Forum Archive Home -> Media Center PC / MediaCenters -> Western Digital HDMI USB Media Player?? (WDAVN00BN)
Western Digital HDMI USB Media Player?? (WDAVN00BN) | ||||||
| Inspex posted 2008 Nov 02 12:30 | ||||||
| This isn't really a DVD player, but it's a media player that can play media from USB devices and has full 1080p HDMI. It goes for $99 at Best Buy and other stores.
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 I see that it supports H.264, MKV, MOV, FLAC and a couple of other formats that a lot of other players for this price don't support. Anyone own this yet? I would be interested in a decent review from an actual user from this forum! Pics and specs: http://www.buy.com/prod/wd-tv-hd-media-player-usb-2-0-hdmi-compos ... 75073.html Edit: Official product page: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=572 I have tested the following video sample files with no problems on the player: The.Bourne.Supremacy.2004.HDDVD.1080p.x264.Rus-Sample.mkv star.wars.episode.i.the.phantom.menace.1999.1080p.hdtv.x264.sample-hv.mkv oceans.thirteen.2007.720p.hddvd.x264.sample-sinners.mkv spiderman.3.2007.720p.bluray.x264.sample-sinners.mkv Iron.Man_2008_720p.BluRay.x264-NhaNc3.sample.mkv | ||||||
| MJA posted 2008 Nov 02 15:43 | ||||||
| I can't find any review and can't find it on amazon.com.
some feedback
http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/01/western-digital-quietly-intros ... ia-player/ it will be nice if I can copy video from Canon HV-20 to my passport then watch it using the WD media player | ||||||
| decoy5657 posted 2008 Nov 02 17:13 | ||||||
| I bought one of these today after.
It is a very sleek little player. They are currently 99 dollars at Best Buy and the file support is amazing. Plays AVC/264 like a dream! All in all I think it's pretty good for less than half of a Popcorn Hour. I have some minor complaints about the unit. My only complaints: * While it does play ISO files (DVD rips) it does not seem to have Menu or Chapter support. I really really really hate that I can't skip chapters. Hopefully a firmware upgrade can fix this later. * I wish it had network, like the Popcorn Hour. But this is 125 dollars less than the P.H. so I'll get over it. * Flash drive playback seems buggy and unstable. Not a huge deal, I've got 2 dozen portable USB drives. To the previous poster, if you want to send me a video clip of the file type you have in question, I'll be happy to try and play it and let you know how it goes! | ||||||
| Inspex posted 2008 Nov 02 17:54 | ||||||
I'm curious if it plays high resolution XviDs (XviDs over 720 pixels wide). If you get time, please try this. :) | ||||||
| MJA posted 2008 Nov 02 18:03 | ||||||
| decoy5657
do you think it works better with 3.5" external hardrive ? try also you HDV cam if you own one :) keep checking your email bro.a alot of questions on the way :lol: :lol: | ||||||
| Inspex posted 2008 Nov 02 18:10 | ||||||
| I just picked up a Philips 5990 a few weeks ago. Wish this would have been out at the time i got the Philips. I only got the philips for USB playback. :( | ||||||
| Inspex posted 2008 Nov 02 18:26 | ||||||
| It seems like it would be a little sexier if it had a USB port directly on the front of it. Easier to plug usb sticks and card readers into without having to move the unit around. I'm thinking about picking one up to try out. | ||||||
| MJA posted 2008 Nov 02 18:33 | ||||||
I own 2 Philips players but I'm looking for some thing that can play HD/HD divx .I hope this one is the answer,but I don't wanna get my hopes too high .just wait for more feedback | ||||||
| decoy5657 posted 2008 Nov 02 18:34 | ||||||
| Update: There are no flash drive issues. I just had a crappy video file. All is well. It works just fine with all of my 2.5 and 2.5 external HDDs
There are 2 usb ports. One is on the side and one is on the back. | ||||||
| MJA posted 2008 Nov 02 18:35 | ||||||
| do you own HDV cam decoy5657 ? | ||||||
| Inspex posted 2008 Nov 02 18:56 | ||||||
| Do xvid subtitles work with it? .idx, .srt, .sub
Thanks for all of your information so far. :) | ||||||
| decoy5657 posted 2008 Nov 02 19:02 | ||||||
| No HDV cam for me (if you can send me a short clip, I can test it for you)
The analog audio had a pretty bad buzz in it.. Switched to Optical and it is 100 times better. subtitles... I tried an episode of House with a .idx file in the same dir as the video and it did not work. The player has some kind of sub support, as they work when playing ISO files. (Note, idx is the only type of sub I had, so i couldn't test the others.) | ||||||
| Inspex posted 2008 Nov 02 19:04 | ||||||
| What about displayed character limit on file names? Also, does it just display lists of files like standard dvd players do when playing data discs? Sorry for all of the questions, i'm sure there are plenty more to come, though. :D | ||||||
| decoy5657 posted 2008 Nov 02 19:11 | ||||||
Not sure about the limit. It's not a small one. It will use the whole screen for filenames and the fonts are pretty small. I plugged my ipod nano into the player and all of the music showed up! pretty cool. album art and mp3s showed just like they were on a regular usb drive, which is interesting because of how the ipod stores music, which is very non-conventional. | ||||||
| Inspex posted 2008 Nov 02 19:24 | ||||||
| What about skip to time? Can you skip to a specific time while playing xvids and other video formats? How is the fast forward and rewind? Slow or fast? Thanks again. | ||||||
| MJA posted 2008 Nov 02 19:28 | ||||||
| I found this HD clip (birds.m2t) http://rapidshare.com/files/23283389/Birds.m2t.html
more Raw .m2t (bottom 2 look good)) http://www.canonhv20.com/canon-hv20-footage.php | ||||||
| decoy5657 posted 2008 Nov 02 19:28 | ||||||
| As far as I can tell there isn't a skip to time feature. I will dig around with it more and find out. It's really irritating and leaves a lot to be desired.
You can FF and RW at two speeds. It is VERY smooth and pretty quick. I wouldn't want to go through an hour of film with it, it would probably take 5 minutes. However, if you're playing an ISO and finish half way through, turn it off, watch something else, listen to music, or whatever and then go back to the same ISO you played earlier, it will ask you if you'd like to resume where you left off or start over. | ||||||
| decoy5657 posted 2008 Nov 02 19:42 | ||||||
Works just fine! | ||||||
| MJA posted 2008 Nov 02 19:45 | ||||||
| Thanks dude.
clips on the 2ed link look a lot better | ||||||
| lordhutt posted 2008 Nov 02 19:46 | ||||||
| Sounds sweet so far...I was looking at getting a PCH 110 but this may do the job! I have a full blown HTPC for my big screen but something like this will be great for the other tv's. | ||||||
| Inspex posted 2008 Nov 02 20:02 | ||||||
After reading this, I decided to see if I could plug my Creative Zen into my Philips 5990 and play the contents. It doesn't work. It just says "Device Not Supported" :( | ||||||
| eteled posted 2008 Nov 02 21:41 | ||||||
| Took one today from BB for $99. Plays mts, m2ts HDs from my Sony HDRSR11 (that what I needed most). Is capable to work with two USB HDDs at the same time. Let say view slides from one and play music from the other. One more nice feature - power switch is on the remote. Since I store all my media on the USB HDDs, I don’t care about network. | ||||||
| waefwaeefwaefw posted 2008 Nov 03 01:30 | ||||||
| In for one, a had a 50$ BB gift card... :D | ||||||
| jcas posted 2008 Nov 03 08:11 | ||||||
| To decoy5657
Is this autovolt or 110V only? What A/V ports are available (HDMI, optical out...) . | ||||||
| MJA posted 2008 Nov 03 08:46 | ||||||
Thanx for the info.I also need it the most for my Canon HV-20 | ||||||
| ysb posted 2008 Nov 03 09:49 | ||||||
| Can this play display subtitles when playing VOB files?
Also, how does this player handle VOB files? Do you play the the first one and it automatically plays the rest? How about chapter points? Can it jump between chapter points? What about DVD menus? Thanks for any answers. | ||||||
| alhall773 posted 2008 Nov 03 12:26 | ||||||
| Wondering about the ability to update the firmware to accommodate new platforms. I've searched WD's site and found no mention of this product. Any idea where one would go for firmware and support? | ||||||
| TBoneit posted 2008 Nov 03 13:14 | ||||||
| http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=572
File Formats* Music - MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV/PCM/LPCM, AAC, FLAC, Dolby Digital, AIF/AIFF, MKA Photo - JPEG, GIF, TIF/TIFF, BMP, PNG Video -MPEG1/2/4, WMV9, AVI (MPEG4, Xvid, AVC), H.264, MKV, MOV (MPEG4, H.264) Playlist - PLS, M3U, WPL Subtitle -SRT (UTF-8) | ||||||
| Inspex posted 2008 Nov 03 13:26 | ||||||
| Looks even better now. From the looks of the images on Western Digital's website, it also plays .mp4 files. Nice. I'm going to pick one of these up sometime this week. :) | ||||||
| poisondeathray posted 2008 Nov 03 13:32 | ||||||
While the price is good, if it can't even play DVXA-compliant h.264 files as reported, that is a serious problem for claimed "h.264 support" | ||||||
| MJA posted 2008 Nov 03 13:47 | ||||||
I hope one of the guys here will test it to confirm that | ||||||
| decoy5657 posted 2008 Nov 03 16:28 | ||||||
| I will test any format for you guys, just drop a file (sample size) to a sharing site and I'll check it out. | ||||||
| FulciLives posted 2008 Nov 03 16:53 | ||||||
| I have some 1080p and 720p MP4 and M2TS file that I know are DXVA encoded properly.
I'm at work now ... will try to get them on-line and post links later tonight. - John "FulciLives" Coleman | ||||||
| Inspex posted 2008 Nov 03 18:25 | ||||||
| I just picked up the player but haven't tested it yet. If anyone wants to see videos of the GUI or anything, let me know and ill hook the player up through the pc and capture some video clips. :D | ||||||
| Inspex posted 2008 Nov 03 19:17 | ||||||
| It does have variable speed fast forward and rewind, but it doesn't display the speed that its seeking at. You just hit FF or RW button multiple times to speed it up like any other player.
You can list files in Thumbnail or List mode. List mode is basically how a standard player lists them. However, if a title is too long to be displayed, if you leave it selected for about half a second, it scrolls slowly to display the complete file name. Nice feature there. Thumbnail mode is pretty much for pictures, as it doesnt display any kind of video thumbnail preview. You can plug 2 USB devices in and select which one to browse. The remote has an eject button that I assume works like a PC and stops the device for safe unplugging. I tested the player with a Transcend 16gb SDHC card in a Transcend compact card reader. Everything loaded up very fast with no problems. I tried various XviDs with no problems what so ever. You can resume playback of XviDs, which is super sexy. You stop a video, look around on the menu, ect, then when you play the file again, it asks if you want to resume or start from the beggining. Haven't checked if you can resume XviD playback after powering the player down yet. The player is really small. I thought it was the size of a Western Digital My Book external drive from the pictures, but it's much smaller. The remote is also very small, but nothing awkward. I'm pretty pleased with the player so far. The Philips DVP-5990 DVD player with USB 2.0 playback has slightly better picture for XviDs in my opinion, but the WD player is nice. The GUI is pretty clean. I dig it. You can also select which display mode to use, normal or widescreen, depending on your television. I haven't tried it on a HD tv, as I don't have one at the moment, but video playback is good through the standard RCA cables. If anyone would like any other information, let me know. I don't have anything better to do right now. :D | ||||||
| Inspex posted 2008 Nov 03 19:29 | ||||||
I just looked on my SDHC card, and the WD player created 3 small files on it. Based on the type of files and whats in them, Im assuming this is for indexing and the resume feature.
 | ||||||
| Inspex posted 2008 Nov 03 20:06 | ||||||
| I just tested and can verify that it plays the following files with no problems:
The.Bourne.Supremacy.2004.HDDVD.1080p.x264.Rus-Sample.mkv oceans.thirteen.2007.720p.hddvd.x264.sample-sinners.mkv Both files played fine for me from an SDHC card. | ||||||
| Inspex posted 2008 Nov 03 20:24 | ||||||
| The following file played with good audio, but the video was kind of blocky. Not sure why:
the.terminator.1984.1080p.bluray.x264.sample-hv.mkv Will try and test other 1080p clips as I find samples. | ||||||
| Inspex posted 2008 Nov 03 20:54 | ||||||
| Tried another few samples, the following played fine:
spiderman.3.2007.720p.bluray.x264.sample-sinners.mkv star.wars.episode.i.the.phantom.menace.1999.1080p.hdtv.x264.sample-hv.mkv Iron.Man_2008_720p.BluRay.x264-NhaNc3.sample.mkv This one had a few minor glitches in the video: Pirates.of.the.Caribbean.The.Curse.of.the.Black.Pearl.2003.BD-Rip.1080p.x264.Rus-Sample.mkv I don't know what the difference is between HDDVD, HDTV and Bluray encodes are, but, so far every HDDVD encode sample plays flawlessly and there are 2 Bluray encodes I tried that have minor glitches in the video. Both videos with glitches were 1080p. 720p Bluray Spiderman 3 and Iron Man sample played fine. | ||||||
| decoy5657 posted 2008 Nov 03 21:15 | ||||||
| I'm so peeved that there is no chapter support. I guess I'll have to get the Popcorn Hour for the living space and stick this little guy in the bedroom! I pray for a firmware update! | ||||||
| Inspex posted 2008 Nov 03 21:26 | ||||||
| Yeah, hopefully a firmware update will come after theyve sold a few more. This little player really has potential. I'm returning my Philips DVP-5990 and sticking with this. :) | ||||||
| TBoneit posted 2008 Nov 03 22:34 | ||||||
| I want both. I need a regionfree DVD player. | ||||||
| Inspex posted 2008 Nov 03 23:50 | ||||||
| One thing I don't care for. When I turn the unit off, my card reader stays lit up, so I have to unplug the unit or take my card reader out before walking away from it or going to sleep. I may end up keeping the Philips, as I go to bed and watch movies or television alot and I like to just turn the player off, roll over and go to sleep. Not sure how this works with USB-powered Passport drives, but I don't like the idea of a drive being powered on 24/7 while I'm not using it, and I don't want to have to unplug the unit or pull my card reader out every time I'm done watching something. I'll have to see how it works with my WD My Book. | ||||||
| lordhutt posted 2008 Nov 04 05:02 | ||||||
I have a similar problem with my HTPC...I have a passport plugged into it and it stays lit even when the PC is powered down...I have been wondering why it does this... | ||||||
| TBoneit posted 2008 Nov 04 10:05 | ||||||
| Actually the External laptop type hard drive stays powered up on My Philips 5990 too. If I turn the 5990 off while I was playing something from the external drive it starts making noises so I pull the USB plug on it when I'm done to avoid damaging it.Staying powered up is a normal thing on USB devices. a IBM workstation here at work the USB mouse stays lit when it is off. A Clone I built for my brother = likewse, and so on. | ||||||
| pakawufs posted 2008 Nov 04 14:20 | ||||||
| I have a few questions on this unit. I intend to primarily use the unit for home videos. I use a MAC and quicktime. I import my movies into quicktime as uncompressed .dv files. I store these files on an external Lacie firewire hard drive. Will this unit play .dv files and is there a way I could use my "firewire" hard drive with the USB port on this unit? I'm trying to get around hours of compressing time. If I do have to compress, what quicktime codec is the best to use .mov H.264? Thanks | ||||||
| Squash posted 2008 Nov 04 18:04 | ||||||
| I picked up one of these yesterday. This post concerns playback of HD x264 MKV files on the WD player.
I tracked down the problematic 1080p MKV Terminator sample file referred to earlier in poisondeathray's quote from engadget, and also referred to by Inspex (the file was posted to Usenet on July 25th if you want to find it). It was not DXVA compliant (not that it was claimed to be); at least not with MPCHC (checked using CTRL-J). Summary video specs from MediaInfo: 10.2 Mbps, 1920*1040(16/9), at 23.976 fps, AVC (High@L5.1) (CABAC/8 Ref Frames). It played fine in MPCHC using ffdshow decoding, but broke up into severe blocks and smears when played back on the WD TV, only clearing up when there was virtually no movement in the scene. The only other 1080p clip I had handy was an Apple trailer (.mov) and it played fine on the WD. Tried a couple of lower resolution x264 MKV files, 1280x720p and 1280x544p (made from BD source) on the WD player, no problems. Both were larger than 4GB and played back fine from an NTFS-formatted 8GB thumb drive. On the computer, I got DXVA playback with these in MPCHC. One was L3.1, the other was L5.1. I downloaded 19 more 1080p/x264 MKV sample files to see if I could find what separates the good files from the bad. Of the 20 files, 13 played fine on the WD TV player, the other 7 were like the Terminator clip. When played on my computer using MPCHC, the 13 good files were able to use DXVA, the bad 7 were not. They all played fine in MPCHC, it's just that those 7 used software playback rather than DXVA. All the good files respected ExDeus's formula: Height * Width * num_ref_frames <= 8294400. All the bad ones exceeded it. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=12691751#post12691751 So at 1980x1080 you could use up to 4 ref frames. Most of the samples were cropped, so that the height was less than 1080, which allowed for more ref frames. Several of the cropped files used 5 ref frames with no problems, and two of these used L5.1, which also caused no problems. All the troublesome files were uncropped (black bars above and below) and used more than 4 ref frames. Two of the files I downloaded were from the same release group (hV) that did the Terminator clip. They were uncropped, but only used 3 ref frames compared to the 8 used in the Terminator, so they played back fine. In summary, it looks like the WD player's criteria for playing back HD AVC are very similar to those for DXVA playback on a PC, for whatever reason. So, if you're encoding files to playback on this device, follow ExDeus's formula and you should be alright. He's got more guidelines in his main article here, along with tips on how to possibly fix, without re-encoding, some 720p files that you may have problems with: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=12728994#post12728994 And, Inspex, about the fast forward not showing the speed, look very closely at the left of the fast forward bar. The font is so tiny that I thought it wasn't there at first, too, but it does show your FF speed (2X, 4X, 8X and 16X, I think). | ||||||
| Inspex posted 2008 Nov 04 18:06 | ||||||
My card reader doesn't stay lit up when my Philips 5990 is turned off.
I know there are Firewire to USB adapters available, but I can't say whether or not they work with these types of players, as I've never tried them. As far as the best quicktime codec, sorry, maybe someone else can help you with that. | ||||||
| jman98 posted 2008 Nov 05 06:59 | ||||||
| Thanks for the posts, guys. This is a very interesting thread.
I really don't mess with H.264 myself as my best PC is single core and too slow for this to be a realistic option at this time. I plan to upgrade my PC later this year or early next year. What settings are required to make something CxVA compliant? I did a search on Google and all I could find were things about what video cards were DxVA compliant, not anything about what makes video DxVA compliant. | ||||||
| Inspex posted 2008 Nov 05 07:18 | ||||||
| Someone has said that this player doesn't seem to support DivX, only XviD. I Haven't had a chance to confirm this. Doesn't make much sense if it doesn't play DivX, though. Maybe an issue with licensing or something? | ||||||
| FulciLives posted 2008 Nov 05 10:00 | ||||||
| I had a feeling that the problem files would either be H.264 above Level 4.1 and/or having "too many" reference frames.
My understanding is that DXVA calls for H.264 at Level 4.1 with 3 reference frames. I do have a Sony PS3 and it will sometimes handle H.264 with more than 3 reference frames but that seems very "hit or miss" as in sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't so other factors must come into play. I do know that it appears that any of the H.264 encoders that have a PS3 mode (which might as well just say DXVA mode) do only 3 reference frames at Level 4.1 I have two clips I have uploaded. Both encoded with XVID4PSP. The first is a clip from THE HULK (2003) and it is 1920x1080 23.976fps H.264 Level 4.1 with 3 reference frames. It is an MP4 file with 2.0 256kbps AAC-LC audio. The bitrates are pretty high on the video end but it was encoded using a PS3 profile which means it is DXVA compatible and I can confirm it plays back great on my PS3. Here is the link ---> http://rapidshare.com/files/160906892/hulk1080p.mp4 I have another file that was created more-or-less the same way except this time around it is a M2TS file using 5.1 640kbps AC-3 audio. This clip is from THE INCREDIBLE HULK (2008) and again the video is 1920x1080 23.976fps H.264 Level 4.1 with 3 reference frames. Again it plays back smoothly on my PS3. Here is the Link ---> http://www.mediafire.com/file/0x3k3qi3fin/Hulk2008sample.m2ts The first file is very large (about 198MB) whereas the second file is much smaller (more like 43MB). Would be great if these could be tested :) - John "FulciLives" Coleman P.S. The HULK MP4 has 2.0 audio but it was downmixed from the 6 channel DTS track using Dolby Pro Logic II so if you have a surround sound receiver that supports that you should get surround sound otherwise you get regular stereo sound. | ||||||
| Squash posted 2008 Nov 05 10:13 | ||||||
| @Inspex,
It plays Divx fine. I even made a 1920x1072 divx and it played that. @jman98, There's a good guide to encoding for DXVA compliance here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=12728994#post12728994 and there are massive threads about it over on doom9. That DXVA-HD-HQ profile ExDeus refers to in the above link comes with MeGUI, or from here: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=101813 You should be able to use the command-line settings that ExDeus listed from that profile with any gui that allows you to input x264 command-line settings, but I don't know, I always used the profiles. Baldrick just recommended some x264/MKV GUIs here: http://forum.videohelp.com/topic359058.html MeGUIs the only one of those that I've used, but it has a bit of a learning curve. DXVA compliance is not really necessary for playback on newer computers since they'll generally play non-compliant HD AVC files fine through software, but for some reason it seems to be needed with this new WD player. @FulciLives, I'm downloading your first file now. Should have both in about an hour (slow DSL). I'll let you know. | ||||||
| Squash posted 2008 Nov 05 11:44 | ||||||
| FulciLives,
They both played fine on the WD player. According to the ExDeus post I linked to above, MPCHC's decoder will allow DXVA for files using a tag of a L5.1 as long as the other conditions are met, while the Cyberlink decoder will not allow higher than 4.1. The WD acts like MPCHC in this regard; I don't know about the PS3. Audio was fine, but I'm just using stereo. I did a quick check on DXVA in MPCHC and they both passed.(When it can't use DXVA, MPCHC says "DXVA: DXVA not used". If it can use DXVA, it looks like this shot from your m2ts):  | ||||||
| MJA posted 2008 Nov 05 11:59 | ||||||
| very interesting .I guess I don't need a PS3 :-) | ||||||
| FulciLives posted 2008 Nov 05 12:11 | ||||||
| I'm gonna have to buy me one of these WD Media Players. Sure I have a PS3 but I can't use NFTS via an external HDD with the PS3 (an external HDD hooked up directly to the PS3 must be FAT32). Of course I do have the PS3 hooked up to my PC and can stream from there so it's not a huge deal breaker but I like the idea of the WD Media Player allowing the use of an external NFTS formatted HDD so no silly 4GB limit and no relying on a PC at all.
