house where it belongs and be the workspace for getting the media onto the network. For the tv area I just want to pick up the remote and watch stuff I've got on my hard drives.

Right now I have to plug my notebook up to the tv to watch media content, which isn't a huge deal, but you can't just fire up something on the spur of the moment, instead we have to decide "Ok, we're going to watch something right now. Grab the notebook and I'll pull the hdmi cable out."

It does look like a great device and I can see why people would be grabbing one. I just hope someone puts the same package together but just adds in network support.