OT: Western Digital Media Player

psg wrote on 11/11/2008, 8:23 PM
WD just announced a small media player. I picked one up at Best Buy. Seems like they're the only ones that have it.

For $99 (on sale) you hook up a USB drive and it catalogs the media files on the drive and through a simple menu UI (using the supplied remote), you play slideshows of pix (support JPEG, PNG, BMP TIFF, GIF), play video (mpeg1, mpeg2, mpeg4, wmv and others) as well as audio.

I've only started experimenting with it and looked at a couple of .mt2 files and they looked great on my 32" LCD 1080P TV.

The neat part is that if you use one of WD passport drives you only need to use the power supply to power the media player. the drive power comes from the USB connection. Pair it with a WD 320GB drive and you have a nice small portable player you can take with you.

Video connections are limited to composite and an HDMI port. Audio is L/R RCA and Toslink. Definitely has some limitations, but for the price....

Here's a link
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=572

Comments

24Peter wrote on 11/12/2008, 9:35 AM
Yeah, I picked one up too. Video output is top notch - 1080P and all. It's also tiny and doesn't seem to have any moving parts. It does get warm (hence the warning not to put the drive on top of it) and power flows through the unit even when you turn the power off via the included remote (this means any connected drives continue to spin even though the unit is "off"). It's great for viewing images or video clips on a widescreen HDTV (if your set doesn't have a card slot.) It also uprezes video quite nicely. Even Youtube-quality downloaded video clips look good on my 47" Toshiba LCD HDTV.

It also seems to be able to play many different formats - .mpg, .wmv, .m2t clips and Quicktime without a hitch. The built-in browser, though very simple, is useable, though there doesn't seem to be a way to delete files directly. I was even able to attach a CF card reader via the USB port and view images off the card without issue (though it doesn't automatically rotate images.) The slideshow function works well for still images and plays video clips one after another. Would be nice if there was an option to play music under the slide show...

Though it's kind of a one-trick-pony, if you have a lot of media on USB drives and want a better viewing experience than your computer screen, it's a good way to go.

FrigidNDEditing wrote on 11/12/2008, 1:12 PM
I see this being very popular at conventions as a way of having different media playing on displays etc... and being a very compact form factor.

Dave
psg wrote on 11/14/2008, 5:47 PM
I'm thinking it will also be nice when you want to show clients or friends or family some of your HD videos or any video or photos for that matter. It's easy to carry along with one of the WD Passport drives and given that most new TVs have an HDMI port you won't have to use the composite output much (not sure why they didn't include an S-Video connector though).

It appears the firmware is upgradeable. We'll see if they add support for additional formats or add features to the browser.
CClub wrote on 11/14/2008, 10:09 PM
Any stuttering of video from a USB hard drive?

Geez, not to get the Blu-Ray argument going again, but if this works, I see using this rather than a Blu-Ray player to show my work out on the road.
Dach wrote on 12/19/2008, 11:49 AM
I picked up wht WD TV player today and am very pleased with it. I had recently used my USB device to watch some items on my PS3 and really enjoyed the experience. This device has become a good fit for us.

This device is ideal and I would expect to see such devices built directly into televisions sets in the near future.

I am not expert on the subject, but it really raises the questions to how long optical discs will be around. I still plan on getting a Blu-Ray burner eventually though.

Chad
dat5150 wrote on 12/19/2008, 4:14 PM
It's interesting, but I can do almost all of that with my existing ipod and Dio Home dock delux plus I can go mobile.
teaktart wrote on 12/19/2008, 11:50 PM
I plugged mine in for the first time last night and with an external HD it would play the AVCHD files I had, the m2ts I've captured , and .wmv but it was not able to play my CFDI intermediate avi. files 1440x1080.

I also couldn't quite figure out how to make an .mpg file play via the device with audio,since I render my .mpgs for dvd without audio (using the AC-3) for when I go to DVDA to burn the dvds. So it looks like I need to find a way to combine the A/V into one container so it will play.

Unforetunately, when I swapped over to my portable WD Passport it did the scanning for files, showed them all to me, but this time would not play any format saying I needed to consult a manual (which was not in the sealed box.... oh, that's not nice....)
to find out how to play that format, which it played fine just moments earlier from the bigger ext. HD.

If I can find a solution for the intermediates to playback and the Passport issue then I'll be a very happy customer. Why buy a BR burner, a player, and over priced blanks when a render and $100 gets the job done?

CorTed wrote on 12/20/2008, 9:37 AM
Could somebody tell me if it can play an .iso file.
That would really put BD out of business, as you could play a BD created disc right from your drive.....
Ted
ScorpioProd wrote on 12/21/2008, 2:06 PM
For the same reason you can't play a BD .iso off of a USB flash stick, because Blu-ray copy protection requires actual Blu-ray player hardware to allow playback.

Otherwise, I could certainly see delivering BD on USB flash sticks in the near future.
teaktart wrote on 12/21/2008, 9:08 PM
I've been experimenting a bit today with rendering some short videos to AVCHD 1920x1080 -60 @16mb and it would play it but it was also choking and a bit jerky. One longer file the audio and video got progressively out of sync...not good.

I'd like to try the other BR format but it doesn't include audio in the template possilities, and I don't know how to 'wrap' the the A/V together so the WD/TV will play it.

Anyone else have the answer for both the intermediates and the BR formats so that they will play on this device?