Sounds like WD has a real winner here based on 1080p H.264 DXVA capability and the rather low price. Also a quick note about H.264 DXVA encoding: I use XVID4PSP which has a "MP4 for P3 or XBOX 360" x264 encoding profile. Works wonders and that is how my first clip was encoded. There is also a "M2TS" option which again uses the same video settings (with the ability to do AC-3 audio instead of AAC-LC audio). I really like XVID4PSP and recommend it highly. The only other alternative that I know of that also seems to work well is MeGui but I find it a bit overly complicated for my tastes. Not that it is unusable but XVID4PSP seems to work really well while also keeping options fairly simple and easy. - John "FulciLives" Coleman | ||||||
| MJA posted 2008 Nov 05 12:20 | ||||||
| is it possible to connect an External CD / DVD Drive? | ||||||
| Squash posted 2008 Nov 05 12:24 | ||||||
| I believe the sale price ends this week at Best Buy and they go up $30 on Sunday.
I don't know about the external cd/dvd; I don't have one. I remember seeing someone ask that question about an external USB dvd drive on some other board the other day, probably AVSforum. I'll see if I can find it; maybe somebody answered him. Just off the top of my head I wouldn't think so, different file system. Edit: By the way, the thread over there is at http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1080840 . There's about 7 pages of posts if you want more info. | ||||||
| bts0004 posted 2008 Nov 05 12:54 | ||||||
| I read on the WD site's FAQ that external DVD/CD drives do not work. | ||||||
| bts0004 posted 2008 Nov 05 12:57 | ||||||
| I have little experience with NAS devices, but does anyone know if something like this would work?:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136196 Western Digital My Book World Edition WDG1NC10000N 1TB Home Network Storage with Remote Access I'm wondering if I would be able to hook it up to the WD media player via USB. I just want to be able to transfer files to the hard drive attached to it from any computer, without having to unhook it from the media player and drag it around to all of them, then hook it all back up again. | ||||||
| MJA posted 2008 Nov 05 14:03 | ||||||
even better to an Asus WL-520GU Wireless Router w/ USB Port .straming from pc to the WD | ||||||
| bts0004 posted 2008 Nov 05 14:42 | ||||||
While this would be an even better "want," the problem is that the WD media player can't get on the network. Or am I missing something? So, I was hoping I could at least bring its storage to the network as a compromise. | ||||||
| stiltman posted 2008 Nov 05 14:49 | ||||||
| Anyone high bitrate Xvid/Divx files?
I'm talkin 704/3xx @ 3500kbs or better with AC3 5.1 | ||||||
| MJA posted 2008 Nov 05 15:12 | ||||||
upload one for testing :D | ||||||
| stiltman posted 2008 Nov 05 16:37 | ||||||
Thanks, if I get a chance, I'll do it tonight | ||||||
| ricoman posted 2008 Nov 05 17:57 | ||||||
| Here is a breakdown review:
http://maddhat.com/?p=31 | ||||||
| MJA posted 2008 Nov 05 18:22 | ||||||
excellent review with Pix | ||||||
| festmaster posted 2008 Nov 05 21:07 | ||||||
| This thing is remarkable. I was considering a Sansa TakeTV or a Iomega Screen Play but those only play Divx/Xvid while the WD plays nearly everything you throw at it for the same price. Best of all, the user manual gives instructions for updating the firmware which WD states will be upgraded to improve file compatibility.
When coupled with a flash drive, this unit provides high def playback with absolutely no noise. That claim cannot be made with BluRay, TIVO 3, HTPC, PS3, etc. The one disappointment is that it will not play .ts files directly. The mpeg must first be extracted. There are several tools to convert transport streams to mpeg's very quickly, but it would be nice to record OTA high def programs on my computer with the saving location of the file being an external drive that I can simply plug into the WD device at my convenience. Maybe that will be upgraded in the future. The high def MPEG's load very quickly, though. Before heading to Best Buy, check their inventory online. Today there was no inventory in the online store and only 1 store out of 5 in my area had them in stock. | ||||||
| thegman45 posted 2008 Nov 05 21:24 | ||||||
I just bought one of these today. It has the capability of turning subtitles on and off. | ||||||
| MozartMan posted 2008 Nov 05 21:53 | ||||||
You don't have to convert .TS files to MPEG's program streams (if that what you mean). Just use tsRemux and convert .TS to .M2TS. That's what I do for PS3 because it doesn't play .TS files. | ||||||
| festmaster posted 2008 Nov 05 22:02 | ||||||
| I use VideoRedo which completes the task as fast as it takes to rewrite the file. My point is that it is an extra step that shouldn't have to take place. | ||||||
| MozartMan posted 2008 Nov 05 22:06 | ||||||
Well, what can we do. It looks like .TS container is not supported in hardware players (i.e. WD, or PS3). | ||||||
| stiltman posted 2008 Nov 05 22:10 | ||||||
| Here's the link (22mb)
Link removed (I removed the test video from my site) This is my average conversion  | ||||||
| Squash posted 2008 Nov 05 23:13 | ||||||
| About .ts file support, I've seen a couple of posts on other boards stating that you can play them on the WD by simply renaming the file extension to either .mpg or .m2ts. I haven't tried this myself.
@Stiltman, Your Transformers test clip played fine on the WD. | ||||||
| stiltman posted 2008 Nov 06 10:03 | ||||||
Thanks for testing my test :) I have a lot of conversions that are around that kbs. I know my standalone plays them fine (even though the manual says it wont play 448kbs AC3) It's now nice to know I have another option. My standalone also has a HDMI input, so I can run this on through it's input if I need too. | ||||||
| shadow_cruiser posted 2008 Nov 06 12:05 | ||||||
| Damn, not available in Canada. Anybody know of any online retailers selling it?
I checked all the usual ones (NCIX,BB,FS,ca.buy.com,etc) | ||||||
| FulciLives posted 2008 Nov 06 12:44 | ||||||
I found a seller on AMAZON.COM that is selling the WDAVN00BN and you can contact them directly via a toll free 800 phone number. Just search for "WDAVN00BN" on AMAZON.COM and then click on the name of the seller and the contact phone number pops up on their "About Me" page. So my suggestion is to give them a phone call and see if they are willing to ship to Canada. Although this thing seems to be brand spanking new so my guess is that it will eventually make it to Canada sooner than later ... if you have a lil bit of patience I think that will "pay off". Then again I know the feeling of wanting something NOW !!! 8) - John "FulciLives" Coleman | ||||||
| shadow_cruiser posted 2008 Nov 06 13:45 | ||||||
| The Philips 5990 was released in April in the US, then released in September-October in Canada. We always play the waiting game here in Canada, lol.
I'm really excited about this product as it can be my affordable USB media player that I've wanted. I called the seller with the search you provided and he said shipping would be $40:(. Eh, I will just be patient and wait. Hopefully it gets released before new years. On a side note, a representive from Western Digital made a few posts over at the MacWorld forums concerning the WD TV HD. One post that concern is this "These are all great ideas. We are already working on the next generation WD TV and of course we like feedback to help improve our products. " They just released this product but are already working on the next revision of the WD TV HD? | ||||||
| MJA posted 2008 Nov 06 14:31 | ||||||
| just cross the the borders to Michigan :-) | ||||||
| Inspex posted 2008 Nov 06 15:42 | ||||||
They should have advertised it and gotten user input before going into production on the first one. My only real problem with it is that it doesn't power down the USB port when you turn it off. I guess this is just so the player will automatically turn on when plugging a device in. But I would much rather have to turn the device on manually than unplug it or my USB drive everytime I'm done watching anything. :( Who want's to keep their USB device alive 24/7? Perhaps I'll return it and wait for the 2nd generation WD TV. :adminfinger: | ||||||
| MJA posted 2008 Nov 06 16:22 | ||||||
both of my dvd players Philips 82/90 are the same .USB devices are always on.
doubt that | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2008 Nov 06 17:00 | ||||||
| You have to change the extension of your .divx files or it will not play them. I tried one on a thumbdrive and it showed the file as a dat file with no name and when I pushed play, it said there was no audio and would not play the video.
Out of curiosity, I changed the extension to AVI of some HD Divx files I had and left one as .divx and put them on an external HDD and the unit read them all except the ,divx file. It gave no errors this time, just didn't show the file. I keep getting pixelation and losing the audio for a few seconds. Not sure if it's the unit or the external harddrive. EDIT: With the firmware update, you no longer have to change the extension of your .divx files to .avi. It will now see and play them as is. | ||||||
| kiaconcepts posted 2008 Nov 06 17:57 | ||||||
| how do I extract AVCHD ISO's? Arnt I suppose to extract the streams for WD HD , because it wont read iso's right? | ||||||
| shadow_cruiser posted 2008 Nov 06 19:07 | ||||||
My 5982 powers down the external hard drive when I power off the unit. I know its not running because the hard drive enclosure is cool to the touch and also it makes that powering down sound when I turn off the it. The factory firmware may not do this but Ryan Jefferson's modded firmware does | ||||||
| festmaster posted 2008 Nov 06 20:32 | ||||||
Yep, that will do it. | ||||||
| Inspex posted 2008 Nov 06 21:07 | ||||||
Yeah. My 5990 has modded firmware, I didn't even think about that. Hopefully someone will release some custom firmware for the WD player soon that will fix the issue. | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2008 Nov 06 23:10 | ||||||
| I wish there was a way to keep the progress bar from popping up every time you start a video. I know there's an option to show the progress bar but turning it off still doesn't keep it from showing the first 10 seconds of every video. It's very annoying. | ||||||
| Bondja posted 2008 Nov 08 15:59 | ||||||
| This is one great device...finally I can watch my Hauppauge WinTV HD PVR recordings in true HD without a HTPC. :D | ||||||
| shadow_cruiser posted 2008 Nov 09 10:20 | ||||||
| NCIX has it in stock for those in canada. Its been confirmed that $149.99 will be the regular price in canada, be it at best buy or anywhere else
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=98329J&vpn=WDAVN00 ... L%20DRIVES | ||||||
| MJA posted 2008 Nov 09 13:21 | ||||||
| Good news.The price is up $129 :lol: . | ||||||
| fountainhead posted 2008 Nov 09 15:02 | ||||||
| A great little device! Doesn't trump Popcorn Hour's A-110 player, but for it's price, availability, and basic functions, this is real winner. Here are some initial observations with my WD HD player:
SUBTITLE SUPPORT needs much improvement. This is my biggest disappointment so far. In my tests, only .srt format subtitles will play. NO other subtitle formats (sub/idx, ASS, UTF-8, etc.) will play from MKV or AVI containers. Haven't tried DVD subs yet but others have mentioned those won't play either. Can anyone confirm this? If so, please note whether DVD testing is from ISO file or extracted VIDEO_TS folder (does WD even play from VIDEO_TS folder?). I'll have to try that too. Also, it won't play VC-1 (Microsoft) encoded HD video in WMV containers. There are many such types being posted now. I tried 10 but none would play. Hopefully, a firmware update will enable playback for this format. Can anyone confirm DTS audio playback from MKV via HDMI connection? My Popcorn Hour A110 won't even do that right now so that would be quite impressive. Overall, a great buy for $99. Popcorn Hour A110 costs $215 but does a LOT more. For those with simpler requirements, the WD HD is an excellent choice. | ||||||
| FulciLives posted 2008 Nov 10 00:17 | ||||||
In regard to subtitles ... you might want to try AVIAddXSubs
I haven't tried it myself but I've been meaning to because I have a Sony PS3 and AVIAddXSubs supposedly makes it so the PS3 can "see" the subtitles. If it works for the PS3 (and other hardware AVI capable players) then chances are it will work with the WDAVN00BN ... well one can hope :) - John "FulciLives" Coleman | ||||||
| cameraz posted 2008 Nov 10 07:59 | ||||||
| Hi,
I bought one of these Western Digital HD Media players this week and I'm curious how some people says it plays DIVX videos. I have tried many Divx files on it and they are not even recognized! This does not surprise me since Western Digital does not even list Divx as a suppored file. It does, however, play Xvid videos. | ||||||
| poisondeathray posted 2008 Nov 10 09:50 | ||||||
Fulci, that only works for DivX Ultra players, not regular AVI Hardware players or regular DivX players. I didn't know PS3 had this capability? | ||||||
| poisondeathray posted 2008 Nov 10 09:53 | ||||||
Most hardware players than can play XviD should be able to play DivX - they are essentially the same. Unless there is something peculiar about your file (e.g. GPEL, GMC, etc...) Otherwise you can use a fourcc changer to change DivX=>XviD without re-encoding | ||||||
| FulciLives posted 2008 Nov 10 10:05 | ||||||
People have said in comments that I have read that AVIAddXSubs makes DivX/XviD files that work with selectable subtitle support on the Sony PS3 so ... I've yet to try it myself. Actually I did run one AVI through it last night but haven't had a chance to try it yet on the PS3 ... maybe tonight after work. - John "FulciLives" Coleman | ||||||
| jman98 posted 2008 Nov 10 11:31 | ||||||
| I bought one of these on Saturday. A couple of quick notes...
I hardly gave it an exhaustive test, but it played: WMV MKV with 720p H.264 video Divx The remote control died yesterday and the unit is useless without it. After work I'm going to contact Western Digital about a replacement. I liked the player, but I'm not impressed that the remote died so quickly. And lest you guys ask, I went out and bought a brand new pack of AAA batteries just in case it was dead batteries and the remote control still doesn't work. My city, which has quite a few Best Buys, is just about out of these players. Note that Best Buy's website doesn't appear to be very accurate about which stores do and don't have it. The store I found it in actually had it over with portable media player equipment and not with PC stuff, which is where the website has it listed. If the website says that a particular store has it, you may need help from a clerk to find out exactly where it is. I got lucky because the guy who helped me told me that he saw it on the shelf the day before when he walked by that section (he didn't work in the section where it was). | ||||||
| fountainhead posted 2008 Nov 10 11:59 | ||||||
Extracting and converting existing internal subs to external, to compensate for limitations of a new device, isn't practical. Plus, even older DivX/DVD players support at least 2 types: VobSub (.sub/.idx) & SubRip (.srt). To really compete, the WD HD must at least support SRT, SUB/IDX, and UTF-8, internal and external. Otherwise, user appeal will remain limited. For example, right now I can only enjoy 2/3 of my collection on WD HD. The Sigma chips used in WD HD are also found in competing devices, which *do* handle multiple sub types. So, it seems a simple matter of firmware. Presently, WD only claims to support SRT, so the specs aren't misleading, just lacking. I mean, how often do we see .SRT subs matched with MKV h.264 files? Rarely. The lack VC-1 video codec (Microsoft) is possibly a licensing issue. Hopefully, this support will be added in future firmware. I'm anxiously awaiting a WD firmware update. A few simple improvements could propel WD HD to the head of the class. Meanwhile, it still feels like a beta product with lots of unrealized potential. | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2008 Nov 10 13:18 | ||||||
As I mentioned on page three, you have to change the file extension from .divx to .avi. I don't have any divx files with subs and extra audio to see if they play correctly but I'll assume that they play like they do on the Philips 642 and not like they play on an ultra divx certified player. | ||||||
| adcvideo posted 2008 Nov 10 17:44 | ||||||
I have a question -- is anyone able to get 5.1 audio from this unit? the WD website list the specs as follows:
I don't expect 5.1 from mp4 files, but the convenience of being able to play vob files with 5.1 is a must-have for me. Thanks | ||||||
| fountainhead posted 2008 Nov 10 17:54 | ||||||
| Additional test results:
- Does NOT play DVD menus. Just plays longest title set. What? ':(' - Plays DVD ISO files the same way. No menus. - Does NOT play extracted VIDEO_TS folder either. Only displays VOB files for playing. - Does display DVD subtitles. Select text icon at top after hitting Options button. (Small consolation) - Upscaling for XviD video almost looks as good as my Philips 5960 DVD player. - Only plays DVD subs and external SRT subs for other supported video types. - Plays MP3 files very well. Displays ID3 tag art during play. Can browse other folders or features while listening. (I didn't test playlists, m3u, etc.) - Does NOT play DTS audio. My test MKV w/DTS track played the AVC video without audio. - No VC-1 hi-def codec support, as mentioned in my earlier post. I hoped this little device could eliminate the need for a DVD player. Not happening. In short, the DVD features on the WD HD really suck. :-x I was going to buy a couple more, but now I think I'll save my $$ for another Popcorn Hour A-110. For around $100 more, I get all the DVD playback features lacking on this + VC-1 codec support, multiple sub formats, better remote, etc. I commend Western Digital on their first effort, but they need to do much better to get any more money from me. Testing the WD HD helped me appreciate Popcorn Hour's A-110 even more. I'm glad I bought that first, or I might have hesitated buying it after the WD. | ||||||
| cameraz posted 2008 Nov 10 19:14 | ||||||
Hi Everyone, Could somebody tell me how to use the Fourcc Changer? I downloaded it but can't figure out how to work it. There is a Description Code and a Used Code. How do I know which one to use for a particular video file? What I'm trying to do is to get my Divx files to play on my Western Digital Media Player, something they won't do right now. I'd appreciate any help anyone can give me. Thanks! | ||||||
| poisondeathray posted 2008 Nov 10 19:51 | ||||||
| cameraz - load your file, change them both to xvid and press apply
If it doesn't play, there's probably something else that is incompatible with your file (e.g. GPEL, GMC, etc...). If so, post a gspot screenshot of that file here | ||||||
| cameraz posted 2008 Nov 10 20:23 | ||||||
Hi poison, How do I change the file to Xvid? The options I'm given in FourCC changer are: mp41, mp42, mp43 or DIV4. Sorry for being such a noob. | ||||||
| cameraz posted 2008 Nov 10 20:33 | ||||||
Hi DarrellS, I tried changing my extensions from .divx to .avi, but they still wouldn't play on my WD Media Player. So I don't know what the problem is. Thanks. | ||||||
| shadow_cruiser posted 2008 Nov 10 21:14 | ||||||
What DivX codec is it? (ie 3.11, 4.0, 5.0, 6.0) This player should play DivX 3.11 at minimum but since its not listed as a supported file type, I could see it not playing 5.0 or 6.0 | ||||||
| poisondeathray posted 2008 Nov 10 21:19 | ||||||
I use Nic's Mini FourCC changer  | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2008 Nov 10 21:50 | ||||||
The files that I have are DX50 created with the Divx 6.8.4 codec. If your files are real .divx files, meaning video with audio and subs in a .divx container instead of AVI then there's a good chance that they won't work. I'll try some other DivX AVI and let you know what they are. | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2008 Nov 10 23:28 | ||||||
| I tried a DivX 3.11 and a DivX 4 and they both played fine. All of my newer files are all encoded with the Divx 6 codec and they all play fine.
Maybe a GSpot screenshot or a MediaInfo text file would help us figure out your problem. | ||||||
| FulciLives posted 2008 Nov 10 23:32 | ||||||
| I finally got a chance to test AVIAddXSubs and it works on my Sony PS3 although the subs were very slightly off center. If the left side of the screen is 0% and the right side is 100% with 50% being dead center then I would say the subs were in the 55% range (slightly more right than dead center). So yes not dead center but pretty darn close.
This was a DivX *.AVI file with external IDX/SUB subtitles and AVIAddXSubs made it a single *.DIVX file instead of a *.AVI file. The slight offset of the subtitles might have something to do with the fact that the resolution of the video is a width of 704 whereas the DVD was 720 ... maybe I needed to enter that in the custom resolution section of AVIAddXSubs. Please note that AVIAddXSubs says that simply changing the final output from *.DIVX to *.AVI should make it work if the device doesn't accept *.DIVX files (but is capable of DivX/XviD codec playback). I don't have the WDAVN00BN in order to test. - John "FulciLives" Coleman | ||||||
| cameraz posted 2008 Nov 11 17:34 | ||||||
I just tried Nic's Mini FourCC changer. It still would not play on my WD Media Player. Very frustrating. | ||||||
| Teutatis posted 2008 Nov 11 17:38 | ||||||
Which additional DVD playback features does the PH 110 have compared to the WD? I will be buying one of the players soon and DVD playback is an important feature to me. I know that the PH 110 does not support DVD menus, but how is its DVD playback better than WD? | ||||||
| cameraz posted 2008 Nov 11 17:49 | ||||||
| OK guys,
I'm attaching a MediaInfo text file to show you what my Divx videos are comprised of. Hope this helps somebody figure out why I can't play Divx files on my WD Media Player.  | ||||||
| eteled posted 2008 Nov 11 19:45 | ||||||
| I've got email today from WD:
Thank you for contacting Western Digital Customer Service and Support. The WD TV uses the same chipset as Blu-Ray players, Sigma Design 8634. The WD TV uses HDMI 1.3. | ||||||
| MJA posted 2008 Nov 11 19:54 | ||||||
| (Sigma SMP8635LF)
http://maddhat.com/?p=31 | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2008 Nov 12 14:40 | ||||||
| I don't see anything in the screenshot although I don't recognize the writing application.
You might try Mpeg4modifier on one to see it that helps or maybe use Virtualdub to re-encode one and see if it will play. I would use the new divx codec since I know my divx files encoded with it work. | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2008 Nov 12 15:15 | ||||||
| I guess it doesn't support divx in 1080p. I just downloaded two 1080p HD Divx trailers and neither one showed up from a thumb drive.
Edit: The 1080p HD Divx do work. I forgot to change the extension. :D | ||||||
| peaceweb posted 2008 Nov 12 16:01 | ||||||
| One simple question, can you set it play the same movie/file over and over (repeat, loop)? | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2008 Nov 12 16:55 | ||||||
Yes. It doesn't do it very well. There is a black screen between the end and the beginning | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2008 Nov 12 17:07 | ||||||
| I have a bunch of XviD AVI that I made using Bitmaps with high resolutions and about 20 of those files did not play. I assume all of the ones 1920x1080 and above. I'll remove all the files except the ones in question to make sure.
Wish someone could create a firmware for this that would get rid of that stupid progress bar from playing on the bottom of every single file. That drives me crazy. I thought I had gotten rid of it but as soon as all the files got to the end, it returned. Somehow, I got it to play one file after the other all the way through the directory but after it played the directory, it lost that ability. A firmware update is definately needed for this thing with a lot more user controls and maybe a couple of codec upgrades. | ||||||
| fountainhead posted 2008 Nov 13 03:59 | ||||||
You got it backwards. WD does NOT support DVD menus. Popcorn Hour DOES...via ISO or VIDEO_TS folder. You can even attach a DVD-ROM drive via USB and play the actual discs. This also answers the second part of your question re: DVD playback on PH A110. Popcorn Hour is way ahead of WD on this one. Popcorn Hour plays DVDs as they were meant to be seen. WD does not. However, WD does play the main title in most cases. Choose a device that can play most formats correctly (PH A110) or a few formats well (WD). I'm glad I have both products to compare. I'll certainly buy another Popcorn Hour but I'll wait and see how the WD product evolves over time. | ||||||
| shadow_cruiser posted 2008 Nov 13 12:10 | ||||||
| Dell has it for $99 right now on sale until November 17 with Free Shipping to bout. I would pick this up if I were you guys 'cause these things are selling fast and I can only see the price raising in the future.
