WD TV-2 spruces up Western Digital's already attractive media player offering
By Paul Miller 
posted August 16th 2009 2:30AM
posted August 16th 2009 2:30AM
posted August 16th 2009 2:30AM
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A PS3 with tversity or Playon does the same thing. As an owner of the PS3 and the WDTV, the WD's advantage is its portability - I can move it from room to room easily, and it is self contained - no need to leave my computer on all night to watch something from the bedroom TV.
I haven't tried TVersity to stream content to my PS3, but the main reason I ended up buying a WDTV is that it fully supports the VC-1 codec. I still have a rather large HD-DVD library and many Blu-ray films still use VC-1. No matter what I tried (using PS3 Media Server, Rivet and EyeConnect), I could not get VC-1 to play at all on my PS3. Yeah, I could encode the HD movie to a different format, but it takes so long to convert a full length HD film and there is the possibility on quality loss. The WDTV is playing back all of my HD movie backups perfectly.
Though I have heard that some people have gotten VC-1 to playback on their PS3's, but the audio had to be in only two channels. Transcoding may also work, but I'm on a Mac, and the PS3 and PS3 Media Server still aren't allowing VC-1 content to be transcoded. Whether it's in MKV, TS or M2TS containers, it's still a no-go for me on the PS3.
I hope they update the original to do DTS decoding too! I have a receiver, but not all my friends do. It's great to be able to carry around a 2.5" WD portable USB drive and the WD TV to your friends' house and watch movies. But if they don't have a receiver to match, then you got no sound!
Small PC + Boxee > ALL!
small PCs are quite expensive.
Not really.
My WDTV works great. Plays HD from the Hauppauge HDDVR. Plays just about everything and its very portable.
No fan. Perfect for the bedroom or throw it in the suitcase for travel.
why not add 801.11n and torrent support? that would be a deal for me...
I need something that will play the files created and stored on my Canon HD camcorder. Will this do it?
Is anyone controlling this with a Logitech/Harmony remote?
I have the WDTV and Harmony 550... they work... you just have to manually program the remote. One other small annoyance is that the wdtv doesn't power on when you choose the activity. I resolved the issue by adding a WDTV Power button to a custom button. I just turn it on manually.
I have the Harmony 720 model and when I select my "Watch WDTV" Activity, it power ups my WDTV.
As the other poster commented , you will want to do some custom programming ( it didn't map all the buttons on the main screen that I needed ).
I like my WD-TV, but its lack of DVD menus and extremely flaky remote (or, more probably, infrared receiver) have dampened the enthusiasm somewhat in recent months.
Will this support 100hz motion flow if I play a downloaded movie through it? Cause currently I have a pc hooked up to my LCD and it doesn't which sucks
The previous version supports 1080p 24Hz over HDMI, which means this one probably does too. The reason motion flow might not work with your PC may be because your PC's frame rate doesn't match that in which the video is encoded.
because pc's dont cause playing them through vlc or whatever and pcs dont support 100hz motion flow
the 100hz motion flow works same as a dvd would through a dvd player?
thankyou
still no rmvb....
does anyone know if the WD TV2 outputs Dolby Digital in true 5.1 (to quote the specs from the old one - "AAC/Dolby Digital decodes in 2 channel output only".
If it puts out 5.1, I'm in.
Did you not read my reply? Yes it output DD 5.1 in 5.1 thru optical. Its really just passing digital audio thru....
The WD TV1 outputs both DD 5.1 and DTS and stereo to your audio receiver via optical cable so the WD TV2 should do as well.
Well, by my own observation (and, not to mention, WD's own specs), WDTV1 only puts out 2.1.
Was wondering if WDTV2 would improve on this...
Was very disappointed with their first attempt at producing a media player, and a remote, you need a magnifying glass to use.
Yes,It can read a dvd image, but cannot read menus off the image, just goes straight to the movie. Even with the new firmware (1.02.07)
If you want a player that can play as if inserting a dvd into a conventional dvd player, get the Mvix MX-760 / 780HD.
I'm very much looking forward to this machine BUT, if there is no ISO MENU support it will be the greatest joke ever. I mean, it was, and still is, by far the most wanted feature with the WDTV1. I read somewhere that WD is "planning" on adding this feature with the WDTV2...WHAT?? It should be there from the beginning because I aint gonna be fooled again as with the WDTV1 where iso menu support was "planned" too and never came.
I'll wait and see. If there is no ISO menu support with the release of WDTV2 I am going for the Popcorn Hour C-200 machine instead which has it all. It's more expencive, but it is worth it. Rather buy 1 of those than 5 WDTV:s that never developes ISO menu support.
Will this support WTV and DVR-MS files?
I wonder how easy it is for most people to set this thing up??
I see that it supports DD5.1 and DTS over optical port, but I would rather just use an hdmi cable. Does it support DD and DTS over the HDMI cable?