Took delivery this week of the $100 Western Digital WD TV HD Media Player.
Amazing little device.
We produce in HD but have a devil of a time releasing in HD. Not a lot of Blu-ray players and the media/workflow is expensive. Many computers cannot play back even 720p HD WMV reliably. The WD TV can play 720p, 1080i and 1080p content beautifully and economically.
The WD TV is a small device (4" x 5" x 1.5") that plug into an HDMI-equipped HD display or is inserted into a home theater system. I say home theater because the WD TV has an HDMI output that sends audio and video over one cable, but also has a Toslink optical Dolby 5.1 output for a suitable receiver. (It also has Composite RCA outputs, but why bother?)
There is no internal storage. Rather, you plug in a portable USB drive or even a thumb drive. I bought a WD 500gb My Passport drive that's bus powered--no wall wart hassle. It's as convenient as a thumb drive and holds a half TB. Amazing.
Simply drag files to the drive and plug it into the WD TV. Power up the WD TV (it has a wall wart) and use its remote to bring up its display on the screen.
The WD TV will play a host of formats at full resolution and frame rate: MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, WMV9, AVI (MPEG4, Xvid, AVC), AVCHD (including the high profile 24mbps Canon files from the HF-S10 / HF-S100 series), H.264, MKV, MOV (H.264 and MPEG4).
The only limitation I've found so far is bitrate: there's a limit to how fast the data can come off the USB drive. If the file is too big, it plays back in slow motion and without audio. For instance a 1.8gb 2-min super H.264 will not play at full frame rate. Lower bitrates are beautiful, as are AVCHD playback.
The WD TV also functions as a music player (MP3, WMA, Ogg, WAV, AAC, FLAC, Dolby Digital, AIF, MKA) and has play list and other ability.
It also can display still photos: JPEG, GIF, TIFF, BMP and PNG. It handles full Large/Fine JPEGs right out of my Nikon D300, but does take some time to load them. Small files would sequence faster.
The only thing missing is the ability to build video playlists. That would make this a very sweet device for trade shows. You could load up a My Passbook with beautiful HD content, select which videos you want to play and loop them continuously. All you'd need is an HDMI-equipped display.
Western Digital is constantly updating the firmware, too. This is good. It's not abandoned. Firmware update is simplicity itself: download the firmware, unzip, drag two files to the My Passbook, plug Passbook into WD TV, turn on WD TV and it says "New Firmware Recognized. Install?" Press okay and a few minutes later, your device is updated.
This is going to make it very hard for me to purchase Blu-ray burners, media and players. I can produce excellent HD content at up to 1080p and delivery it to this little device much easier.
Amazing little device.
We produce in HD but have a devil of a time releasing in HD. Not a lot of Blu-ray players and the media/workflow is expensive. Many computers cannot play back even 720p HD WMV reliably. The WD TV can play 720p, 1080i and 1080p content beautifully and economically.
The WD TV is a small device (4" x 5" x 1.5") that plug into an HDMI-equipped HD display or is inserted into a home theater system. I say home theater because the WD TV has an HDMI output that sends audio and video over one cable, but also has a Toslink optical Dolby 5.1 output for a suitable receiver. (It also has Composite RCA outputs, but why bother?)
There is no internal storage. Rather, you plug in a portable USB drive or even a thumb drive. I bought a WD 500gb My Passport drive that's bus powered--no wall wart hassle. It's as convenient as a thumb drive and holds a half TB. Amazing.
Simply drag files to the drive and plug it into the WD TV. Power up the WD TV (it has a wall wart) and use its remote to bring up its display on the screen.
The WD TV will play a host of formats at full resolution and frame rate: MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, WMV9, AVI (MPEG4, Xvid, AVC), AVCHD (including the high profile 24mbps Canon files from the HF-S10 / HF-S100 series), H.264, MKV, MOV (H.264 and MPEG4).
The only limitation I've found so far is bitrate: there's a limit to how fast the data can come off the USB drive. If the file is too big, it plays back in slow motion and without audio. For instance a 1.8gb 2-min super H.264 will not play at full frame rate. Lower bitrates are beautiful, as are AVCHD playback.
The WD TV also functions as a music player (MP3, WMA, Ogg, WAV, AAC, FLAC, Dolby Digital, AIF, MKA) and has play list and other ability.
It also can display still photos: JPEG, GIF, TIFF, BMP and PNG. It handles full Large/Fine JPEGs right out of my Nikon D300, but does take some time to load them. Small files would sequence faster.
The only thing missing is the ability to build video playlists. That would make this a very sweet device for trade shows. You could load up a My Passbook with beautiful HD content, select which videos you want to play and loop them continuously. All you'd need is an HDMI-equipped display.
Western Digital is constantly updating the firmware, too. This is good. It's not abandoned. Firmware update is simplicity itself: download the firmware, unzip, drag two files to the My Passbook, plug Passbook into WD TV, turn on WD TV and it says "New Firmware Recognized. Install?" Press okay and a few minutes later, your device is updated.
This is going to make it very hard for me to purchase Blu-ray burners, media and players. I can produce excellent HD content at up to 1080p and delivery it to this little device much easier.