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?sku=A216199 ... lid=680413 | ||||||
| Gramps posted 2008 Nov 13 14:17 | ||||||
The encoding settings look OK. The first thing I would try is just renaming the file extension from .divx to .avi. Try playing it. The player may be looking at the file extension to determine the video container used, and it doesn't recognize the .divx extension as an AVI container. It should support the Divx codec OK, but it just may not recognize the .divx file extension If that doesn't do it, try opening one of the problem AVI files in VirtualDub. Click the Video menu and set it to Direct Stream Copy. Do the same in the Audio menu. Then click on File menu and save the file to a new name with a .avi extension. It should only take a couple of minutes. Then see if the new file plays OK. Sometimes, while there is nothing wrong the way the file is encoded, the way the file was originally muxed causes problems for some media players. In this case, VirtualDub is just remuxing the file. | ||||||
| cameraz posted 2008 Nov 13 16:27 | ||||||
[quote="Gramps"]
Hi Gramps, Changing the extension to .avi was one of the first things I tried. It didn't work. I have tried about a dozen divx videos on the WD TV player and none of them worked. I'm really bummed out because most of my videos are in divx format. I created them with DIVX.com's own Divx Converter. They all play great on my computer, but, amazingly, most don't play on my Toshiba DVD recorder, which is supposed to be able to play divx videos. I did use SUPER to convert some of my divx videos to .MOV videos, and they played well on my WD TV. I guess that's what I'll have to do with the rest. | ||||||
| Gramps posted 2008 Nov 13 17:14 | ||||||
Give the trick that I mentioned with VirtualDub a try. I've had several videos that were encoded with the DivX Converter that didn't play, but the VirtualDub trick fixed it. It was something to do with the way that the DivX Converter muxed the audio and video together that the media players didn't like. If it works for you, it will mean that you won't have to re-encode to MOV and suffer the quality loss. | ||||||
| VoodooEvil posted 2008 Nov 13 17:18 | ||||||
| hi all.
so what is the best format to convert the main movie to for output in hd and save space? I am a little slow with this and could not figure it out. thanks Joe | ||||||
| cameraz posted 2008 Nov 13 18:28 | ||||||
Thanks, man, I will give it a shot. | ||||||
| cameraz posted 2008 Nov 13 19:37 | ||||||
Well, Gramps, the trick worked. I ran two of my Divx videos through VirtualDub and they played flawlessly on my WD TV player. Thanks for the help! | ||||||
| shadow_cruiser posted 2008 Nov 13 23:15 | ||||||
You wanted to output in HD, meaning resolutions of 720p/1080p?. There are only a few HD specs, but MKV/X264 is what your looking for | ||||||
| Gramps posted 2008 Nov 14 07:24 | ||||||
You're welcome! | ||||||
| bnwbass posted 2008 Nov 14 10:19 | ||||||
| I played a slide show today with jpeg images ~5MB and time between photos was about 3 sec. Still a bit sluggish for me. However, the video play back capabilities on this little box are very impressive.
I'm playing full 7GB native DVD .ISO files that look great on my 42" 720P display with full audio coding of Dolby Digital AC-3 and DTS. I did some comparisons today of a source DVD playing on an up-scaling OPPO DVD machine vs a ripped .ISO of the same movie playing on WD TV, the WD TV unit looked even better than the DVD source. Just my observation. Other than not being a network ready device out of the box this player is going to turn some heads for the low $$. bnw | ||||||
| VoodooEvil posted 2008 Nov 14 15:03 | ||||||
| thanks shadow!!!!!!! | ||||||
| zoe1271 posted 2008 Nov 15 11:42 | ||||||
| It doesn't have menu or chapter support yet, right? The media player automatically plays the largest title set, right? Any suggestions for TV shows on DVD that have 4-5 episodes, each episode about the same size? I have a bunch of them on my HD in iso. I'm curious to see how the player would handle these... | ||||||
| fountainhead posted 2008 Nov 16 11:39 | ||||||
I suspect WD HD would have trouble w/those due to a lack of menu selection. Poor DVD and limited subtitle support are the 2 greatest disappointments with WD HD. DVD support could eliminate the need to keep and store DVD discs. However, it just doesn't handle this well - at all. Suggestions for 'episode' DVD discs... 1. You could try extracting the ISO to a VIDEO_TS folder, play the first VOB, then hit Next on remote to see if plays the next episode. If it works, I suspect results will vary depending on how the original DVD was authored. 2. If you want to adapt your DVD's to meet WD HD's limitations (I wouldn't) you could extract to VIDEO_TS and reauthor them in DVDShrink - making separate ISO's for each episode title (no transcoding required). With each episode in separate ISO's, you'd keep the original video quality, subs, audio tracks, etc. *but* will lose menu selection and other DVD features completely. But...why do all that when other HD players exist - which play DVD properly? Good luck. | ||||||
| zoe1271 posted 2008 Nov 16 13:22 | ||||||
| I don't have mine yet, but I'll check it out as soon as it arrives. I thought about the second option (ripping each episode separately). That shouldn't be too big of a problem, just a bit time consuming.
The main attraction for me is the support for lossless audio in FLAC. I have about 2.5TB of FLAC on external drives. It looks like this will turn the externals into juke boxes. This in addition to playing iso's at this price is great! | ||||||
| fountainhead posted 2008 Nov 16 14:59 | ||||||
Not to dismiss WD's player entirely, but another suggestion is to buy a Popcorn Hour A-110 instead. http://www.popcornhour.com I own both the A-110 & WD HD -- price & availability are the only advantages to the WD. The A-110 supports FLAC audio *and* plays DVD properly + everything else the WD will do. I wish I'd saved the $110 I spent on the WD for another PCH A-110. It's twice the price but worth every penny - even though you have to buy and wait 4 wks for delivery. Just install the latest firmware and enjoy. I don't even network mine or install a HDD - just plug-in big USB drives to watch all my stuff. | ||||||
| VoodooEvil posted 2008 Nov 16 19:31 | ||||||
| Hi..
MKV plays great from this thing. I do have 1 problem..... I have a canon point an shoot camera that takes very good video clips and saves them as .AVI. The WD media player video playback is nice, but for some reason the audio is very poor, you hear it , but it sounds like wind blowing into the mic. any ideas? Thanks Again. joe | ||||||
| cameraz posted 2008 Nov 17 17:49 | ||||||
Hi Joe, That is wind blowing into the mic. I have a Canon SD800 that I take tons of video clips with (I even did a whole wedding with it!), but these things are very susceptible to wind noise. Especially outdoors. I took a video of a friend walking on the beach, and the wind noise was very bad. The problem is that there is no way to attach an external mic to these cameras. Most prosumer and professional video cameras allow you to attach external "shotgun" mics with foam wind screens on them. These point 'n' shoot cameras are great for videos, but they do have their limitations. | ||||||
| jbaruch76 posted 2008 Nov 17 20:34 | ||||||
| this item sounds pretty interesting, especially with mkv support. so my question is is there any way to wirelessly transfer movies from my computer to the hard drive w/o physically moving it back and forth? | ||||||
| cameraz posted 2008 Nov 17 21:34 | ||||||
The WD TV Media Player doesn't contain a hard drive. You plug a portable hard drive or flash drive (thumb drive) into it and it plays video, music and photos on your TV. So load up your files onto your portable drive, and plug it into the WD TV's two USB ports. By using portable drives, you have unlimited space for your collection. | ||||||
| jbaruch76 posted 2008 Nov 17 21:40 | ||||||
i know, i mean some way to leave my external drive downstairs, and my computer upstairs and load files onto it, while keeping it attached to the wd media player | ||||||
| fountainhead posted 2008 Nov 18 08:52 | ||||||
No. It has no network capability and no internal hard drive to copy anything to. Please read the product description. Devices with the features you're looking for are available - but cost a bit more, as expected. These have been mentioned throughout this thread. | ||||||
| Darney76 posted 2008 Nov 18 12:49 | ||||||
| FYI
Buy.com's got it for $99 with free shipping (I'm gonna get one after BF): http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=209975073&adid=1765 ... caid=17653 | ||||||
| sdvideo posted 2008 Nov 18 15:26 | ||||||
| whats the difference between The Western Digital WD TV HD Media Player and the xbox or PS3... other than price? | ||||||
| stiltman posted 2008 Nov 18 15:29 | ||||||
| Here's a funny
BB says they're on back order for $129.99 BB for business has them in stock for $159.99 Usually BB for business is 10% less than normal BB prices | ||||||
| shadow_cruiser posted 2008 Nov 19 13:04 | ||||||
| According to an email exchange from Scott at Western Digital, a new firmware will be coming up soon which will correct the following issues. This isn't a confirmed list but they are testing the functions
*USB power-down when WDTV HD is shut off (High Priority) *Fixed remote issues, ie. Not being able to turn the unit on or off *VobSub subtitle support (planned but may not be included with this release) *Go-To Function He said these are the major fixes and there will be many many small bug fixes. He also mentioned there are many more planned features and fixes but since the WDTV HD has only been out for 3 weeks, they don't want to release updates without proper testing. He said that power management is at the top of their list, didn't mention what this would include other than USB power down. Anyways, expect the first firmware update very soon! | ||||||
| cameraz posted 2008 Nov 19 14:34 | ||||||
This is great news. Thanks! | ||||||
| fountainhead posted 2008 Nov 20 14:58 | ||||||
Thanks for the info. USB power-down on WDTV shutdown would be nice. I haven't noticed any remote problem (beside obvious lack of features). VobSub subtitle support should be a high priority - although I hope they're also looking at other types, i.e. ASS and UTF-8, common in MKV containers with x.264 videos. Go-To? ...also not a high priority with me. I'd rather see support added for VC1 codec. | ||||||
| jugeo posted 2008 Nov 21 12:51 | ||||||
| :( I purchased one at Best Buy and was planning to use it to replay HV-20 Camcorder HDV files. Did not work. Tried changing format to 1920x1080i and still no luck. Did not have much luck with some ripped DVD video either. It did play some basic .avi SD video. So I returned it with regrets that it was no help to me. | ||||||
| MJA posted 2008 Nov 21 13:52 | ||||||
why you didn't ask for help 1st?
| ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2008 Nov 21 14:20 | ||||||
You have to change the file extension to MPEG. Does not recognize the .mts extension. | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2008 Nov 21 14:36 | ||||||
| Plays my WMV-HD VC-1 trailers but does not play the audio - Windows Media Audio Professional.
Plays 1920x1080.mov (did not play the audio - PCM big-endian) It says it supports both PCM and WMA. | ||||||
| Inspex posted 2008 Nov 23 02:18 | ||||||
| Has anyone noticed random XviDs playing out of sync on the WD player? Either out of sync from the start or just after you've fast forwarded for a few minutes? I noticed it on a couple of movies that I encoded and it kinda erked me. The same files play fine on my Philips 5990 through USB.
Just curious if anyone else has had this problem with random video files going out of sync. | ||||||
| yonidass posted 2008 Nov 23 06:58 | ||||||
| Yes, I've noticed a few Xvids playing with the audio out of sync, either after fast-forwarding or just from the start. I haven't really looked into it as far as the details of how they were encoded, but this is definitely something I've seen. And these are files that play fine on an older AVel media player I have, which is very picky about what Xvids it will play well. And of course they play fine on the computer.
For the most part this unit plays everything I've thrown at it so far and I'm happy with, but there are bugs in the current firmware, no doubt. | ||||||
| pandeyrajiv posted 2008 Nov 23 11:52 | ||||||
I have had this *exact* same problem with some Xvid files that were converted from 1080i HD programs and on one particular on I notice the audio starts to drift and gets progerssively worse. I logged a ticket on the WD Support site (this was about 3 weeks back) and even offered to FTP or snail mail the specific file to the engineers at WD but after about 20-25 exchanges back on forth on their recommendations (Which were focussed more on treating the symptom and not the true cause - the support tech was very courteous though) the recommendation I got from WD was that I should simply re-encode the file using the packaged ArcSoft encoder (or other that I may prefer) as that is the only thing the engineers are willing to do at the moment. BTW, for the record that Xvid file plays just fine on a computer with no audio drift issues. Now all that said, I do find WDTV to be a very fine product out the door and it has a lot of plus points where I dont plan on returning it, but I would prefer that WD support be a bit more hands on in trying to solve the problem when a user is willing to give them the isolated issue and the file that caused it...They could have easily seen it for themselves and debugged the problem at their end. | ||||||
| cameraz posted 2008 Nov 23 15:29 | ||||||
Count me in as a user who has experienced his audio out of sync. I have a couple of Divx files that I ran through VirtualDub and saved as .avi files. They play fine on my computer, but have the audio sync problem with the WD TV player. However, if I take these same Divx files and convert them to .mov files using SUPER, they play fine on my WD TV without any audio sync issues. Hope Western Digital fixes this problem. | ||||||
| Squash posted 2008 Nov 23 18:45 | ||||||
| I think I've found a work-aound for this problem. Hopefully some of you guys can test it and see if it works for you and report back.
I had the sync problem on one AVI file. I had converted it (DGAVCIndex/Avisynth/Vdub) from a 720p AVC/AC3 MKV file into a 720x400 divx/mp3 file for playback on my Philips 5990 player (this was before I had the WD), and it played fine both on my computer and the 5990. When I tried this file on the WD, the sync gradually drifted. Vdub shows video and audio duration to be identical. The original MKV plays fine with no sync problems on the WD. One out-of-the-ordinary thing about this file was that the framerate was 24.000 fps, which I left alone when converting. I wonder if this could be related to the problem. Replaced the mp3 audio with the original AC3 and it was still out-of-sync on the WD. I opened the avi file in Avidemux, left Video and Audio on "Copy", changed "Format" to MKV, and saved it. No more sync problem on the WD, and no re-encoding involved. Note that if Avidemux says "Packed bitrstream detected. Do you want me to unpack it?", say yes. The first time I tried this I said no, and the sync was OK but video was choppy. It worked on that file, let us know if it works on others. Of course other containers might work, but MKV's the only one I've tried. Sounds like MOV will work, but Avidemux didn't have that option. All the other avi files I've played on it have had no problems. | ||||||
| pandeyrajiv posted 2008 Nov 23 21:05 | ||||||
Just so I am clear in what you are suggesting - you want us to open the problematic Xvid AVI file (the one with the sync issues) and actually have AVIDemux *change* its "format" to MKV and once you change the format in the header (of sorts) the file plays just fine - right? If that works, that would be great as the whole point of having something like WDTV *is* to not have to convert and re-encode files from various formats and be able to play stuff as is...which is why I found the WD support answer kinda lame as that was not a solution but a workaround. Will try and report back once I get the confirmation frm you. Thx | ||||||
| Squash posted 2008 Nov 23 21:38 | ||||||
| Hi, pandeyrajiv,
Yes. All it took for me was to change the container format from avi to mkv, then the sync problem disappeared on the WD. I'm thinking there may be a problem with the WD's handling of some avi files. Maybe they should hire someone from Philips to teach them how to do it. I was just curious if this would work on other people's problematic avi files, since my file had that 24.000 fps thing, which is pretty unusual, and I haven't found any other bad ones yet. Hopefully they'll clear this up in the firmware update. Thanks for trying this. It only takes a minute or so to save the new file. If you're not familiar with Avidemux, remember to give the file a .mkv extension when you save it, as Avidemux does not give file extensions automatically. | ||||||
| Inspex posted 2008 Nov 23 23:00 | ||||||
| Glad to hear I'm not the only one experiencing the audio sync issue. I don't really want to have to switch the container on all of my encodes just for the WD player, as they won't play on other DivX/XviD players if I do. I hope Western Digital stays on top of these little bugs as they are reported. Looking forward to a firmware update. | ||||||
| zoe1271 posted 2008 Nov 24 08:24 | ||||||
| I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on one of these. I originally ordered from Best Buy when they were on sale for $99. They now have it on backorder and have upped the price. So, I tried Dell.com because they had it listed for $99 - backordered again!!! My third attempt is amazon.com who also had it listed for $99. We'll see if the order actually gets filled.
I have my music library flac'd up and tagged, so I think I'll just be able to plug 'n' play music with this device. But, I'm going to start ripping my DVDs to .iso on a spare 1TB external HDD to use with the media player. I can't find anything that will tag the .iso (movie name, DVD art, year, etc.). What do you use? | ||||||
| cameraz posted 2008 Nov 24 09:44 | ||||||
Fyi, everybody, It's on sale for 100 bucks at buy.com with free shipping. http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=209975073 | ||||||
| fountainhead posted 2008 Nov 24 17:08 | ||||||
zoe, please catch up. WD should play your FLAC files just fine, but for DVD ISO (DVD in general) this player is NOT even good. The DVD playback support is atrocious. WD doesn't even claim that it's good. To your question...ISO is a container file. You can't find anything to "tag" it with metadata because there's no such thing. | ||||||
| dun4cheap posted 2008 Nov 24 17:36 | ||||||
| While more and more media players are becoming available, I still think there is room for advancement. From the popcorn player, the Buffalo Linktheater, SMC EZ Stream player, the Klegg player which there seems to be a lot of different brands of this player not to mention the Phillips DVD players with USB support, or even the DLink players. Without even having the WD version I must say that with no Lan support it automatically loses here. Whether it can play ISO dvd's, MKV files at 1080P, it flat out is not enough in my opinion.
Anyhow, I am personally tired of being teased. Its time to see an upgradeable device that supports the following: Gigga Lan and Wireless Support HDMI/SVIDEO/Component/Optical/Analog Digital Support USB/Firewire Input Support the installation of a hard drive and a combo HD/BR and DVD Rom Drive. Standard SAMBA Support without requiring special unique server software DVD/ISO Play Back MKV Support 1080P/1080I Mpeg2/Vob/Elementry Streams at High Bit Rate 25mbps (HD) WMV,WMV-HD all version/Upgradeable DivX/Xvid/MP4 Support AC3/DTS/PCM Audio While I don't use this feature, Sub Title and CC support is a must for those that do. These options are not to much to ask for, matter of fact there are a few products on the market that come close. The Buffalo Linktheater is one such device, advanced for its time, then there is the popcorn. The Klegg device was close as well, it has all the right connections and plays DVD ISO Files menus and all. But they were gone just and quickly as they showed up. Anyhow, I am just venting because the technology is there, but nobody wants to offer it all in one. So the WD box to me is just another poor attempt. Especially since it does not off so much as LAN support. | ||||||
| citanool posted 2008 Nov 24 17:46 | ||||||
| Will those problematic AVI's play fine if you only use MPEG4Modifier to unpack the bitstream? | ||||||
| Squash posted 2008 Nov 24 19:19 | ||||||
| citanool,
I used mpeg4modifier to unpack the avi later and it didn't help on my file; sync was still off on the WD. I then tried re-muxing that unpacked avi into an MKV with Avimuxgui and got good sync but jerky video (but I didn't mess around with all the MKV container settings it offers; just used the defaults). I also tried re-muxing the unpacked avi to mkv using MKVmergegui; again, good sync, but somewhat jerky, though not as bad as the avimux version. | ||||||
| festmaster posted 2008 Nov 24 22:24 | ||||||
I think you are describing the ideal media center, and after spending a lot of money trying to build the ideal HTPC, i now believe some sort of media center that is not a PC is what we really want for our big screen TV's. That being said, the WD device is not attempting to be a media center. It is a movie player. It's cheap, plays most of the formats you listed, low power, noiseless and simple. I can envision telling my wife that we have one and trying to teach her how to use it once I have a drive full of her movies attached. The popcorn hour is very nice but it is more than twice as expensive...for now. I think Western Digital has made this sector much more competitive and we will see better products as a resutl. | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2008 Nov 25 00:16 | ||||||
Exactly. That's why I bought mine. You can't find anything near this price that will do what it does. I would love to have the Buffalo wireless Link Player but not only would it cost close to $500, the courts will not allow them to sell it because of a pending lawsuit. It's been off the market because of this suit for almost two years so I don't see them being able to sell it anytime soon if at all. | ||||||
| cameraz posted 2008 Nov 25 09:01 | ||||||
Festmaster, I couldn't agree with you more. The WD TV doesn't try to be all things for all people. It's a great little movie, photo and music player. It's the best 100 bucks I've spent on a piece of electronic gear in a long time. Before, if I wanted to watch videos I've downloaded from the Web on my TV, I had to convert them and burn them to DVDs. Now I pop them into a USB drive, plug it into my WD TV, and it works! | ||||||
| dun4cheap posted 2008 Nov 25 09:56 | ||||||
| You hit my point exactly, the WD type device is nothing new but it surely is over priced. There have been external media share boxes available for as little as $30. The klegg box which was selling at Fry's for $99 was an external drive box with NDAS, LAN and plenty of audio and video connectors. I purchase 3 Buffalo Linktheater for $200 all totaling less the $99 for more functionality. Even the phillips DVD players offer similiar support for $49. The point here is are continually being teased with nothing more than a lot of repeats. The WD box should not cost more then $40 for what it really is.
Lastly, when you say that the wd box is not meant to be a medial center, this is not true. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck its a duck. I am not looking to burst anyones bubble, but it gets frustrating collecting all of these boxes that just miss being what we really need. I don't know about you, but I really want to do away with the 2 dvd players, media player, htpc and cable box and have one device sitting in my living room. (I am ready for this.) | ||||||
| pandeyrajiv posted 2008 Nov 25 10:07 | ||||||
Sorry, I am on vacation now so have not had a chance to try this changing of container to get rid of the audio drift problem...Has anyone else tried...Maybe I will have a definite answer before I get back on Sunday night to try this out | ||||||
| shadow_cruiser posted 2008 Nov 26 01:17 | ||||||
| Can someone tell me what the file character limit is for FAT32 formatted drives using the WDTV HD? | ||||||
| Squash posted 2008 Nov 26 02:49 | ||||||
| shadow_cruiser,
Probably 255. I renamed an avi by typing in the alphabet 10 times (well, cut & pasted), but Vista said the file name was too long, so I took off the last 26, for 234 characters, not counting the .avi on the end. I put it in the WD and it showed 49 characters and an ellipsis. When that title was highlited, however, the entire filename scrolled by. And it uses a proportional font, so the number of characters displayed in a non-highlited title probably depends on how wide they are. This was on a fat32 thumb drive. | ||||||
| shadow_cruiser posted 2008 Nov 26 08:58 | ||||||
| Squash,
Thanks for the response. I've had 3 Philips players with USB support and was told it wouldn't support more than 25 characters because its a fat32 limitation. I now know its a Philips limitation. My WD is on the way, can't wait to test it out | ||||||
| cameraz posted 2008 Nov 26 16:01 | ||||||
OK, guys, I tried this technique with Avidemux and it worked flawlessly. The only problem is that .mkv videos won't play on my computer, but they play great on my WD TV. | ||||||
| Squash posted 2008 Nov 26 17:10 | ||||||
| Thanks for the confirmation, cameraz.
I just opened a support ticket with WD with this info. Maybe it'll help them figure it out for a firmware update, which is rumored to be coming in January. I didn't want to submit one earlier in case it was just something peculiar to my file. | ||||||
| rkp_india posted 2008 Nov 29 10:48 | ||||||
| Okay, I used to be a collector of media includes Divx/XVID/Video CD etc. Now to decrease my complications in life. I moved from home built PCs to an IMAC and for 3 years ripping and encoding DVD's using handbrake at 2500kbps as mp4 (apple quicktime compatible). Originally I did this because I was going to use an apple TV as my SILENT HTPC box. But i hated the fact that i had to have the movies in my itunes and the hard drive was only 160GB. I bought the WD TV to play movies off passport 2.5 hard drives but i noticed some skipping that IS NOT there when i am playing these files on my Macbook and Imac. I ran a 2500kbps handbrake encode off a Sandisk Titanium 4GB cruzer and it still had a few (5-6 times) millisecond pauses. Nothing that ruined the movie but annoying to my wife. Is it the WD hardware??? which seems unlikely because the stuff you guys throw sounds more complex!. IS it the USB bus?? should i buy a faster USB key? or a faster USB hard drive? (7200 rpm non portable) -wrv | ||||||
| thinhtut posted 2008 Dec 01 17:19 | ||||||
| I don't have the player yet but I'm wondering if this player can play .FLV files downloaded from U-tube. | ||||||
| cameraz posted 2008 Dec 01 22:16 | ||||||
I don't think it can, but they can easily be converted using a program called SUPER. | ||||||
| justFuR posted 2008 Dec 01 23:54 | ||||||
| so i picked one of these up and i'm just starting to play with it...
reads off usb card reader just fine, reads from my 60gig classic ipod... but i can't get it to recognize my external hd. it's an acomdata 500gb that is usb2.0 formatted fat32. ideas? ... | ||||||
| pandeyrajiv posted 2008 Dec 03 16:31 | ||||||
Squash, you sir are a gentleman and a scholar!!! :-) I came back from my vacation and tried it and viola! The file plays perfectly with no sync issues at all. The only part AVIDemux asked me to do (when I tried to save it) was to build some audio sync info. and some other indexes (I forget the exact message as I am at work)...It did tell me I could do it later, but I chose yes anyways...But essentially all I did was kept the audio and video to "copy" (which is the default and as you suggested) and changed the container to "MKV" and saved it as a new file with a mkv extension and it worked. Now what I ought to do is - try to save it back as an AVI as well and see what this new file does...could it be that the extra indexing and other processing AVIDEmux asked me for be the reason the audio was synched up or was it the container? I want to try and isolate it by experimenting. Overall, thanks again and I sure hope they fix it via a firmware update...I also updated my open ticket with WD to tell them this solution and pointed them back to this page. | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2008 Dec 04 00:22 | ||||||
| I have a folder with 11 episodes that are 1024x576 divx/mp3 and they all play out of sync. I've spent two days trying to fix them with Goldwave, Virtualdub and Mpeg4modifier but still can't get them to play correctly.
I have copies that I had converted to 720x406 that played fine on the Philips 5990 but I had to do a lot of tweaking on them to get them to play in sync with the WD. Most of my other files play fine. I don't know what the deal is with this folder. All of these files play fine on the PC. I guess I'll have to try the MKV trick but if I have to start converting files to play with this player, it pretty much kills the reasoning why I bought this player. To play the files that I have on my PC without having to convert them to something else. Hopefully WD will fix all the problems with firmware updates. Something tells me that the reason they packaged a converter in the deal was they have no intension of fixing any problems. We'll see. | ||||||
| justFuR posted 2008 Dec 04 13:27 | ||||||
| plugged it in and then powered it up and all is well.
took about 25 minutes to index everything though. ... | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2008 Dec 04 17:43 | ||||||
| I put the troublesome HD AVI files in MKV container and all played perfect except for one which I had to fix with audio interleave in VDub.
May start putting all my HD AVI in MKV containers since they seek much better and I don't have to recode them. The HD AVI won't play in the Philips anyway. Would like to see 5.1 Windows Professional audio support. | ||||||
| xela19115 posted 2008 Dec 05 10:32 | ||||||
| I tried Avidemux to change the container on .DIVX movie into .MKV, with both Video and Audio in COPY mode. Did not do anything else to the file, no audio or video recoding and it worked flawlessly. Thanks to folks here for the advice. | ||||||
| shadow_cruiser posted 2008 Dec 06 01:49 | ||||||
25 minutes to index?. I have two 1TB drives. One is filled to the rim and took 15 seconds to index the first time and the second was 5-10 seconds which has 600gb of data. What kind of drives are you using? | ||||||
| misterbill posted 2008 Dec 06 04:50 | ||||||
| shadow_cruiser.
The question is, What kind of drives are YOU using? | ||||||
| shadow_cruiser posted 2008 Dec 06 15:19 | ||||||
| 2 Samsung Spinpoint F1 with Vantec Enclosures | ||||||
| jaxxboss posted 2008 Dec 07 15:14 | ||||||
| I feel like Im back trying to figure out how to make a vcd... Anywayzz..
Since I cant hear my mkv dts movies, is there a simple proggy that will let me convert the audio to ac3, but keep the video as is, either 1080 or 720? ID like to not have to re-encode the movie, but I will if I have to. Or I suppose i could get a cheapo dts system, but for now I just wanna try to re encode the audio. Remember, the simpler for my brain, the bettA ! | ||||||
| Squash posted 2008 Dec 07 19:51 | ||||||
| jaxxboss,
This free Audio Converter works well. I've used it on a few MKVs and it does what you want; just re-encodes the audio, video is untouched. You can download if from the link at the top of this tutorial: http://audioconverter.heartware.dk/Tutorial/ Its forum thread is here if you want more info: http://www.networkedmediatank.com/showthread.php?tid=10111 | ||||||
| jaxxboss posted 2008 Dec 07 22:12 | ||||||
| Thanx Squash
Its funny that i had downloaded this already but figured it was gonna be too technical for me, but since you recommended it I went back and .....YES, I READ THE DIRECTIONS... lol. Thanks for the kick in the 6. | ||||||
| Supreme2k posted 2008 Dec 07 23:33 | ||||||
| If you read the directions half as much as you farted, you'd be THE expert here :lol: | ||||||
| Kenwvt posted 2008 Dec 08 13:16 | ||||||
| Could someone download a smallish HD video file and tell me if it will play in the WD Media player ?
Here is the link: http://www.darylmaxwell.com/video/PW.wmv Thanks, Ken | ||||||
| Squash posted 2008 Dec 08 14:59 | ||||||
| Kenwvt,
No, it doesn't play. The WD gives this error: "Unable to play the selected file. Please refer to the user manual on how to change the file to a supported format" MediaInfo reports that your video is encoded in WMV2. According to the WD manual: "The following video file formats are supported: • MPEG 1 • MPEG 2 • MPEG 4 (ASP, AVC HD/H.264) • WMV9 • AVI • Xvid • DVR-MS • MKV • DAT (VCD/SVCD)" I'd imagine that the error message is pointing towards re-encoding the file using their supplied converter program. | ||||||
| cameraz posted 2008 Dec 08 16:57 | ||||||
| What is the best HD format?
Sorry if this is the wrong forum for this question, but many of you guys seem so knowledgeable. If I am going to have to convert my HD videos to play on my WD Media Player, I would like to optimize them all to the best format. I did convert some of my Divx videos to .mov format, but some people have said that's not the best way to go. (The Divx files, by the way, would not play as is on the WD, so I had to convert them anyway.) I'm looking for the best quality here, and am not necessarily concerned about size of the files. Thanks. | ||||||
| pippas posted 2008 Dec 08 17:39 | ||||||
Doesn't play here either - Procoder says it's wmv2, and encoded at 15fps -not sure if it's the wmv2 bit, or the 15fps that the WD doesn't like. | ||||||
| jaxxboss posted 2008 Dec 08 20:34 | ||||||
Aweee, you remembered. :) | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2008 Dec 09 05:21 | ||||||
Thanks for the link. Blue Oyster Cult was my favorite band in the 70s'. Saw them 3 times in Tulsa in 74' and 75' and in 1980 they were rained out at the Black and Blue tour in Phoenix after Blackfoot and Black Sabbath (Ronnie James Dio). Sabbath ended the concert with a lightning show and cannons. | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2008 Dec 09 05:42 | ||||||
Not sure why you're having problems with the divx files. Did you try using avidemux to put them in a MKV container? All of my divx files play (after changing extension to avi) but a handful played out of sync so I put them in MKV containers and they all play fine. If I had to recode them then I would find a different player since I have probably a thousand divx files. I thought you said the Virtualdub trick of direct stream copying worked. I would try Mpeg4modifier on troublesome files also. | ||||||
| Squash posted 2008 Dec 09 05:56 | ||||||
| cameraz,
I made a sample .divx file using the Divx Converter, and it didn't even show up on the WD's menu. When I renamed the extension to .avi, it played back fine. I didn't use any of the "Ultra Divx" features like chapters and menus, however, so that might not work for you. .divx containers (DMF, or Divx Media Format) never really caught on, and the Divx folks are moving on to MKV as the container for their next generation encoder. The .divx files are basically AVIs with some new extensions. Conversion should be avoided if possible due to quality loss; sometimes you can get around it by just renaming the extension, or by copying the audio and video into an different format (container). If you have to convert something in order to play it on the WD, AVC/x264 in MKV seems to be pretty trouble-free in the WD and offers a good picture-quality to filesize ratio. MP4 is another format (container) option, but until very recently did not support AC3 (Dolby) audio, which many video files contain, and playback devices haven't yet updated to reflect the new AC3 support in MP4. The WD doesn't play AC3 in mp4, I've tried it. But you might want to use MP4 if you have some other playback device that uses it. I don't, so I generally use either mkv or avi. Avi is old and dated, but widely supported on many devices. There's lots of guides here on conversion programs and how to use them in the "Guides" section. Avidemux is good and doesn't install a bunch of other apps on your computer. Here's a good guide for it: http://forum.videohelp.com/topic357763.html By the way, I noticed in one of your earlier posts you said you couldn't play MKVs on your computer. KMPlayer, MPCHC, or VLC should play them fine. Or you can install Haali Media Splitter and play them back through WMP, but you'll probably also need to enable a directshow x264 decoder via ffdshow or somesuch. | ||||||
| cameraz posted 2008 Dec 09 07:52 | ||||||
DarrellS: Yes, I did try avidemux and it worked fine. But that was not the focus of my question. I only wanted to know if I have to convert an HD video file, which format is best (quality-wise, that is)? I'm kind of a noob when it comes to formats, containers, etc. | ||||||
| cameraz posted 2008 Dec 09 07:55 | ||||||
Squash, Thanks for your response. You answered my question. See my reply to DarrellS above. | ||||||
| FulciLives posted 2008 Dec 09 10:20 | ||||||
| Somewhere in this thread I posted a link to a 1080p M2TS file. The video is H.264 and the audio is 5.1 640kbps AC-3 audio. At least one person said it played on the WD (which I don't have) so I just wanted to add that M2TS is always an option. Note that such files work natively on the PS3 which is why I make them sometimes (I have a PS3).
In short I am suggesting that M2TS is a good format for H.264 video and AC-3 audio. tsMuxeR ... a MS Windows program ... can create M2TS files. This program does no encoding or transcoding ... it simply muxes existing H.264 and AC-3 into M2TS. - John "FulciLives" Coleman | ||||||
| zoe1271 posted 2008 Dec 09 15:02 | ||||||
| I've tried this thing and it's great. The FLAC playback is fine. The GUI could be better, but it gets the job done. As for video, I've ripped DVDs in .iso format and a couple Blu-Ray discs in .m2ts. It played all files without a hitch until two days ago. I simply reset the system to factory defaults and it's all good. Hopefully it stays that way.
I have it connected to a Sony Bravia 46" LCD via HDMI. The audio is connected to the "optical in" in my receiver. I have the audio set to "digital" and the video output set to "1080p 60hz". The Blu-Ray rips look and sound absolutely phenomenal. But, each rip is anywhere from 15-20GB. The DVDs are good too, except the 4x3 full screen. All 16x9 aspect ratio DVDs are fine, but 4x3 shows up as a big square in the middle of the screen. Maybe if I change the settings on the WD from widescreen to normal when playing a 4x3 DVD it will resolve the problem. Duh...I just thought of that now. I wish it would display artwork when in thumbnail view similar to windows. Since I can't tag .iso or .m2ts, I put the artwork in each folder as a "folder.jpg" file. Anyway, I think it's a good buy but hope that firmware updates will provide noticeable improvements. | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2008 Dec 09 16:05 | ||||||
If that wasn't the focus of your question then you should've left it out of your post. You've made numerous posts about divx files not playing for you and having to convert to a different format. If all you wanted to know was the best format to convert to and not how to get your files to play on the WD then yes, you probably should've made a new thread or at least made it clear that your divx problems were solved and you only wanted to know what the best format was for video storage. Just like any other "best", you'll get many different answers depending on the criteria. | ||||||
| cameraz posted 2008 Dec 09 16:35 | ||||||
I included that extra bit of information (in parenthese) to let people know my experiences so they would not have to scroll back and read my previous posts. Thanks again for your reply, but you don't need to get hot under the collar about it. This is a forum, after all. Sorry if we don't all live by your rules. | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2008 Dec 09 17:24 | ||||||
This is a video help forum. If you want people's help, you'll have to learn not to be a smarta$$ ahole. Don't worry, you'll get no more replies from me. | ||||||
| FulciLives posted 2008 Dec 10 01:02 | ||||||
| For the record I didn't care for his shit ass response either.
- John "FulciLives" Coleman | ||||||
| cameraz posted 2008 Dec 10 07:32 | ||||||
I presume you're referring to DarrellS. I merely asked a legitimate question and was given a lecture for including too much information in my post. Sorry if you or anybody else was offended, my response was not directed at you. | ||||||
| zoe1271 posted 2008 Dec 10 08:41 | ||||||
| I'm having some trouble with TV DVDs. Because the WD Player does not support chapters, I thought I would just rip each episode as a separate .iso and put it on my USB HDD. But, the media player won't play them. Each episode was approx. 18-24 minutes. I ripped them from the DVD with DVDFab's "Custom" mode and saved them as .iso's. None of them played. However, a 30 minute bonus feature ripped to .iso played fine using the same method. All the DVD movies ripped to .iso play fine. I chose .iso because I do not want to lose quality.
Any suggestions? | ||||||
| FulciLives posted 2008 Dec 10 09:56 | ||||||
Actually I was referring to you and agreeing with DarrellS 8) - John "FulciLives" Coleman | ||||||
| jaxxboss posted 2008 Dec 12 23:37 | ||||||
| I farted | ||||||
| Tom P posted 2008 Dec 14 04:18 | ||||||
| Is there a way to convert the Format profile : High@L5.1 to L4.1? Total newb here but from what I have gathered this is stopping proper playback on the WD TV.
Thanks for the tip on MKV audio converter. That has worked well converting the DTS. I also Dl'd mkvmerge which seems to allow me to easily strip stuff from the file. I've had this little box for 3 days now and am amazed how well it works. Tp | ||||||
| Squash posted 2008 Dec 14 13:18 | ||||||
| Tom P,
The problem is not with the 5.1 level. The WD will play back videos that claim to be level 5.1 with no problem (it has for me, anyway). Certain other applications/devices, such as Cyberlink's decoder or the PS3, DO require the level_IDC be set to 4.1 (unless this has changed recently). Changing the level can be done with h264info assuming the encoding parameters of the file do not in fact exceed level 4.1. This works great on a lot of 720p files, not so much on 1080p. What is screwing up the playback of your file is the number of reference frames. Playback of AVC files on the WD seems to be limited by the size of the Decoded Picture Buffer implemented in the WD. This DPB size appears to match the upper limit of the HDDVD/Bluray level 4.1 standard: 1920 X 1280 X 4 ref frames = 8,294,400 (plus about 50% extra for other stuff). I have seen a few exceptions to this rule posted in other forums, though. One was 1920x800x 6 ref frames = 9,216,000. The others were a couple of 1280x720 files with a large number of ref frames. Maybe some of the overhead in the DPB was able to be allocated in these cases, I don't know. Your computer's software player can set any buffer size it wants, so playback won't be a problem there. The only fix that I know of for your file would be to re-encode with 4 ref frames or at a lower resolution. But I could be wrong. If you want to try the level change, instructions are here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=12680502#post12680502 Higher reference frames apparently only offer a significant advantage if the source material is highly repetitive, like anime. For live-action video, anything outside the limits is pretty much a waste. Hopefully more people will become educated about this, and how it affects playback on stand-alone devices. More info, if you're interested: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=12704139#post12704139 http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=12728994#post12728994 And welcome to Videohelp. | ||||||
| FulciLives posted 2008 Dec 14 13:35 | ||||||
| I have a PS3 and have run across H.264 video files that say "Level 5.1" and when you change it to "Level 4.1" it is an "iffy" thing as sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
My understanding is that DXVA calls for 3 reference frames and when using the PS3 / XBOX 360 mode in XVID4PSP you get 3 reference frames. That's the program I mostly use but I have used MeGUI a couple of times and I think it also did 3 reference frames. However like I said I have downloaded some with more than 3 reference frames and some of those have worked ... some did not work. This even when having changed to "Level 4.1" If you have a MKV with H.264 video and AC-3 audio with no need of subtitles then just use tsMuxeR to create a M2TS file. This works with the WD media player and tsMuxeR can change the profile to Level 4.1 if need be. Such files also work on the PS3. Assuming there aren't too many reference frames etc. - John "FulciLives" Coleman | ||||||
| Tom P posted 2008 Dec 15 03:19 | ||||||
| Well I'm getting an education here. I spent most of the day playing with the files. Last week I didn't know what this MKV container thing was all about but now I think I am getting a bit of a handle on it. I went through a lot of processing but never had any success. When I reduced the ref frames to 4 and set it to 4.1 all I would get was a mostly green screen. Some of the MKV's have up to 8 ref frames in them. If these files were once on a BD they were encoded @ level 4.1 with 4 reference frames? Is that the standard? | ||||||
| VoodooEvil posted 2008 Dec 16 07:06 | ||||||
| Hello.
People have posted that they are capable of playing mt2s files. I am able to isolate the main movie off my blu-ray movie, but can not get wd player to play it. any ideas... thanks joe | ||||||
| Squash posted 2008 Dec 16 09:01 | ||||||
| VoodooEvil,
Check with mediainfo to see if the video is VC-1. The WD doesn't support VC-1. There's been some speculation that it might support it in the future, as the WD's chipset is the same as that in the Popcorn Hour player, which is capable of VC-1 playback. There are several posts around here about converting VC-1 if you have to, but I've never done it. | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2008 Dec 16 09:48 | ||||||
| Rename .M2TS file to .MTS? Remux with TSMuxer? | ||||||
| damorsoft posted 2008 Dec 18 21:54 | ||||||
| :?: :?: I am still wondering, can you plug an external
DVD player (USB) into this device and play MKV files from DVD? Perplexed | ||||||
| Tom P posted 2008 Dec 22 00:48 | ||||||
| From info gathered on the av science forum dvd drives are not supported. | ||||||
| jbaruch76 posted 2008 Dec 22 12:25 | ||||||
| ok, so i am having a couple problems with my player that are ruining my movie viewing. first, i am running a fantom 1 tb external drive, i believe there is a wd caviar drive inside and it takes close to an hour to index everything, but when i go through my videos (very slowly, ~8 seconds per button press) they are all there. is there some way to make it stop scanning my drive? it is very frustrating because I am constantly putting new content on the drive and then every time I have to wait again. Second, i have many mkv files and only a couple of them work without any problems. most of them are just very pixelated, then it will jump to being fine and then as the video moves again it becomes more pixelated. it is unwatchable. or, there is no sound, which i assume is because it is dts audio whcih needs to be converted to ac3, so i don't really need help there, but the other thing is very frustrating. and none of my wmv files work, does this not support wmv? they were made to be played with the xbox 360, where they do work fine, but my xbox just broke so i cant' use them anymore. if anyone can help, thanks. | ||||||
| Squash posted 2008 Dec 22 18:50 | ||||||
| The new firmware has been posted:
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=1001&lang=en Looks like they've fixed the playback issues with MKV files that exceeded the 1920x1080x 4 reference frame limits. I'm able to play several files now that would not play using the old firmware, one of which is 1920x1040x8 ref frames, high profile at 5.1. Also, support for many more subtitle formats, plays embedded subs in MKVs, MKV chapter support, better playback-navigation through files, and a couple dozen other things. Looks pretty good so far. | ||||||
| festmaster posted 2008 Dec 22 21:31 | ||||||
But it doesn't look like they have added VC1 support yet. That's a shame as HD-DVD's can be bought for $5-10 on Amazon and Frye's. For the brave you can convert HD-DVD to H.264 with evodemux and Ripbot264, but on my dedicated P4 3.0GH machine it takes about 75 hours. | ||||||
| Squash posted 2008 Dec 22 22:20 | ||||||
| There are people at avsforum saying that it does now support VC-1. I do not have any samples to test.
If this is indeed true, you'd think WD would have mentioned it in the firmware's release notes. Then again, they didn't mention the fix to the reference frame limit, either. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=15361610#post15361610 http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=15361243#post15361243 Edit: I just downloaded a 1440x576 sample VC-1 file from http://samples.mplayerhq.hu/V-codecs/WVC1/ Played back with no problems. Whether that's directly comparable to what's used on an HD-DVD, I don't know. | ||||||
| festmaster posted 2008 Dec 23 09:36 | ||||||
| Sure enough, VC-1 now works. I tested a HD-DVD rip of Casino. For some reason, I can only get it to work in a .m2ts container and not a .mkv. That's not a big deal and I am delighted with this improvement. | ||||||
| Kinkkujuusto posted 2008 Dec 23 20:08 | ||||||
| Can I connect this to my home thearter system?
Picture would go by hdmi to the video projector and sounds by rca to my amplifier. | ||||||
| Supreme2k posted 2008 Dec 23 20:20 | ||||||
| Kinkkujuusto,
yes Also, the new firmware kicks ass! It was already a prtty cool little gizmo, but with all the quirks ironed out, it's even better. Love the chapters in mkv, too. | ||||||
| zoe1271 posted 2008 Dec 27 11:32 | ||||||
| Any tips on playing episodic dvds on this? It won't play individual episodes that are in iso format. | ||||||
| TBoneit posted 2008 Dec 27 20:28 | ||||||
| I have to agree, I just updated the F/W. The ability to jump 10 minutes per click, Great!
It also seemed to play the wmv's and mp4's I tested it with better. I liked it before and now it's even better. It looks like the quirks are fixed. I am so glad I managed to score one the first week when BB had them for $99. I got the last in that BB store and from their website the last in my area at that time. | ||||||
| Supreme2k posted 2008 Dec 27 21:43 | ||||||
I've been using Handbrake to mp4, using batch mode. You can then put them all in a folder and name & play them sequentially. | ||||||
| newnews posted 2008 Dec 29 03:41 | ||||||
| Any one know if it supports idx/sub and Xsub? | ||||||
| olegeiser posted 2008 Dec 30 20:14 | ||||||
| But why oh why didn't they incorporate a dvd/cd drive? | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2008 Dec 30 20:17 | ||||||
| To avoid having to get a CSS license. And probably size too. | ||||||
| cameraz posted 2008 Dec 30 21:23 | ||||||
| I just installed the new firmware, and I have good news and bad news. The WD HDTV now plays my Divx videos, something it wouldn't do before. But, when I was playing a .mov video, I tried fast-forwarding it. When I resumed play, the video was extremely choppy and generally unwatchable. I don't know if this was just a bad file, or what.
Also, I was not happy to see that when I powered the WD HDTV off, my USB drive remained powered. I hope they fix this with the next firmware release. Overall, however, fixing the Divx issue makes this a good upgrade. | ||||||
| Supreme2k posted 2008 Dec 30 22:41 | ||||||
| Some of the problems are due to user error or lack of information.
I have several mov files, self encoded, that work without any problems. I also have a few downloaded from the net that give me problems even when played on my PC. I have found that only "smart" drives will power down correctly. I have a WD passport that works fine, but the old drive from my laptop that I put in an external enclosure doesn't power down unless I eject it first. Another feature that I'm happy about is the chapter support for mkv files. Makes it much easier to move to the wanted parts on a file. That's in addition to the already included "resume" feature. | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2008 Dec 30 22:53 | ||||||
Couldn't you just rename them from .DIVX to .AVI? .DIVX is just a .AVI with some extensions to support chapters, menus, etc. | ||||||
| cameraz posted 2008 Dec 31 07:46 | ||||||
Yes. I have done that in the past and it works (sometimes). But I have tons of Divx videos and now I can play them as is. | ||||||
| cameraz posted 2008 Dec 31 12:00 | ||||||
I am using Sandisk USB thumbdrives. But I plan to get a 500 GB Passport. | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2009 Jan 01 03:18 | ||||||
| I've seen a few posts that say this player will play VOBs but if I try to play a VOB, it renders the player unusable. No files on the drive will play after I try and play a VOB and I have to reset the player to factory settings and fiddle with both the player and the external drive to get it to read the drive and play my files again.
Has anyone else been able to play VOBs? I also saw mention of playing ISO files in this thread. Can anyone else confirm this? | ||||||
| SquirrelXss posted 2009 Jan 01 07:39 | ||||||
| I love my player, its the best thing since sliced bread, the wheel, FTA, combined! | ||||||
| JjMon posted 2009 Jan 02 21:27 | ||||||
| Just a quick ?, Are we able to hook a USB hub to the unit and plug in hard drives to the hub? I have purchased 1 of these unit and hasn't come in yet. I'd thought to ask to see if anyone has tried it. thanks | ||||||
| TBoneit posted 2009 Jan 03 11:33 | ||||||
I've seen the same .mov issue with some .mp4 files. It seems to depend on where I hit play when fast forwarding. ff and play again may or may not return to proper play, it dpends again where it is in the file when I hit play.
I play .vobs with one. They play better with the firmware update. My last problem with vobs happens on some music video discs I made. I need to cut them so that each video is seperate and I don't have to fast forward through them. | ||||||
| TBoneit posted 2009 Jan 03 11:35 | ||||||
MY quick guess not having tryd is that it won't work. I'd bet that the unit can only handle 2 hard drives. NTFS support is nice so that I don't have to break things down under 4Gb now. | ||||||
| JjMon posted 2009 Jan 03 23:59 | ||||||
| GREAT NEWS! I plugged in a powered USB hub and plugged 2 drives in the hub and the unit saw both of them, depending on what usb port you put them on is where they listed the drives. For instance i plugged the hub on the side (Port 1 on the unit) and went to Video->Folders-> and picked USB 1 and there lied the 2 drives, I pick 1 just to see if it would work and it went in and listed my movies i stored on it, pressed play and it started the movie. YAY! I love this device. Now to try it with more than 2 drives... Just shared my finding to everyone who owns the unit. | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 Jan 04 00:02 | ||||||
Nice! Thanks for the report. | ||||||
| kursed posted 2009 Jan 04 13:24 | ||||||
| I'm currently using WDAVN00BN version of WDTV, which is running firmware version: 1.00.01. The one that it came with.
Now, I just noticed that a new firmware has been released for this product on WD's website. I've since downloaded it, put in a hdd following the instructions provided. Now, after connecting the hdd with my tv, I can't seem to find the 'Firmware Upgrade' option in the settings tab. As it's being depicted on WD's website. The only relevant option that I can find is 'System Settings' but that too doesn't feature anything pertaining to a firmware upgrade. Can you folks help me with this issue? | ||||||
| Supreme2k posted 2009 Jan 04 16:41 | ||||||
| If you put it in the root of the drive, it should find the new firmware immediately and ask you if you want to upgrade. | ||||||
| rusky_g posted 2009 Jan 04 17:46 | ||||||
| Hi guys
Just ordered one of these which I am planning to use for watching on a 32" HD TV. Most of my films are in MKV .x264 (some of which have DTS or AC3 in the file name) I have no audio receiver so I will be using the HDMI for picture and the red / white RCA's for audio running straight in my TV's RCA inputs. My question is will this be ok? I've read a few comments about people having problems with lack of sound on some MKV's? | ||||||
| glenmike posted 2009 Jan 04 18:30 | ||||||
| I just played a 1.09 GB file from(http://www.eztv.it/frontpage.php) in MKV, and using only an HDMI cable the file played perfect audio. I don't think you need the red & white cables at all. HDMI sends both the audio and video. | ||||||
| rusky_g posted 2009 Jan 04 18:40 | ||||||
| Wow I thought HDMI was picture only...thanks Glenmike that sounds promising, I'm not fussed about multichannel audio so that's cool | ||||||
| JjMon posted 2009 Jan 04 18:43 | ||||||
While playing aroung with this unit i noticed it will not decode DTS threw the Red-White Plugs only ac3, pcm, mp3 ...ect. Sry | ||||||
| rusky_g posted 2009 Jan 04 19:14 | ||||||
| Thanks, just going through my collection to see if I can find AC3 versions of my DTS titles :) | ||||||
| Supreme2k posted 2009 Jan 04 20:43 | ||||||
| rusky_g,
Most questions about specifics can be found in the glossary, linked on the left. HDMI, for example. | ||||||
| rusky_g posted 2009 Jan 04 20:49 | ||||||
| Thanks man | ||||||
| kursed posted 2009 Jan 04 21:10 | ||||||
| ||||||
| festmaster posted 2009 Jan 04 21:22 | ||||||
Try using a flash drive that has nothing but the firmware package on it. Large hard drives with the firmware upgrade are not recognized, which ironically is fixed in the very latest firmware. | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2009 Jan 05 00:22 | ||||||
You need to put the wdtv.bin and wdtv.ver files in the root folder of a USB drive. If you put the WDTV_FW_1_01_01 folder in root folder, it can't see the files. That's what the instructions say to do and it worked for me. To update the firmware: 1. Go to http://support.wdc.com and download the latest firmware update compressed file for your Media Player. 2. Click "Downloads" then the product name (or photo). 3. Extract the two files (.BIN and .VER files) to the root folder of a portable USB drive. 4. Connect the USB drive to the HD media player's USB port. 5. Press HOME, and then select the Settings bar. 6. Select the firmware upgrade icon, and then press ENTER. 7. You are prompted to perform the firmware upgrade. 8. Select OK on the firmware update prompt, and then press ENTER. This will restart the system. 9. After restarting, the system automatically enters firmware upgrade mode. 10. Once the update process is completed, the HD media player will restart again. 11. Once the HD media player restarts, the new firmware is automatically loaded. | ||||||
| djljr88 posted 2009 Jan 06 22:59 | ||||||
Try turning "ON" the Media Library, under Setting/System/Media Library -> ON Then plug in your drive with the firmware in the root directory. This will scan your media and can give you the option of upgrading it. | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2009 Jan 07 21:46 | ||||||
| Anyone able to view subs? I've tried both Vobs and .divx with subs and neither can see them. The manual says it can play .srt subs if they have the same name as the avi and are in the same folder but says nothing about playing subs in VOBs or MPEGs. | ||||||
| misterbill posted 2009 Jan 07 21:50 | ||||||
| I view subs in VOB and ISO. | ||||||
| njsges posted 2009 Jan 07 22:29 | ||||||
| I am having trouble playing audio. The video plays great on the iso and mpeg files, but the mkv files will not play audio. I have tried stereo and digital settings via rca and digital, all with no luck. The two mkv files are xxxxblu720p.mkv and xxxxblu1080p.mkv. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you very much!! | ||||||
| JjMon posted 2009 Jan 08 13:06 | ||||||
guys i may have found a way to tag mp4's properly, ill give more info when i find a faster way of doing it and being able to add AC3/DTS to mp4's. Have a look below
Keep in mind these are files not folders. :) | ||||||
| rusky_g posted 2009 Jan 08 14:55 | ||||||
| Well...
It got delivered today at work, picked up an 8gb usb stick on the way home which I reformatted to NTFS, loaded up an 720p rip of B**k To The F*t*r* and an HD TV episode of K*ight R*der 2008 all I can say is wow....exactly the solution I wanted, cannot believe how clear the picture is, highly recommended. | ||||||
| rusky_g posted 2009 Jan 08 14:57 | ||||||
Do the MKV files have DTS in the title? If so, that will be why. Either acquire the non DTS rip or change the audio format on the existing rip. | ||||||
| Supreme2k posted 2009 Jan 08 17:14 | ||||||
| This must be be ONE HELL of a machine, if it can the long dead like njsges (8 years!!!) back to posting :shock: :shock: :shock:
Seriously though, what with these people who have been here 5-8 years and have under 10 posts? Just a bunch of info leeches. On this page alone, there's JjMon, misterbill and glennmike :roll: ----------------------------------------- Unless you have your WD TV running through a surround amp optical input, you will not get sound from a DTS mkv (which is pretty much where all the sound problems occur). | ||||||
| JjMon posted 2009 Jan 08 18:13 | ||||||
Well i thought i would like to share what i have found on the MP4 factor of adding cover arts to mp4, i did not leech anything. who cares if i have been a member for 5-8 years and posted under 10 posts? and yes most of us do (or at least i do) own a digital receiver to output DTS. Supreme2k, I'm sorry did I offend you in anyway? i also sorry that you cannot post anything nicely. | ||||||
| Supreme2k posted 2009 Jan 08 20:45 | ||||||
Apology accepted (but don't let it happen again). And "sharing" what you have found? You didn't share shit! It would have been more helpful to actually say that you can batch tag mp4 files with something like MetaX which automatically gathers the info from the web (IMDB, Amazon, etc.) And yes, it matters how much you post (ie. participate). In this case, active participation would have shown you to actually post your information/discovery, rather than merely alluding to it. | ||||||
| JjMon posted 2009 Jan 08 21:40 | ||||||
| Supreme2k,
Ok I got it, sry. Now can we all just get along. People on the internet was having a hard time on muxing to mp4 correctly to play on this device for instance YAMB, it would mux the files but will not play on the WD TV, I have found that AVIDemux, meGUI w/mp4box would mux it and play on the unit. Now how I put the cover art on the mp4 is using Tag&Rename. This portion of the forum is the only forum that i have visited since i had purchased the device till today. Like I said sry to any of the Site Members that i may have offended. Piece out. | ||||||
| Drfe posted 2009 Jan 09 12:18 | ||||||
| Hia,
I had some problems with the firmware upgrade. My WD TV just didnt find the files from my USB disk. Then I found out that the filename extensions must be capital letters. So when you have the files to the root of your USB disk make sure the files are named: wdtv.VER wdtv.BIN I hope this helps. | ||||||
| emagon4523 posted 2009 Jan 09 14:30 | ||||||
| wow is this really a $99 FLAC player?
i think i might have just fallen in love. anyone using one of these with HDMI to the TV and the TOS link to their receiver to play flac? quality and performace what you expect? | ||||||
| rusky_g posted 2009 Jan 12 19:08 | ||||||
| Hey guys, anyone else have a problem with this file?
N***t.at.the.M*seum.2006.Blu-ray.720p.DTS.x264-CtrlHD The picture is blocking up, is it because of the DTS track? I'm just using the HDMI for sound and picture and was just testing this for video quality (I knew there would be no sound) however the picture was breaking up quite bad! Also the sample clip from the same film (but 1080p version) had the same problem sector7-nightatmuseum.1080p-sample You are in breach of the forum rules and are being issued with a formal warning. VideoHelp is not the right place for help with illegal downloads. Please read the rules again. / Moderator mats.hogberg | ||||||
| rusky_g posted 2009 Jan 12 19:19 | ||||||
| Link to the second file: http://rapidshare.com/files/182630461/sector7-nightatmuseum.1080p ... e.mkv.html | ||||||
| JjMon posted 2009 Jan 12 21:44 | ||||||
File played just fine on my WDTV, Perhaps Firmware upgrade? i'm running version 1.01.02 from WD site | ||||||
| Supreme2k posted 2009 Jan 12 23:22 | ||||||
| It probably has trouble with files that you get from bittorrent that you didn't buy.
Try buying the Blu-ray or DVD. Less trouble that way.  | ||||||
| mats.hogberg posted 2009 Jan 13 01:30 | ||||||
| <edit> | ||||||
| rusky_g posted 2009 Jan 13 01:49 | ||||||
| Thanks JjMon will give it a try | ||||||
| rusky_g posted 2009 Jan 13 01:50 | ||||||
:o | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 Jan 13 06:40 | ||||||
| The 50 MB sample files shows a running time of 67 seconds but every player I tried stopped playing at 32 seconds. | ||||||
| rusky_g posted 2009 Jan 13 12:24 | ||||||
| Hi guys
Firmware now upgraded to .02, the latest on the WD site 2 things: 1) The clips now run fine picture wise 2) A couple seem quieter in terms of audio volume? Anyone notice this? Thanks Russ | ||||||
| njsges posted 2009 Jan 13 13:21 | ||||||
| I have tried playing both .iso's and .vob's with no success. I can't get them to show in my list of files. Any suggestions? I have the most current firmware on the WD TV. Thanks for any help or suggestions.
NJ | ||||||
| JjMon posted 2009 Jan 13 13:27 | ||||||
| rusky_g,
I haven't notice it at all, but then again most movies with the original AC3 audio is low anyways. I have been converting my originals to MKV (H264+AAC 5.1 Audio) with HandBreak and they look great! I quit using MP4 cause the chapter support did not work. | ||||||
| rusky_g posted 2009 Jan 13 14:12 | ||||||
| Thanks J
The audio thing is sorted now, not sure what is was lol! | ||||||
| jaxxboss posted 2009 Jan 13 14:44 | ||||||
| Has anyone watched a full blue ray 25 gb + or - ( or just the video parts of the BR files) compared to its compressed 8- 10 gb version? If so, whats the quality diference if any? | ||||||
| JjMon posted 2009 Jan 13 14:57 | ||||||
| jaxxboss,
Haven't tried any BD cause i haven't got a bd drive, but I am going to try a HD-DVD movie as soon as i can cause i do have a HD-DVD USB 360 drive :) , soon as i try it i can post a replay on how it did with the unit. | ||||||
| Supreme2k posted 2009 Jan 13 15:07 | ||||||
| From what I've tested, full BR vs. mkv is even less difference than a very well done xvid from a DVD source (I mean well done as in someone who cares, not a torrenter). | ||||||
| rusky_g posted 2009 Jan 14 19:11 | ||||||
| When playing files, are people leaving the video output set to automatic or are there any instances where you are manually selecting to 720, 1080, 50hz etc?
So far I have just been using the Automatic preset whether I'm playing a 720p or 1080p file (my TV is a 32" 1080p model) Thanks | ||||||
| JjMon posted 2009 Jan 15 09:38 | ||||||
| I manually set my output, even though it does a good job detecting your output resolution. | ||||||
| rusky_g posted 2009 Jan 15 11:33 | ||||||
| Thanks J | ||||||
| cameraz posted 2009 Jan 15 21:37 | ||||||
| The latest issue of MaximumPC magazine has a review of the WD HDTV. They liked it and rated it 8 out of 10. | ||||||
| festmaster posted 2009 Jan 16 22:06 | ||||||
| Seagate announced their version of the WDTV at CES:
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=seaga ... ee0a0aRCRD Their advantage seems to be that it has a custom slot to tuck a Free Agent Go drive into. The disadvantage is that is uses component rather than HDMI for HD output. Pricing will be in line with the WDTV. I am delighted to hear there will be competition in this segment. I love my WDTV and would like to install a couple more in my house. The more companies that produce similar products, the better and cheaper they will be. | ||||||
| zoe1271 posted 2009 Jan 17 13:26 | ||||||
| The new firmware still doesn't help with playback of episodic DVD back-ups. Because the WD-TV does not support menus or chapters, I want to rip each episode to my HDD as a separate video file. I've tried ISO and VOB with no success. Any suggestions? | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 Jan 17 13:39 | ||||||
VOB2MPEG | ||||||
| JjMon posted 2009 Jan 17 13:43 | ||||||
| zoe1271,
are you willing to try and re-encode to a different format? | ||||||
| zoe1271 posted 2009 Jan 17 13:52 | ||||||
| I'm open to a different format, but I don't want to lose quality. | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 Jan 17 14:06 | ||||||
| VOB2MPEG will remux each episode into an MPG file. No loss of quality. Easy as cake. | ||||||
| zoe1271 posted 2009 Jan 17 14:08 | ||||||
Thanks for the suggestion! I'll give it a try... | ||||||
| zoe1271 posted 2009 Jan 17 17:27 | ||||||
| I'm still fiddling with VOB2MPG. But, I noticed that the WDTV had no problem playing an ISO of a pilot episode that was approx. 44 minutes long. It won't play ISO's of regular episodes that are 21-24 minutes. | ||||||
| MeDiCo_BrUjO posted 2009 Jan 19 08:03 | ||||||
Are you going to take your piece out???? 
Just pulling your leg mate. :wink: | ||||||
| JjMon posted 2009 Jan 19 11:26 | ||||||
| :box: :hump: LOL | ||||||
| meeya posted 2009 Jan 20 04:06 | ||||||
| Hi Guys,
I would like to know what's really going on here with the Subs (SRT) i am viewing. some video able to played out the subs, some not. (even though the srt are the same name with video file) any idea? :?: :? | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 Jan 20 07:28 | ||||||
| Just a guess -- maybe the SRT files that don't display are Unicode, not ASCII text? | ||||||
| JjMon posted 2009 Jan 20 17:15 | ||||||
| I managed to put a relay on the (WDAVN00BN) Western Digital HDMI USB Media Player to power on/off my 7-port USB hub and my (external/internal) Hard drives. Check the video below...
Click here to watch the video More to come. 
Picture above is where i attached the relay to. The pin of the LED is where the ground of the relay is soldered to, and the last pin of the connector is where the Positive of the relay is connected to. :D Sorry about the quality of the video, I was actually using a picture camera to take the video. :wink: | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 Jan 20 17:38 | ||||||
| For those not wanting to rip their new media player apart a smart power switch might work:
http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Strip-SCG3-049418906-Autoswitching/dp/B000P1QJXQ/ | ||||||
| RabidDog posted 2009 Jan 25 05:46 | ||||||
| Just looking at that Seagate jobby the salesman *cough* mentioned. It looks like its a very similar concept ..except there IS mention of divx but NO mention of hdmi..and I have to say the remote control looks awkward...I would get the wd simply for the better remote. Still time to change it tho | ||||||
| yoda313 posted 2009 Jan 31 08:20 | ||||||
| EDIT - Forget it. I think I got stop looking to buy new hardware. I was asking about hddvd support on the wd media player. I think I'll just hook up my 360 hddvd drive back to the 360 and use that until it dies. Then I could start rebuying my hd-dvds on bluray. Until then i'll just forget about conversion........ | ||||||
| yonidass posted 2009 Jan 31 08:52 | ||||||
| To answer a question asked a while back, the new firmware does indeed support idx/sub subtitles. I ripped some from DVD and they played fine with an MP4 ripped from the same DVD. There is also a setting now for the subtitle font size. Nice.
Also new with the firmware upgrade is support for other text encodings, such as Asian languages, presumably for file names and maybe subtitles. And video files now display the file size after the file name when browsing. Still no support for multiple audio tracks in MP4 files. | ||||||
| kiaconcepts posted 2009 Feb 05 06:14 | ||||||
| Ok I have had this thing since the 1st day, and I love it, Only thing I wish it had was Network support? Has anyone found a solution for hooking a NAS up to it? | ||||||
| luchazo posted 2009 Feb 08 15:40 | ||||||
Hi to all the WD HD TV owners or future ones! I got mine yeaterday, and I'm very impressed. I updated it to the new 01.02 firmware so it's even better now. Going to the topic on you message kiaconcepts, I'm looking for the same thing: a way to enable the WD HD TV unit in a network, so the files on the HDD can be updates without unpluging the USB hard drive from the WD HD TV. I found somewhere else that an external hard drive like the LaCie Ethernet Disk mini may do something like this, since it has concurrent access to both of its interfaces: 1) USB 2.0 2) Ethernet input http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/29790/75/ Hope this helps to find sommeone that has actually tested it with the WD HD TV. Lucho PS: Taken from the same web page (it seems a version on 1 TB is available too) Product LaCie Ethernet Disk mini V2 - 500 GB (301138U) Summary Updated version of single-drive NAS with new CPU, gigabit Ethernet and SATA drive. Available in 250GB/320GB/500GB capacities. Pros • Can be used as a NAS, external USB 2.0 drive or both • Easy to use and set up • AFP and Bonjour support for Mac users • Gigabit Ethernet with 4K and 8K Jumbo frames supported • Fast Cons • Windows network browsing problems • Relatively slow USB-connected performance • Sluggish admin interface This was added later when I found extra info on the concurrent USB/Ethernet functionality: This is the part of the review, where the hability of use both interfaces at the same time is explained. The red part I think is a blocking reason for the WD HD TV to recognize this unit as a mere USB Drive..... Hopefully someone proves me wrong.... One of the original Edmini's claims to fame is that it can be used as either a NAS or as an external USB drive and the V2 retains that feature. However, the V2 kicks it up a notch and now supports connection to both interfaces simultaneously. Note that this doesn't mean that you can combine the USB and Ethernet connections to get higher performance—only one data path per client is supported. To accomplish this trick, LaCie runs an IP network connection over USB. This, plus changing the internal drive filesystem to XFS eliminates the need to reformat the drive to the FAT32 filesystem if you want to use it as an external USB drive. So once you connect the V2 via USB, you'll find it in Network Connections, not My Computer. | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 Feb 08 16:20 | ||||||
That is why it won't work. Of course, there's no reason WD couldn't add that ability but I doubt it has it now. | ||||||
| luchazo posted 2009 Feb 08 17:21 | ||||||
Thanks! I found later a full thread where they try to get these WD units capable of network access trhu it's usb. Very techincall though.. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1100062&page=5 | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 Feb 08 17:38 | ||||||
The WD TV HD firmware source is available under GPL? That is great news! | ||||||
| mysticgohan17 posted 2009 Feb 09 01:59 | ||||||
| one cool thing i realized came with 1.01 firmware update, it now recognizes the correct DAR in mkv files so i don't have to have every 16x9 SD video encoded at a res of 640x360, etc. useful.
my favorite piece of technology ever. | ||||||
| toiday posted 2009 Feb 09 18:01 | ||||||
| No network, no internal HD? I like my Popcorn Hour much better. This box has all that and it's smaller. http://www.popcornhour.com. I share my hard drive and my Popcorn Hour can play it. No need expensive NAS or USB drive. I bought a HD and installed inside the Popcorn Hour but now I took it out and install in my PC instead. You guys should check it out.... | ||||||
| Supreme2k posted 2009 Feb 09 18:35 | ||||||
| Man, five posts in 6 years, and you have to come out of hiding to shit on this thread?!
You stupid-ass popcorn hour fanboys are so full of shit. The WD TV is a great device, and for the price, totally kicks the PH's electronic ass. Go back under your rock. | ||||||
| toiday posted 2009 Feb 09 20:02 | ||||||
You think WD TV kicks ass because it only costs haft of the PH? That's what you get, haft the hardware. Can WD TV play off the box? Can your WD TV access the internet? Or can it access your file shares? Oh, it doesn't have a NIC. Can you even install a HD internally or you just like to daisy chain it with your USB drives. Too bad. I'm sure WD TV is a good product. I just say it doesn't have enough features. And I don't even have to cuss any one out. I'm reading the previous poster who has a great idea to connect the WD TV with the LaCie so both your PC and WD can access the same share. Great idea but with PH, you can just share your PC's HD and the PH can access it. If you install an internal HD into the PH, you can turn it into your NAS device. But enough of it, check out for yourself. | ||||||
| Supreme2k posted 2009 Feb 09 20:50 | ||||||
| This whole thread is about WD TV, though. Take your PH worship somewhere else.
You're like a kid going into the Xbox forums and saying how great the Wii is, or vice-versa. I'm sure a Maserati is better than a Ford Focus, but if the forum thread is talking about the Ford, leave it at that. This thread isn't "Which Multimedia box should I get?" And why do you give a crap? You've already gone way over your post quota for this year. Enough with your freakin' commercial for the PH. Go back to sleep. | ||||||
| RabidDog posted 2009 Feb 11 23:17 | ||||||
| ||||||
| champ94 posted 2009 Feb 19 16:10 | ||||||
| I've just been told by the gru's at WD that the WDAVN00BN does not support MKV movies with DTS sound. Has anyone else experienced this problem? Is there some kind of work-around to overcome this (IMOP) overwhelming problem?
Other that this MAJOR problem it's a great little piece of equipment. | ||||||
| JjMon posted 2009 Feb 19 16:28 | ||||||
| The only way as of now is you need a DTS receiver capable of decoding DTS. File will play, but will not have audio without a receiver. :( | ||||||
| yoda313 posted 2009 Feb 22 12:19 | ||||||
| Ok I finally broke down and bought the wd media player.
It is fantastic! I have two important questions that I'm sure have been covered but will take some time to sort through. 1 - how do you rip a dvd in its original uncompressed quality and maintain 5.1 surround sound so the wd media player will play it? - I did a test rip of a dvd to .vob without compression. It did see the vob files on the drive but did not play them. I don't want to convert unless I have to. I also want to keep the 5.1 surround. EDIT - I did read on the front page of the thread that it will play a dvd iso rip. I am attempting that now with a dvd. Hopefully that will do it and save any unneccessary conversions. 2 - Now that this has mkv support unlike the xbxo 360 or ps3 what is the best way to convert bluray and hd-dvd to play on the wd media player with digital surround sound? I imagine converting to mkv with 5.1 is the best option? Is 5.1 supported in the wd media plyaer in a mkv container? Or is h264 better? The box says it doesn't do aac 5.1 only 2.0. Please note my sony amp is not hdmi and is only dolby digital and dts. So any conversion would have to be compatible with those standards. FYI I did upgrade it already to the December firmware. I am also impressed at how small it is. Its no bigger than a papaerback! | ||||||
| Supreme2k posted 2009 Feb 22 12:25 | ||||||
| 1. Rip to iso (movie only0 and play.
2. Check Baldrick's guide Yes, 5.1 is supported. H264 is the video, but you can use DTS or AC3 for the audio. | ||||||
| yoda313 posted 2009 Feb 22 12:39 | ||||||
| @supreme 2k - Sweet! Thanks for the confirmation.
So h264 with the audio remuxed to normal ac3/dts would be the best bet for bluray/hddvd then? Should I retry ripbot264 for this? EDIT - Regarding the dvd iso it did work great. I did the whole dvd before I had read your post supreme2k. It did play the iso but not the menu which is ok. Why dodesn't it support the chapters in the dvd? ANyway I did get 5.1 surround sound so I'm delighted with that. :) | ||||||
| TBoneit posted 2009 Feb 22 16:03 | ||||||
| Dont forget to update the firmware.
10 Minute Skip is a decent substitute for lack of chapters IMHO. I loaded the ArcSoft Converter as a test. It only outputs SD.... However it gives the best results for FF and Frev when playing back. I did a test conversion of a .flv and it came out looking and sounding as decent as it could considering the source. I believe ffdshow is used there. Sad to say do one flv and it won't do another one without a restart. It trys to get you to buy the full version to convert more than one flv. With the updated firmware I've had success rippping the DVD to the USB drive and the WD player plays the entire movie for me whhen I start from the movies first VOB. Not the menu VOB. Cheers | ||||||
| Supreme2k posted 2009 Feb 22 20:33 | ||||||
I haven't checked, because I rarely use chapters, but try the options button, then the chapters option at the top-right. | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 Feb 22 21:48 | ||||||
| If I remember correctly (going by what I've read) it will only play one title from a DVD ISO. Or maybe there was simply no easy way of navigating to the rest of the titles. So TV series are a problem. | ||||||
| festmaster posted 2009 Feb 22 21:52 | ||||||
As for HD-DVD, the majority of those were encoded in VC-1 with Dolby Digital Plus. You don't really want to transcode to H.264 due to the time and you don't have to. However, the only container that the WD-TV will recognize with VC-1 is .m2ts. So after you rip the HD-DVD, use evoDemux to select the video and audio stream and wait about 10 minutes, then hit remux and wait another 10 minutes and you have a suitable file for the WD-TV. | ||||||
| yoda313 posted 2009 Feb 23 17:33 | ||||||
Absoultely beautiful! That is what I wanted to hear. I'm willing to invest in another drive later on if that means I will have to keep my hd-dvds at their 20-30gb size to play them. But it will be so worth it to save hours and hours of conversion and all that frustration. What if its a hd-dvd title that isn't vc-1? Would I then have to do h264? I only have about 7 or 8 hd-dvds so I don't know what my chances of having that happen are. Also does that protect the 5.1 audio? I don't have a dd+ or dts master compatible amp just the normal dd and dts stuff. EDIT - by the way after my harddrive snaffu the other day I am re-ripping my hd-dvd that I was testing on before. I'm about half hour from finishing the rip. Once done I'm looking forward to testing this out! :) :) EDIT 2- by the way on the remux in evodemux I manually changed the extension for video from mpv to m2ts. Is that correct? Or should I use tsmuxer to do the muxing to .m2ts? | ||||||
| JjMon posted 2009 Feb 23 17:56 | ||||||
| so your saying it better to keep the source instead of compressing? I do that with dvd's I own now. It may take more space but it alright with me :) I also hope the 1.5 terrabyte I ordered will be usable on this fine unit. | ||||||
| yoda313 posted 2009 Feb 23 18:09 | ||||||
| @jjmon - I can't comment yet on the bluray/hd-dvd conversion issue.
However as far as the harddrive size it should not be an issue. It supports ntfs so as far as I know it should be the skies the limit...... My 320gb works just fine on it and its ntfs. EDIT - Just finished my hd-dvd rip and opened it in evodemux. This disc is actually h264 - avc. I am still going to try remuxing to m2ts. Should I try a different approach since this is avc-h264 and not a vc1 title? EDIT 2 - Well I ended up trying this on a trailer. I'm not sure if the trailer was h264 or vc1 - the main movie was h264-avc I know for sure. WHat I did was use evodemux and I made sure it was mpv this time (tsmuxer didn't like the m2ts extension evodemux did my first demuxing - this time I made sure the trailer was ripped to mpv and ts muxer took it). From there I took the video and audio stream and muxed it to m2ts with the tsmuxer. Then I copied it to the harddrive and tested it on the wd media player. IT worked great. The audio and video was in perfect synch. The quality was excellent since there was no compression. HOWEVER there wasn't any digital surround that I was able to get this way. I am certain there was in the original evo trailer. Tsmuxer said so. What I"m going to try next is to convert the dolby digital plus to normal ac3 audio. Then hopefully remuxing again will provide me 5.1 audio. I'm praying this time I don't get into synch issues. Otherwise this method looks great. | ||||||
| festmaster posted 2009 Feb 23 20:19 | ||||||
If you rename mpv to m2ts I think you lose audio. Using tsmuxer to mux to .m2ts works well, though. As for playing DD+, the WD-TV seems to have that ability as it plays fine on the TV speakers. | ||||||
| yoda313 posted 2009 Feb 23 20:22 | ||||||
| @festmaster - thanks however I was editing my latest post as you replied.
Yes the dd+ played perfectly on the tv speakers. However I was only able to get stereo on the amp - and yes I tested a dvd rip and got full 5.1 audio so I know its connected properly. Please have a read of my method for the evo trailer off the main hd-dvd:
EDIT 2 - I GOT IT WORKING!!!!!! I demuxed the evo trailer into an mpv and mpa file. Then I used eac3to to split the audio stream into mono wavs. From there I used another program (can't remember right now) to remux to standard ac3 at 448khz. I then used Tsmuxer to remux the video stream and the downconverted ac3 audio. I got perfect picture and 5.1 audio! It was beautiful. I'm currently attempting the same feat on my feature film. I'm hoping the same process will work. I also remember tsmuxer had a chapter insertion option for m2ts creation. I would like that to work as well. EDIT 3 - THE CONVERSION WORKED! I got the full movie off the hd-dvd and muxed it with a converted ac3 track and got full visual quality and 5.1 audio. I'm so happy this finally worked with minimal fuss. I remembered now it was aften I used to remux the mono wavs from the original eac3 audio. It did say there was a 5ms delay at the 41 minute mark but it was not noticeable. I watched it at that point and there was a small glitch but the rest of it seemed to be in synch. Or at least a 5ms delay must be so imperceptible as to not be a cause for concern. SO I was able to mux the h264 stream and the converted ac3 audio with tsmuxer into a wopping 22gb m2ts file. It played perfectly on the wd media player with no apparent issues. I also got my 5.1 audio so I'm a happy camper. Is there a way to split a m2ts file to preserve it? Would it be worth backing up to a few dual layer dvdrs? Or would I be better just reripping the original hddvd should anything happen to the harddrive? | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2009 Mar 08 14:07 | ||||||
| My friend got the WD for Christmas and just got around to hooking it up. He bought an Onkio receiver to hook all his audio/video equiptment up to. He's running the WD into the Onkio through HDMI.
We installed both firmware updates and put a bunch of files on an 8GB thumbdrive. All of the movies play with a line that scrolls up the screen like old TV broadcasts used to do but the picture looks like its been cut horizontally and spliced back together. Does anyone know what is causing this and how to fix it? I suggested getting an HDMI switch and hooking the WD directly to the LCD TV but he paid about $1200 on sale for the receiver and wants to take advantage of whatever it offers. Here is what the picture looks like...  | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 Mar 08 14:56 | ||||||
| That is tearing cause by flipping frames while the frame is being drawn rather than during vertical blanking. I doubt the receiver could be doing that. It's more likely the WD player. | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2009 Mar 08 15:06 | ||||||
| I guess I could bring mine over to make sure it's not the WD player. I haven't heard anyone else complaining of this issue with the WD.
The Receiver he has is an Onkio TX-SR876. It has all kinds of video filtering. My thought was that the receiver had a setting that was causing this that could be changed. | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 Mar 08 16:34 | ||||||
| Was that an HD or SD source? Does it do that with all video files? That sample image has two tears which means you are seeing parts of three separate frames. That's pretty bad. Are you sure it's not the source? | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2009 Mar 08 17:01 | ||||||
| I believe they are all 320x240 mpg files that he downloaded from the internet.
The sample that I uploaded is a picture that I created to show what the TV is showing. It is not an actual screenshot of the video. Could it be the receiver is upconverting the low quality clips and causing the tearing? | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 Mar 08 17:07 | ||||||
| I wouldn't expect a $1000 receiver to screw up like that. But I would certainly try running HDMI directly from the WD player to the HDTV. And try different resolutions and frame rates. Ie, 1080p, 1080i, and 720p. | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2009 Mar 08 17:14 | ||||||
| Thanks! I'll pass on all the info and give it a try. | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2009 Mar 08 19:50 | ||||||
| I took my WD over to try and rule out the player but it still did the tearing so we went into settings and changed resolution from automatic to 1080i/60Hz on his player and it fixed the tearing. Thanks for your help. | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 Mar 08 20:56 | ||||||
| Do you know what resolution and refresh rate the automatic setting chose? Maybe 1080p60? Do you know if the receiver had anything to do with the problem? Just curious. | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2009 Mar 09 00:31 | ||||||
| I don't know what the automatic setting chose and I don't think I saw a 1080p setting. I don't think the receiver had anything to do with it.
I just looked at the manual and there is a down arrow under resolution that he didn't check which probably had 1080p setting. I'll let him know tomorrow. The video wasn't stretching to the side of his widescreen TV so he set the aspect ratio to normal and it filled the screen. I had to have mine set to widescreen on my 4:3 TV for aspect ratio to be correct. Seems backwards but... | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 Mar 09 08:25 | ||||||
| Well, if you find out what the player defaulted to please let me know (many HDTVs will tell you the input format if you press the Display/Info button). | ||||||
| maditaly posted 2009 Mar 10 14:23 | ||||||
| Using the WD TV HDMI Media Player with success over the past few months playing VOB files... but after the latest firmware update the VOB files (in the video_ts directory) will not play. I only get a darkened screen.... any ideas, fixes, etc????
The system was playing these files before the firmware update from WD. Thanks again!! JD | ||||||
| danboyd posted 2009 Mar 10 20:31 | ||||||
| Have had no problem in adding my DVD's (originals) to a external HD and playing but is thereanyway to stop the delay between chapters ??? | ||||||
| jstewart posted 2009 Mar 11 15:26 | ||||||
| Ok - I do not totally understand audio. I have read through many post between here and another site.
I have several movies that play 1080p that require Digital Audio and obviously the WD box will not play it. So I am debating on a relatively inexpensive HTIB. I already have a Optical audio cord. What type of HTIB would you suggest? I really do not want to pay much money for this currently. Also, I thought I read it somewhere here but I now cannot find the post. What type of software do you suggest to change the audio on this movie to AC3? Is there a free version? I imagine speed it not going to matter since I use a x2 4200+ processor with onboard video....This will work won't it? | ||||||
| danboyd posted 2009 Mar 11 19:18 | ||||||
| I have no problem with digital audio
Just go to options while playing movie and select digital audio | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 Mar 11 19:36 | ||||||
| As I understand it the WD player has no DTS decoder but will output DTS to a receiver. | ||||||
| danboyd posted 2009 Mar 11 23:13 | ||||||
| Yes if the DVD has a DTS track (Fast & Furious) and i only select the DTS
My Denon Amp will display DTS | ||||||
| 27litres posted 2009 Mar 12 21:57 | ||||||
I bought a smart power switch (Jackson brand for Planet Ark) in Australia. I plugged the WDTV's transformer into the master socket and my hard drives power supply into one of the slave sockets. It didn't work... :-x The trigger power consumption is 30W, perhaps the WDTV's transformer uses less than that? I'm thinking of going the relay route... unless anyone knows of a good standalone IR switched relay kit with multiple relays (I run a Logitech Harmony - best remote in the world EVER)? Cheers | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 Mar 12 22:25 | ||||||
Yeah, 30 watts is probably too high a threshold. Some of the smart power strips have a pot that lets you adjust the sensitivity. | ||||||
| Squash posted 2009 Mar 12 23:36 | ||||||
| Here's a couple measurements of power usage:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=15014825#post15014825 http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=15924732#post15924732 | ||||||
| exiled350 posted 2009 Mar 14 21:16 | ||||||
| Has anyone had any problems with this when using an external hdd. I bought a Seagate freeagent go 500gb hdd for the sole purpose of using with this and it keeps saying "unrecognized device" it does the same thing with my toshiba 250gb and another freeagent go 320gb. It works fine with usb flash drives though. what could be the problem? WD's help isnt really helpful. The drive is formated NTFS under vista x86 sp1, and safely removed before unplugging. | ||||||
| danboyd posted 2009 Mar 14 22:41 | ||||||
| Im using a Trekstor terra Byte with no problem
as well as an 8gig flash drive | ||||||
| herbapou posted 2009 Mar 24 12:59 | ||||||
| I have 1280x720 H.264 AC3 mkv's
It looks like is support H264 and mkv's, but will really playback 720p mkv's? I have 2 audio tracks (AC3), can we change audio tracks? Note that i could convert audio to aac on all my mkv's if necessary. | ||||||
| herbapou posted 2009 Mar 24 13:02 | ||||||
PopCorn MKV AudioConverter is THE tool for mkv to mkv audio conversion. | ||||||
| Supreme2k posted 2009 Mar 24 13:34 | ||||||
It will play 1080p perfectly, too. The Option button allows you to change audio tracks, subs, and select chapters. | ||||||
| herbapou posted 2009 Mar 24 22:29 | ||||||
| I just bought that thing for 149$ canadian at best buy. Its playing everything I throw at it... amazing little thing.
Its playing my 720p h264 mkv encodes. The same files my 1000$ laptop (Core2 dual, nvidia graphics) was choking on. So its better than my laptop for HD movies. I am currently encoding a 1080p for testing. | ||||||
| herbapou posted 2009 Mar 24 22:47 | ||||||
| Is there a way to change file icons for a pic? I can change folders but not files.
I have disable the media library option because I didnt want to wait for the scan (1TB drive). My thumbnails are all generic because of this or its normal? Would be neat to assign the DvD cover to the movie file (has an icon?) | ||||||
| Supreme2k posted 2009 Mar 24 23:37 | ||||||
| You can insert movie covers for the file icons, but only on mp4 files. You can use MetaX to insert the image files.
Also, make sure that you are in thumbnail view and not list view. Everyone, I cannot stress how important it is to read the manual. There is a wealth of information in there. | ||||||
| herbapou posted 2009 Mar 25 07:39 | ||||||
| Regarding thumbnails I found this on WD website:
The WDTV expects the audio/video files to have an image embedded directly into the file itself. You can edit the metadata within the file using programs such as Apple’s iTunes. * MP3 Audio * MP4 Video The following picture formats will automatically display thumbnails: * JPG * JPE * TIFF * TIF * JPEG | ||||||
| herbapou posted 2009 Mar 26 19:35 | ||||||
| Warning about full HD movies encode in h264 AVC
Since some h286 encoders requires a multiple of 16 pixels to encode, converting 1920x1080 movies may give an output resolution that is above full HD. Any resolution above full HD is unsupported by WDTV. For example,Handbrake will convert 1920x1080 to 1936x1088 if you dont specify the resolution. Make sure to set 1920x1072 resolution when you encode h264 full HD movies. This resolution works fine with WDTV. Note that I think there is a way to set h264 to do 8x8 encodes, which support 1920x1080. | ||||||
| mysticgohan17 posted 2009 Mar 27 11:52 | ||||||
| its not that, you just gotta be sure to crop the extra 8 pixels from the bottom, then you should be able to do a perfect 1920x1080. its like padding or something. that step was in all the HD encoding guides i saw before using handbrake. | ||||||
| BillV posted 2009 Mar 30 10:49 | ||||||
| I will continue reading through this entire thread in case my answer is buried in it somewhere, but I thought I might get a faster reply with posting first just in case..
I purchased the WD TV HD MP last week and tried plugging it in yesterday via HDMI to my tv. When the power cable is plugged in, the power light on front comes on after a few seconds and then I see a WD boot screen on my tv. After the boot screen is displayed for 3-5 seconds, the screen goes black and my tv says 'no signal.' My first question there is, do I need to have something plugged into the MP to display the menu on my tv? Or should I at least be seeing an empty menu, etc? Going from there, when I plug a USB flash drive into the MP, the lights on my flash drive light up for a couple seconds (showing activity) but the USB light never lights up on the MP (and again, my tv continues to display 'no signal'). Am I doing something wrong or does it sound like I have a defective unit? I also tried pressing the 'reset' button on the side for 10 seconds like the WD KB says. Thanks, BillV | ||||||
| festmaster posted 2009 Mar 30 13:26 | ||||||
Did you actually press the power button on the remote? Plugging the device into power does not automatically power it up. | ||||||
| BillV posted 2009 Mar 30 13:42 | ||||||
| Yes, I pushed the power button and the home button; nothing happened when pressing either. I also tried swapping batteries with another remote to make sure they were working. The manual says when the power light is on that the device is on. I assumed since the WD boot screen showed up that the power was on, is that not the case? | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 Mar 30 13:50 | ||||||
| What you're describing sounds like an HDMI handshake problem. Try using another output and see if that works. And, what HDTV do you have? | ||||||
| BillV posted 2009 Mar 30 15:20 | ||||||
| Unfortunately I've tried both ideas :(
I tried connecting via the included A/V cables with the same result (logo screen, then blank). I tried with two different tv's.. Insignia and Dynex. Thanks for the suggestions. | ||||||
| BillV posted 2009 Mar 30 15:31 | ||||||
| Quick update... WD just replied to my trouble ticket saying I need a new unit :(
I will RMA this one I guess and hopefully have better luck with the new one. Aside from that... I saw a lot of people making comments about different menus and network connectivity for future enhancements to the product. One thing I'd like to see is an eSATA port added :) Also, has anyone tried linking this up to a DROBO? http://www.drobo.com Can anyone point me in the direction of a good tutorial for noobs to the audio/video converting world? The plan is to move all of my DVDs to hdd storage and play through this WD player. I have the software that came with the player (but from reading other posts in this thread, it's apparently not that good). I also have OJOsoft DVD Ripper and Video Converter (www.ojosoft.com). Thanks again for the helpful ideas.. if anyone has any other thoughts, by all means throw them out there. BillV | ||||||
| Supreme2k posted 2009 Mar 30 16:46 | ||||||
| Autogk and Handbrake, or Xvid4PSP (among others).
Guides to the left. | ||||||
| BillV posted 2009 Mar 30 16:55 | ||||||
| Cool, thanks, appreciate it. | ||||||
| yoda313 posted 2009 Mar 30 17:25 | ||||||
Unfortunately from my point of view network connectivity would probably increase the price. Its realitvely low price point was the reason I bought one. However your point about esata is definitely noteworthy and would not significantly increase cost I imagine. | ||||||
| herbapou posted 2009 Mar 31 11:07 | ||||||
I got a no signal problem yesterday. I tried power on/off on the WDTV several times, didnt work. I tried unplugging / replugging the HDMI cable with no result. At some point I turn off/on the TV and the signal came back on. | ||||||
| holmerz posted 2009 Apr 02 13:30 | ||||||
| Hi
Got myself a WD tv HD media player today. However I cant get it to work via a HDMI connection.It works fine via the composite, but upon changing the video output setting to HDMI (auto) I lost the signal. Any ideas to what to do is much appreciated. In advance thanks Erik | ||||||
| redwudz posted 2009 Apr 02 14:29 | ||||||
| I assume you mean you switched the TV to HDMI input?
Try powering off the TV and the WD. Turn on the WD in HDMI mode, making sure your HDMI cable is properly plugged in. Then power on the TV. HDMI requires a 'handshake' where the output device communicates with the display device. And your video should be the correct resolution for HDMI, though the TV should be able to upscale. Lastly, check that it's not a PAL/NTSC problem, though that shouldn't matter. If all this fails, try the cable with a different HDMI device like a DVD player. That should tell you if the problem is the WD. I don't have a WD player, so those are just generic suggestions. :) | ||||||
| holmerz posted 2009 Apr 02 15:03 | ||||||
| Thanks, I'll try that.
No in the menu of the WDTV you can choose eihter composite or HDMI as output. I tried connecting my pc to the TV via HDMI with the same result, no signal. Furthermore, when the WDTV was up and running via composite I plugged in the HDMI cable and the signal disappered! So far it seems that problem is the either the HDMI cable or the TV, which by the way is a Sony KDL-32p2530. any other suggestions are welcome Erik | ||||||
| holmerz posted 2009 Apr 02 15:43 | ||||||
| Ok solved it....although I don't know how other than by changing the video output to HDMI and then 720p 60Hz.. then it worked.
\Erik | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 Apr 02 15:55 | ||||||
| Maybe it was set to 1080p 60 Hz before? Not all HDTVs accept that. | ||||||
| redwudz posted 2009 Apr 02 15:56 | ||||||
| :D | ||||||
| holmerz posted 2009 Apr 03 03:25 | ||||||
No it was set to 'auto' so I expected it would have worked with that setting. \Erik | ||||||
| BillV posted 2009 Apr 03 11:20 | ||||||
| Just wanted to provide a quick follow-up...
I received my new WD MP and it's working now :) It does not work with the Drobo :( And as for software, I've been using DVDFab to rip to .iso and it's been working with no problems. Thanks again for the help! BillV edit: I stand corrected, this article shows how someone got the WD MP working with the Drobo.. I'm going to reformat mine and give it a shot[/i] | ||||||
| BillV posted 2009 Apr 07 07:31 | ||||||
I was able to get the WD TV player working with Drobo :) As the article linked to above states, you need to keep your volume(s) at 2TB (I had mine at 4TB originally). It's been working nicely :D Thanks again! BillV | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 Apr 07 07:33 | ||||||
| Interesting about the 2 TB partition limit. | ||||||
| glenmike posted 2009 Apr 09 09:34 | ||||||
| There is supposed to be a new firmware update on the Western Digital site but it seems the webmaster forgot to update the file. After downloading, it is the same file as the 12/08 update and not the 1.02.03 for 4/09 that is listed. I hope they figure it out soon. | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2009 Apr 09 10:50 | ||||||
| It's a BETA release and not listed on the downloads page.
http://www.wdc.com/wdtvprerelease/ | ||||||
| jstewart posted 2009 Apr 15 10:08 | ||||||
It says more support for MKV audio formats....has anyone tried this yet? I am just wondering if DTS works. | ||||||
| jstewart posted 2009 Apr 15 10:08 | ||||||
http://wiki.wdtv.org/doku.php?id=start Posted this in another thread. Looks like you can hardwire it....Maybe sometime before Wireless is working. | ||||||
| whooka posted 2009 Apr 16 12:08 | ||||||
| I got one of these media players two weeks ago and while it does seem to work very very well (no problems playing 1080p/mkb, flac, etc) i have one horrible recurring problem which looks like a pretty sizable design flaw in the product. when i first connected it to my lcd tv and turned it on i was greeted with a loud, awful pink noise coming from my tv speakers, even with the tv volume down completely. i have the player connected via hdmi and a toslink cable to my receiver. i tried other hdmi cables, optical cables, etc, no luck. i gave up as it was frustrating and a few days later came back, turned it on, and it was fine and was that way for a week until i took it to a friend's place, where it worked fine, brought it home only to reconnect it and have the pink noise return. i did some research and it seems like the media player is sending a blank audio signal over the hdmi cable even when a toslink cable is attached to the unit. the audio options only have 'stereo' and 'digital', it needs to have an option for 'digital/hdmi' and another for 'digital/toslink' whereby selecting one disables the other. i know better tv's then mine have an option to turn off the hdmi audio input (mine does not seem to) BUT i have a playstation 3 connected to the same tv via the same setup (hdmi and toslink) and i have never had a problem with that soooooooooooo to me this is a fault inherent in the media player. i tried last night to fix it again and have had no luck so am getting to where i may return it but hate do that as when it was working properly for the week it worked very well.
any other ideas? | ||||||
| whooka posted 2009 Apr 16 12:11 | ||||||
DTS does work but you need to have a toslink cable going from the media player to a receiver that can decode dts. the media player itself has no dts decoder in it (hence the low price). but this thing is the first thing i've used where i play an mkv and my receiver properly detects dolby 3/2.1. impressive. i do have a horrible problem though do to their design where it's sending a blank audio signal over the hdmi cable even when a toslink cable is being used. it makes a horrible pink noise on my tv. they should've had an option to either disable hdmi audio or a seperate option to select audio digital/hdmi or audio digital/toslink and one turns the other off. | ||||||
| Supreme2k posted 2009 Apr 16 14:23 | ||||||
| I have my WD TV hooked up like yours (hdmi and toslink) and have never experienced that problem. It is not inherent in the player.
Maybe your WD TV is bad, or one of the other components. | ||||||
| RabidDog posted 2009 Apr 16 15:26 | ||||||
fff
No DTS does not work.. It will get passed thru to a suitable decoder but the Unit itself can Do nothing with DTS. I doubt that this will be changed in a future firmware as its a "paid-for" option.. eg Popcorn Hour with DTS decoding is $50 MORE , than without. Wouldn't want anyone to make the wrong buying choice! | ||||||
| whooka posted 2009 Apr 16 16:02 | ||||||
i was surprised to see how many people in various forums were complaining about the lack of dts decoding, though i can understand it as it'd be a pain but they don't really say it will support dts anywhere but whatever, as even my brokeass has a $150 sony receiver that decodes dts. if you got something like that the toslink works freakin' awesome for dts on this thing. not only has it made me a total convert to flac based audio rips but it's the first time i've seen my receiver show proper dts types (3/2.1, etc) for mkv's i play that use dts audio. when i played them from laptop to my tv even using an external usb sound card that did toslink via usb to optical it wouldn't show the the dts being active. my main beef is that they don't have a seperate option to select specifically hdmi audio output or toslink/optical audio output, it plays both at the same time which caused me nightmarish episodes of loud white noise whenever the thing got reset but i just figured out how to work around this little quirk so i'm happy. my playstation 3 lets you select hdmi or optical so i had no prob with that ever but for some reason my tv, which is admittedly lower end but still nice 27" lcd (insignia) has a problem with this player. | ||||||
| whooka posted 2009 Apr 16 16:11 | ||||||
Yeah, i hear ya, i googled the hell out of it and was somewhat dismayed when i saw no matches at all (never a good sign for said owner) but i literally just figured out how to fix it and why i don't know exactly why i have this problem i've determined it's most likely a bad/unique combination of my tv being slightly lower end (but still a nice 27" lcd (insignia) and the fact that this thing DOES put out audio on both hdmi and toslink optical if you're using both cables which you have to as the optical toslink obv won't do the video. the fact that there is no menu option (there are very few at all) to choose EITHER hdmi or toslink optical may not be a flaw but it is poor design imo (though overall i love this thing). now if i had a slightly more expensive tv there would prob be an option to turn off audio from the hdmi, okay fine, but i have a playstation 3 that connects to the same tv using the same hdmi/toslink combo and never had this problem because the ps3 system settings for audio output let you select EITHER hdmi or optical seperately and then it kills one of the other (at least the hdmi when optical is used because i have no sound coming from my tv speakers when i use digital optical). so i'll split the blame 50/50, shame on you western digital for making such a great, affordable media player that won't let you either kill audio out to the hdmi or select toslink seperately and shame on you insignia for making a very nice, affordable lcd tv that has no option to turn off hdmi audio (and the freakin' mute button on the remote does nothing!). oh yeah, how i fixed this (i tried it 2x and it works) in case anyone else runs into it: symptoms: when media player is on tv speakers emit loud, white noise that cannot be turned down via the volume. you are connected via hdmi and toslink/optical cable and your cheapass tv has no way to turn off sound from the hdmi. fix: 1. turn off media player 2. disconnect hdmi cable from both media player and tv 3. connect media player to tv using component cables 4. turn on media player, switch tv to component input (whatever order is fine) 5. most likely the picture will suck but alas, no horrible white noise! 6. turn off media player. disconnect component cables at both ends. 7. connect media player using hdmi cable, turn it on. 8. dance around the room very happy | ||||||
| Teutatis posted 2009 Apr 17 14:03 | ||||||
| I looked through the thread, but could not find any information on this. My question is does the WD work with a USB-powered hard drive? Does its USB port provide enough power, or does it need a HD with external power? | ||||||
| glenmike posted 2009 Apr 17 14:36 | ||||||
| Yes, it is made to be used with their own Passport series USB powered hard drives. It also works great with flash (thumb) drives. | ||||||
| TBoneit posted 2009 Apr 17 16:43 | ||||||
| I've used it with a Generic USB powered drive.100GB 2.5" IDE laptop drive in a generic case with no problem.
Tonight I plan to start creating folder.jpg pictures si I can have folder art instead of those generic folder icons. (Beta firmware support) From their 1.02 docs: "For Folder Thumbnails: Music: 1. Display folder.JPG (the image file must be named “folder.JPG” or thumbnail will not function) 2. If no folder.JPG file is found, display the first album art image (.MP3 with embedded..JPG) 3. If no album art is available, display the first .JPG in the folder Photo: 1. Display folder.JPG 2. If no folder.JPG file is found, display the first photo in the folder Video: 1. Display folder.JPG 2. If no folder.JPG file is found, display the first cover art (.MP4 with embedded .JPG) 3. If no cover art is available, display the first photo in the same folder as the video to be played For File Thumbnails: Music: 1. Display album art (.MP3 file with embedded .JPG) 2. If no album art is available, display the image file with the same name as the audio file to be played. (for example, song.wav will be associated with song.JPG) Photo: 1. Display thumbnail Video: 1. Display .MP4 with embedded .JPG 2. Display image file associated with the video file to be played (for example video.mkv will be associated with video.JPG) It just keeps getting better. Cheers | ||||||
| Supreme2k posted 2009 Apr 17 16:47 | ||||||
| Please let us know how the beta firmware works out. I already have the thumbnails on deck from my cataloging program, so these extra features will be sweet. | ||||||
| TBoneit posted 2009 Apr 18 09:34 | ||||||
| Well I did some samples last night. Folder.jpg in a folder and a jpg named the same as the video. The results were it worked. I thought the thumbnails were a little small and took time to appear. I suspect the time lag was due to the resizing from the original size to the displayed size.
I'm more interested in music cover art anyway so that's my next test. I did the video first since it was easy to do a screen cap for that. Cheers | ||||||
| Supreme2k posted 2009 Apr 24 19:34 | ||||||
| I'm testing out the new beta firmware, and I've found a couple of thing that I hope they fix before it's considered stable:
1. If you go above 4X fast forwarding on mkv files, it seems to scan much faster than it is actually going, but when you press Play again, it has only advanced a little. This seems to only be a problem with mkv (h.264). 2. Default is subtitles on, with no way to change the default (though you can still turn them off). That is a big annoyance to me. | ||||||
| misterbill posted 2009 Apr 24 20:58 | ||||||
| Prerelease 1.02.07 (includes all previously released updates)
Fixed items: * Added option to toggle subtitle default to 'On' or 'Off' <------------------- * Added subtitle outline thickness selection * Added hard drive spindown on WDTV power off | ||||||
| Supreme2k posted 2009 Apr 24 21:38 | ||||||
| I'll check it out. I got 1.02.04, releases slightly before .07 | ||||||
| festmaster posted 2009 Apr 24 21:45 | ||||||
| The AVS forum thread on this beta firmware indicates there are definitely bugs to be worked out, particularly with a big slowdown in indexing the drive. I am looking forward to adding thumbnails but I think I am going to wait until the firmware is formally released. | ||||||
| nick3lz posted 2009 Apr 28 17:15 | ||||||
| Hi people,
I have a problem with my WD TV HD Media Player (btw, i have the latest firmware 1.02.07). I switched from composite to HDMI today and the Video is perfect! But the audio isn't working anymore. Not even the audio of example movies on the cd included with the device. My WD TV is connected to an 37LG5000 tv. 1080p, 60 Hz. I also tried different Hz and 720p but it had no effect on the audio (but I expected that). I couldn't find any settings in my tv regarding audio and HDMI. I also tried 'Stereo' and 'Digital' in the Settings of the WD TV. I really don't know what is wrong... :cry: Any of you? Thanks for replies! GrZz | ||||||
| Supreme2k posted 2009 Apr 28 19:24 | ||||||
| Could be:
1. bad cable 2. bad WD TV 3. Bad input ports 4. Bad/unsupoprted files but mainly 5. Not enough information | ||||||
| glenmike posted 2009 Apr 28 21:19 | ||||||
| Sometimes it helps to turn off your TV and Wd TV. Then turn on the WD TV first then your TV. My Samsung HDTV loses audio sometimes if I turn on the WD TV last. Hope this helps in your situation. | ||||||
| nick3lz posted 2009 Apr 29 10:20 | ||||||
| Okay, today I still don't have any sound. Following things were said:
Could be: 1. bad cable 2. bad WD TV 3. Bad input ports 4. Bad/unsupoprted files 5. Not enough information Well, today I got 1. another HDMI cable, the audio still doesn't work. 2. another WD TV, still no audio. 3. Bad input ports could be, but that would be strange because I bought this TV (37LG5000) just over a month ago. 4. Bad/unsupported files, this isn't the case because I used the sample video's on the included cd with the WD TV. 5. Not enough information is not the case. So if anybody got any other tips or similar experiences please let me know. And i'm gonna check if it works on another TV (the same as mine) of a friend of mine. But in the mean time any, ANY information would be lovely. Thanks.. | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 Apr 29 10:29 | ||||||
| If the WDTV is like a lot of other devices you have to choose between audio being sent to the HDMI port or the SPDIF port. | ||||||
| nick3lz posted 2009 Apr 29 10:34 | ||||||
| I only got an xbox360 connected with a component cable to my TV. The WDTV is the only device using HDMI. But I can't find any settings for HDMI ports/SPDIF(??) ports or simply audio and HDMI settings... | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 Apr 29 10:57 | ||||||
| I happened to notice this post:
http://forum.videohelp.com/topic358929-390.html#1958624 which mentions that there are no SPDIF/HDMI audio options, it outputs to both all the time. Check your TV's setup options. It may be set up to take audio from a different port (ie, not the HDMI port). (It looks like you've already tried that but I would look again, even in unexpected places -- not in the audio menu for example.) Also try a different HDMI port if you have another. And try running all possible audio cables to the TV (HDMI, TOSLINK, RCA) -- see if any of them are working. That might give you a hint of what's going on with the audio. One last possible issue: the player doesn't have a DTS decoder. You're TV probably doesn't either. If your source has DTS audio it has to be fed via TOSLINK to a DTS capable receiver. | ||||||
| nick3lz posted 2009 Apr 29 11:10 | ||||||
| Okay, I checked the TV setup options (again). The only thing I can find is "Digital Audio Out:" with options 'PCM' and 'Dolby Digital'. I have 3 HDMI ports and tried all of them, no result.
I have 1 option left, trying a TOSLINK cable, but is it supposed to be connected as well as the HDMI? (that's would make since toslink is only for audio, right?) And RCA is composite cable isn't it? When i tried that, i DID got audio and video... | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 Apr 29 15:16 | ||||||
Normally HDMI will carry both video and audio. But some devices can be set to output audio to another port instead.
Some TVs can be set up to take audio from RCA or TOSLINK intead of HDMI. I'm just trying to cover all the bases. Ie, where is audio coming out of the player, and where is the TV trying to get it. | ||||||
| Delta2 posted 2009 Apr 29 15:23 | ||||||
| And why not a TV with Media2.0 built-in ? it is another good and cheaper alternative
like this one : www.hdtvtest.co.uk/Samsung-LE40B650/Operation.htm see the formats that are supported, subtitles are also supported it is a Full HD, good price, and reads almost everything | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 Apr 29 17:39 | ||||||
| You're recommending a $1500 TV instead of a $100 media player? | ||||||
| nick3lz posted 2009 Apr 29 18:20 | ||||||
| whahaha, wrong topic i quess :P
But about my problem..When i connect rca, i have to choose 'RGB' of all input channels. So I can't connect the rca and the hdmi and have them on the same channel at the same time... There are 3 options to get audio out of the player: - hdmi - toslink - composite My tv has also 3 options: - hdmi - toslink - composite I mailed to customersupport of western digital today, hope they recognize my problem.....or else de wd tv is going back to the store.. | ||||||
| jstewart posted 2009 Apr 30 16:58 | ||||||
| Perhaps try reverting bag to the older firmware version.
Could you reset back to factory defaults? | ||||||
| RabidDog posted 2009 May 05 09:36 | ||||||
| Samsung Tv + wd tv = problems | ||||||
| Randm posted 2009 May 07 04:06 | ||||||
| does it copy the file onto the player or does it play it off the USB?
basically, i want to know if i can plug it in, copy, plug it out, and then watch the video...just in case i want to save time and copy a diff. video from my comp to the USB while watching... | ||||||
| jman98 posted 2009 May 07 07:33 | ||||||
As an owner of both, there is some truth to this. However, the only problem I ever have is that sometimes the TV can't find the signal from the WD TV when I power the WD TV on. I have learned that if I turn off the WD TV, unplug it and then plug it back in, it works fine. I've had no issues with playback itself. | ||||||
| jman98 posted 2009 May 07 07:34 | ||||||
It ONLY plays off USB. There is no storage of any kind within the unit so you can't copy anything to it. What you propose CANNOT be done. If you unplug a device, it will stop playing and you'll run the risk of potentially damaging what you just unplugged. | ||||||
| Randm posted 2009 May 07 20:40 | ||||||
ok, can i transfer from one USB to the other? ie. use my ext. hard drive for permanent storage while using my 8-16GB USB to add new movies to the hard drive? | ||||||
| chits007 posted 2009 May 08 10:25 | ||||||
| Does WDTV supports USB HUB (simple unpowered kind of hubs) ? | ||||||
| Supreme2k posted 2009 May 08 14:36 | ||||||
| You CANNOT use the WD TV for file transfer/copy/deletion of any kind. It is simply a reader and player.
From my testing, it does not support unpowered hubs, but supports powered hubs quite well. | ||||||
| jman98 posted 2009 May 08 14:45 | ||||||
If you are asking if you can use the WD TV itself to transfer from one attached USB device to another, I have to say that I am not aware of any option that allows this. This is really just a very simple playback device and nothing else. | ||||||
| Randm posted 2009 May 08 19:42 | ||||||
yea thats what i meant, thanx for the info...i definitely plan to buy this player sometime soon, i just figured i'd get my newbie questions out of the way :) | ||||||
| chits007 posted 2009 May 09 02:28 | ||||||
| Thats good then..
Any success for 5.1 Audio (Use Toslink and mute HDMI Audio option in WD TV)..atleast this optin is their in 5982
| ||||||
| Randm posted 2009 May 10 05:59 | ||||||
| "Yes, it works with NTFS, FAT32 and HFS file systems no problem."
whats the difference between the 3 file systems? | ||||||
| Squash posted 2009 May 10 08:00 | ||||||
| Randm,
The relevant difference between NTFS and FAT32 is that NTFS will allow you to play back files larger than 4GB. FAT32 limits you to files smaller than that. If you're playing back hi-def movies, most of them will be larger than 4GB. Don't know about HFS, it's a MAC OS file system. | ||||||
| Teutatis posted 2009 May 10 23:38 | ||||||
| I bought one a couple of weeks ago. So far it's doing a good job of playing almost everything I need, with a few minor problems.
My question is about Blu-Ray playback. First, I have never ripped a BL disk. I understand that the WD TV does not have the capability of playing back HD Audio. So, If I rip a BL disk, I would have to convert the audio to DD or DTS. Is this correct? Or will the WD TV be able to play back DD True HD and DTS Master Audio, but downconvert it to DD? Is there a simple program I can use in conjunction with AnyDVD to rip the BL disk and convert the audio at the same time? | ||||||
| Randm posted 2009 May 11 06:04 | ||||||
i see, so i guess DVD9 size will be good with NTFS :) btw, whats the file size limit on NTFS? | ||||||
| Squash posted 2009 May 11 07:03 | ||||||
For all practical purposes, it's unlimited: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ntfs | ||||||
| jman98 posted 2009 May 11 07:47 | ||||||
The WD TV has no downconversion capability and no support for HD audio codecs. You must extract either the AC3 or DTS core from your BluRay source for playback with the WD TV. eac3to is one tool that can do this, but I don't know if there's an easier way. For best playback results you should put your BluRay rips in either m2ts or MKV containers. | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 May 11 09:37 | ||||||
Limited to standard definition video files. | ||||||
| bmo posted 2009 May 11 11:10 | ||||||
Actually yes there is. While you have AnyDVD running, use a program called tsMuxer. Basically you can use the program to select only the video and audio streams you want. It is also capable of downconverting TrueHD and DTS Master audio tracks on the fly to regular ac3 and dts. Since you've never ripped a Blu-Ray disc before, you may want to study the Blu-Ray disc structure a little so you know what files are what on the disc. But, in particular you only need the ".m2ts" files in the "STREAM" folder on Blu-Ray discs. All you have to do is load the main movie .m2ts file (the one with the largest file size) into tsMuxer, deselect everything except the main video and audio streams. Lastly, make sure to highlight your main audio and select the "Downconvert HD audio" option and rip away. Have done this many times with my Blu-Ray movies and it works every single time. It's funny though because many of the Blu-Ray conversion guides I've seen have people rip the ENTIRE Blu-Ray contents to their hard drives first which can take a really long time, then running the main .m2ts file through tsMuxer and technically ripping the same streams again and taking up more hard drive space. The thing is, you can just skip the first ripping process to the hard drive and load the main .m2ts files straight from the disc into tsMuxer with AnyDVD running. This will save you time and hard drive space. | ||||||
| Teutatis posted 2009 May 11 13:36 | ||||||
| jman98, bmo,
Thanks guys. | ||||||
| rumplestiltskin posted 2009 May 11 16:54 | ||||||
| I'm expecting mine in the next day or two and will post how well it plays various formats.
I bought it for use on my 32" 4:3 SDTV. I have an AppleTV for my 32" 720p HDTV (and love it). | ||||||
| vhelp posted 2009 May 17 15:49 | ||||||
I was hoping that some one posted the firmware upldate link on these pages, but noone has. I went to WD website, but their products page and support section does not list anything for firmwares on wd tv, nor just typing in "firmware" on their search box. However, some more digging around and I found this page: 1. firmware page: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/wdtv/index.asp?wdc_lang=en 2. if "First time updating wdtv" click that icon so you get some basic idea of steps to follow. 3. download the firmware file: WDTV_FW_1_02_07.zip 12.2 MB size (as of 5/17/2009 Sun)
-vhelp 5107 | ||||||
| vhelp posted 2009 May 17 16:35 | ||||||
| Rats. All this work for nothing. D/L'ing the firmware, reading everything I could on the unit, and so and so forth, only to find out that I can't watch videos because I don't have the connections on either of my equipments because the unit only features Composite and HDMI :( none of which I have on my ATI HD 3450 card (DVI-I) nor 19" Westinhouse (DVI-D) outputs :( and even those cables are expensive, though radio shack has an hdmi cable for lowest $49 price, that's still too expansive, but at least I can walk into a store and pick one up vs. ordering online (would never do) and waiting a week or more for delivery and then prob finding out that I have the wrong stuff or whatever.
dumb dumb, I should have found this first before buying, but these things aren't always as easily realized at first, specially when you get excited about all the interesting ideas and things in these discussions. So now after buying the 1TB hdd and wd tv, I have to return them. So, here's the beaf, so that other interested members don't fall into the same pit: 1. WD TV: only outputs across Composite or HDMI 2. graphic card should have at least HDMI 3. LCD monitor or hdtv should have a HDMI (or composite) input If these three don't match, you're out of luck, or spend even more dollars buying other connectors or adaptors or whatever it might take to get the wd tv unit to output video. Its been a LONG day for me and this endeavor. Now, its time to re-wrap the wd tv, at least I hadn't opened the 1TB hdd, so I know that one will be easy to return. Good thing I hadn't take off the film paper on the wd tv. That should make it easier for the sales peson to accept back. One last question to ask here: what about the popcorn device ? does it come with s-video or DVI-D so that I can mate it with my 19" Westinhouse DVI-D connector ? Thanks for any insight, -vhelp 5108 | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 May 17 17:19 | ||||||
| You can get a 6 foot HDMI to DVI cable for less than US$10.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&Des ... rder=PRICE | ||||||
| vhelp posted 2009 May 17 17:48 | ||||||
| The last time I asked the question, you got mad at me or something because I got confused w/ DVI-I vs. DVI-D, now you're pointing me to a dvi-hdmi, and I'm more confused. I give up!
-vhelp 5109 | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 May 17 17:58 | ||||||
| DVI-A is the analog RGB portion of the DVI connector. DVI-D is the digital portion of the connector. DVI-I (integrated) is both. DVI to HDMI routes the digital signals (no analog RGB in HDMI). It does not route the analog RGB signals because there is no analog video in HDMI.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Visual_Interface#Connector You can also use a simple adapter: http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=104&cp_id= ... p;format=2 http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=104&cp_id= ... p;format=2 I think it's a mistake giving up on the WD TV just because of a $6 cable or a $3 adapter. Local stores often hide (or don't even carry) the inexpensive cables because the overpriced cables are a big profit center for them. | ||||||
| vhelp posted 2009 May 17 18:43 | ||||||
| Thanks the help, jagabo, I think I just need to cool off from this let down. Those *are* good prices, can't belive the rip-off you brought to my attention, and they all realy get away with it, sheesh! Maybe i'll give it another try again this week when I have more energy. So much *other* fun things to do for now :)
-vhelp 5110 | ||||||
| Squash posted 2009 May 17 19:05 | ||||||
| Yeah, vhelp, that's good advice from jagabo. I've used my WDTV with an old Westinghouse LCD TV with DVI in; no HDMI connectors on it. I used a DVI-to-HDMI cable for video, RCA jacks for audio and it worked fine. | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2009 May 17 20:31 | ||||||
| My friend got a screaming deal on this device a couple weeks ago.
Bestbuy had the unit for $99 and we were at Fry's Electronics so they price matched the unit and on top of that, WD had a $20 rebate on the Fry's units. | ||||||
| vhelp posted 2009 May 17 22:30 | ||||||
| Well, all is not lost. I discovered that the WD TV makes a great capture juke box as well !!
I mean, first, I found out that I could hook up my units composite to my pinnacle capture card and capture its output. And its not half bad. There is minor though noticable checkerbox due to the limitation of the composite on this unit, but its not bad, really. Also, the picture in this setup is actually quite good. You can actually watch the darn thing. All the movies that I've thrown on it from my various 8gig memory sticks played well and with sound, too. Here's a demo of the output that I cought with the above capture card: 
* looks like the aspect ratio is off or its the limitation of the unit's firmware or something. I don't know. Its all new to me and i'm just learning off this thing. The unti is not bad at'tall, not bad at'tall :lol: Actaully, if you think about it, (minus the minor checkbox issue) its like capturing from a TIVO or something. The better the quality of the videos you make on your HDD's the better the results, obviously. So, I'm going to play around some with the actual .VOB files and other sources and see how well it does even under composite connections for the time being. Too bad it didn't feature s-video otherwise it would have been that much better. I can't wait to start dumping videos to my 1TB hdd. I only hope that it doesn't require me to do anything, setup-wise..just plug in and start dumping videos to the hdd. -vhelp 5112 | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 May 18 06:03 | ||||||
It looks to me like you have it set up for 16:9 anamorphic output and that particular video is 4:3. | ||||||
| vhelp posted 2009 May 18 20:22 | ||||||
| but there is no facility to change the aspect ratio..the <option> button does not include a setting for this. I'm guessing the unit auto-senses (or reads) various flags of each type of vid file and then presents the picture as it should be.
. . . I'm excited that I can use this new toy and am working up ideas to re-encode various videos and dvd collection, and so on an so forth. I'm thankful that I hadn't given up though I've threatended on many occasions :lol: that's it..its going back .. :lol: haha :lol: For now, I'm think MPEG-2 @ 9000KBits possibly tweaked here or there, as my archive collection standard, only because it seems to be able to read the flags properly and can give the correct aspect presentation. But, I'm still game-planning my ideas for my video collection. I'm sure you guys (who are way ahead of me) have your own *better* system than mine. . . . jagabo, is there an aspect setting on the wdtv ? maybe in a firmware upgrade which I haven't done yet because I'm not at that stage, yet. -vhelp 5113 | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 May 19 08:08 | ||||||
I don't have one so I don't know. My guess is thers's a TV type setting where you tell if the TV you are connected to (via composite) is wide screen or not. I think you have it set to wide screen. | ||||||
| Squash posted 2009 May 19 08:37 | ||||||
| vhelp,
There should be a manual on your CD. If not, let me know and I'll post it for you. It's about 8MB. Aspect ratio is under Settings...Audio/Video...Aspect ratio:  | ||||||
| vhelp posted 2009 May 19 20:35 | ||||||
| Thanks guys. I found it yesterday shortly after my last post..same screen shot as Squash.
I've been testing various mpeg-2 encoding scenarios out and reviewing it through the wdtv and my capture card. I found the mpegs I made down to 5.5k (tweaked) look very good for my many noisy analog cabltv clips, mostly the Disney channel nightime lineup, suite life; wizards of waverly; hannah montanh; that so raven, and a few others. These are interlaced sources, and since the wdtv natively processes the videos as-is, (this is actually a good thing) if you have interlace, it will play as interlace, and not bob or deinterlace, leaving it up to your hdtv or lcd monitor to cope. No problem here, as I would rather do it myself or not at all. So, I'm reviewing various deinterlace scenarios that will work best for the wdtv (and how I currently am watching video) and so far, those I've thrown at it come out rather nicely, no strobbing or such nonsense that I can detect. Anyway, let me get back to my endeavor. I'm also surprised at the quality of the media's hardware decoder(s) because the mpegs and h264 and mpeg4 decode to excellent video quality. Something I was not quite expecting. I'm dying to dump a bunch of vids to the 1TB drive but I'd like reduce the videos some more first. Anyway. So the WDTV has turned out to be a good investment after all. Not bad at'tall. -vhelp 5114 | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 May 19 20:44 | ||||||
| I don't understand why your taking digital video files, playing them on the WDTV, then capturing the analog output. Why don't you just work directly with the original files and avoid the D/A and A/D conversion and the conversion time? | ||||||
| vhelp posted 2009 May 19 21:00 | ||||||
| Sorry for the confusion. I was mearly exploring the unit. remember, I can't watch the video through the hdmi since my current monitor doesn't support it. Rigging up the capture window was purely an idea that came to me while contimplating return the unit. Thus, for the time being, its the only means I have to view any videos through the unit until I get my sitation straighten out. Capturing was the extention of that exploration. Anyhow, I decided not to go the adaptor plugs/cables route. Too expansive and time consuming. Better to just get another monitor *with* hdmi all together. Saturday is my planned date to pick one up, two choices to make so far: HP HD-237HPB (HF237) 21" or the Hanspree HP2159m 23" The goal is to get a true 1920x1080 under $250
-vhelp 5116 | ||||||
| gustav32 posted 2009 May 20 01:02 | ||||||
| Any other having problems using USB-hub after 1.02.08 upgrade?
I use USB-hub in order to connect 3 HDs. Before the upgrade there was no problems. WD TV read all the 3 HDs connected to the hub. But after the upgrade, WD TV can just read one of the HDs. | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2009 May 20 01:36 | ||||||
| The unit was not designed to watch your movies on a PC monitor but to watch on your TV, hence the name WDTV. If you're going to watch them on your PC monitor then you might as well have saved the money you spent on the WDTV and external drive and just watched them straight from your PC.
Surely you have an old analog TV around the house somewhere you can hook composite up to untill you can afford an HDTV. My old 36" Toshiba CRT worked fine until I could afford the 40" Samsung 1080p LCD. The idea behind this unit is to be able to play the movies you usually play on your PC in all their glory on a large screen TV instead of a small PC momitor.. | ||||||
| groberson posted 2009 May 20 08:32 | ||||||
| Manual says it supports firmware upgrades via USB to incorporate future codecs. Mine plays everything great except .mkv files. They either just fail to play (99%) or have no audio. | ||||||
| glenmike posted 2009 May 20 08:48 | ||||||
| Then update your unit. Go to: http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=1001&lang=en
or for the beta go to: http://www.wdc.com/wdtvprerelease/ | ||||||
| jman98 posted 2009 May 20 09:07 | ||||||
| I have had ZERO problems with MKV playback. Do note that there is always the "dumbass" factor involving the encoder where some people will use unsupported encoding options for non-PCs. And note as I and others have said many many times that high def audio formats (ie. DTS-HD, DD+, etc.) are NOT supported. No claims of such support are made. I have nothing I can think of that uses AAC, so I can make no claims as to how good/bad AAC support is. But MKV files in high def X.264 with DTS or AC3 audio have always worked for me.
Future codec support via firmware upgrades is dubious as this is really a function of the chip in the unit. You can turn on support for something that the chip supports by the firmware doesn't, but that's all. It may be possible to support DTS-HD, etc. in the future via firmware updates as I think the Sigma chip already supports these, but I wouldn't really call that a codec update. That's a bit misleading. Players like the WDTV are not PCs and they won't play everything, but again, I have yet to find an MKV file that won't play. Then again, my tastes my be different from some people (ie. I have no interest in Anime, for example). | ||||||
| dr.bling posted 2009 May 22 10:15 | ||||||
| please help, I have purchased the wd-hd about a month ago and sense been trying to backup my dvd collection to portable hd for playback on the wd-hd.....
first off my backup collection of dvds were all made using ether dvd decyper or ripit4me and then shrunk with shrink to fit on a dvd backup disk, now thay all play fine except my kids manage to ruin the backups too so now I want to backup the entire collection to a portable hd to play on the wd-hd player. What is my best option for best quality playback without having some files not be playable ? I read on here that alot of people use mp4 and then use cover art and that sounds great but is there a loss in video quality ? or should i just re rip the originals to .iso and leave them unededed ? I dont realy care about extra features on the disks or dts audio as it seams to be too much of a problem at this time. or does anyone have a guide or the wd-hd to accomplish what i need done ? any help would be greatly appreciated.. thanks | ||||||
| jman98 posted 2009 May 22 11:52 | ||||||
| dr.bling - In my opinion, the WD is a poor choice for playing DVD ISO files. It will do so, yes, but I've yet to figure out how (if it is even possible) to get it to go to the main menu. It simply seems to start playing the movie, leaving you to access the WD menu to change audio/subtitles if necessary. If I am right about this, then this might not be what you want. Or you may not care. I'm just warning you.
Again, I have little to no interest in using it for DVD ISO playing so it's hardly like I have spent a ton of time on this. If there is a way to get to the main menu, I simply don't know what it is. | ||||||
| dr.bling posted 2009 May 22 12:12 | ||||||
| yea, I dont care about the main menue...... the .iso that i got to play works fine and i can sellect the audio stream for the menu on the wd remote....
what about cover art for the movies, anyone knowhow to add cover art ? and were to find it ? thanks | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 May 22 12:19 | ||||||
| Why not rip the main movie as a single VOB or MPG file with DVD Decrypter or your tool of choice?
How much quality you lose when compressing with something like h.264 in MKV or MP4 depends on how much you compress. Compressing to half the DVD MPEG 2 size, while retaining the frame size, will still look very good. Most people probably wouldn't notice the difference. | ||||||
| dr.bling posted 2009 May 22 16:44 | ||||||
| jagabo, I dont care about compresson, only quality...I want exact copys of my originals with or without the bonus junk material, so is there any benifit by converting the video_ts and iso files to mp4 or mkv ?
If so is it better to just rip the origianls straight to mp4 or mkv or should i go off my backups that i converted to fit on sigle sided dvdr's ? thanks | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 May 22 16:57 | ||||||
No. Unless the device doesn't play VOB or MPG files correctly. In that case you could use something like MakeMKV to remux the VOB/MPG into an MKV container with no loss of quality. | ||||||
| dr.bling posted 2009 May 22 19:05 | ||||||
| ok, thanks
now is there a way to get cover art on my iso files or video_ts files ? | ||||||
| vhelp posted 2009 May 22 19:46 | ||||||
pricely. I have seen even some of my poor vids look decent through the wdtv. I'm surprise and amazed. Still, I'm only just starting out with this unit and have yet to gain full throttle use, etc. from this unit. And now that I have my *new*est monitor upgrade, (w/ hdmi) I can't wait to fully test these devices and videos out. I can't wait :) . . . :!: While we are on the subject of wdtv and proper video playability ... I just realized (and edited below) -- I don't want to put anyone on the spot here, but.. if anyone who has encoded successfully h264 videos via x264 cli tool: could you help us WDTV'ers out by enlightening us with the these "supported options" or encoding settings to use to make the *playable* type videos that wdtv can play ? * I am talking about straight x264 cli command string, not megui xml profiles, since I would be using directly under that tool, and I don't use megui. -- x264 encoding (profile) -- -> 720x480 -> 1280x720 -> 1920x1080 -> or the tipicle standards, for when viewing on HD monitors and wdtv I would test right away, and it would be a great lifesaver for us all, at least get us wdtv'ers jump-started, thank you :thumbs_up: -vhelp 5118 | ||||||
| JjMon posted 2009 May 22 21:56 | ||||||
I cannot stress on how HandBreak encodes well for the WDTV, I really do not have a set Preference, I just set resolution to 640, Bitrate to 3k, framerate to 23.976 (if it DVD), 2 Pass. Audio to AAC descrete 6 channel (if it AC3 5.1) 160 Kbps, Under Advanced tab I put all the settings to default, like below
and it all looks good on my Sanyo 50" Plasma, hope that this will help anyone out | ||||||
| sfpx posted 2009 May 23 20:00 | ||||||
| I'm thinking about buying this product.
I quickly read the whole thread (phew). Some mentionned a audio sync issue on some videos . Those comments were made before the firmware releases. Are those sync issues were fixed by the firmware releases ? Thanks | ||||||
| dr.bling posted 2009 May 24 10:09 | ||||||
| i get a verry slight audo sinc im guessing around 20milliseconds, hopefully i can correct it with my onkio tx-sr803. the wife says very is speeled with one r but my sick is verry slight :) O and thats with a 100% exact copy iso image | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2009 Jun 02 19:40 | ||||||
| So you guys are saying that the unit will support DTS in a MKV container? I can't play DTS in VOB files. | ||||||
| rumplestiltskin posted 2009 Jun 02 21:21 | ||||||
| IMHO, one of the most important features of the WDTV is that it drives an old SDTV through the red/white/yellow plugs. This permits the unit to keep your old set viable for a longer period of time. Even video that would be considered "marginal" if the WDTV was driving your HDTV looks pretty darn good on that old SDTV.
I've run some HD (720p) video through the WDTV to my 32" Toshiba SDTV and the quality was excellent. SD footage was also excellent as was 512x352 PAL(?) footage that, presumably, came from across the pond. One thing I tried that didn't work was a video I ran through Submerge to add a subtitle track. Submerge simply added a video track to the ".mov" and this subtitle didn't show up when played on the WDTV. It did display properly on my AppleTV. When I had Submerge export the same video to an H264 with the subtitles embedded, it did play properly in the WDTV (of course). I have not fooled with MKV, only MP4, H264 and MPEG2, the latter as a set of VOBs opened with MPEG Streamclip and exported as an MPEG file (which only took a few minutes). If you have an AVI with a ".srt" of the same name (myvideo.avi & myvideo.srt), the WDTV will display the subtitles just fine although I'd like to see a bit more in the way of size and color choices in a future firmware update. The WDTV box doesn't seem to like SDHC cards in a flash drive adapter but does work quite nicely with "real" flash drives. I've settled on a 500GB 2.5" drive in a USB case as the storage medium for the drive. User interface: Mostly okay but the nimrods who came up with this stupid "icon view" must be M$ fanboys. They should provide an option to present the menus as text. A picture is worth 10,000 words but (as Robert Langdon says) which words do they mean? Bottom line: It's a bargain and, almost without exception, plays everything in the formats I normally use. Oh, one more thing! Without the remote control, the unit is worthless. Thankfully, you can buy an extra from WD's webstore for about $15+tax+shipping. | ||||||
| DarrellS posted 2009 Jun 03 02:01 | ||||||
There is an option to set it to List View instead of Thumbnail View under Browser Display. Here is the manual... http://www.wdc.com/en/library/wdtv/ENG/UserManual.pdf | ||||||
| rumplestiltskin posted 2009 Jun 03 09:08 | ||||||
That's only for the media on the attached hard drive. The main menu has no other option except icons. | ||||||
| RabidDog posted 2009 Jun 09 10:18 | ||||||
| jjmon:
IIRC the WDTV doesnt support AAC ? AC3 yes, and it will pass thru Hi-def like LPCM or DTS-HD. Pictures work in any language, no need to change it on a per-country basis. You can completely re-skin it with wdlxtv firmware, of course | ||||||
| sgraves425 posted 2009 Jun 09 18:27 | ||||||
| I really like my WDTV. Here's my problem. I've been using MakeMKV to covert from BluRay, which works great for me. Up til now I've had no need for subtitles. A couple movies released recently have scenes that are not in english. I've checked this thread, and searched but no luck. How can I get a .srt file from a BluRay disc?
Thanks | ||||||
| JjMon posted 2009 Jun 09 19:25 | ||||||
| RabidDog,
It supports it, I have all my backups in AAC, AC3, MP3. Mainly in AAC 5.1 (6 Channel Discrete) unless the audio is in dolby then i select the dolby. Yep I have on mine " ext3-boot firmware " it works great. my whole setup is 1 PC serving all my media via NFS ( Network File Sharing ) and my " 2 " WDTV on lan reading from 1 machine at the same time while reading the same file at the same time. :) I am vary pleased of the outcome of this Unit. Thanks to all of those coders out there for making this happen. SALUTE! | ||||||
| Des posted 2009 Jun 09 20:50 | ||||||
I had a similar problem with the Japanese scenes in both Kill Bill movies, amongst others. I can't tell you how to do this with MakeMKV, because I use AutoMKV. The solution for me is to select the 0-English subtitle set and then in the Advanced Options tab of AutoMKV and check the 'burn subtitle' option in the Muxing box. I don't knowif MakeMKV has anything similar but maybe this info can help. --dES | ||||||
| rumplestiltskin posted 2009 Jun 10 11:14 | ||||||
| Anything I encode for iPod or AppleTV plays just fine in the WD device. So that's H264 with AAC audio.
If I have a subtitle -track- in the video, the WD device won't play it but if I drop in an avi and srt of the same name (but with the correct extensions), the WD device will display the subtitles. With the exception of the icon view main menu (I'd prefer plain text like my AppleTV), the device is great. | ||||||
| Raycaster posted 2009 Jun 16 07:06 | ||||||
| A couple Newbie Questions:
Purchased the unit yesterday and read thru this thread (Great Info!). 1) I have a few mkv files that seem to have "blur" moments that you can just barely notice when the action gets a little too busy. Is this simply due to the format sampled to high or perhaps a USB transfer problem? Non 2) Is the WD TV picky about mkv files? It stopped playing a certain .mkv file after a minute or so when the PC plays it right thru. The file may be bad but as mentioned the PC plays it no problem. 3) Handbrake has been mentioned as a great encoder for optimum WD TV file format but has anyone found a CUDA/STREAM app workable? Using Expresso or BadaBoom to encode to IPOD is a huge time saver and was hoping a simple workflow using CUDA acceleration is available. I'll be playing with this ASAP but wondering if any users here have already had success. Being able to toss any format at a CUDA app and have it spit out a optimum WD TV format would be AWESOME! | ||||||
| CBC posted 2009 Jun 16 13:04 | ||||||
Save your pic as 120 px X 180 px, name it EXACTLY as your movie name as, My Movie.iso My Movie.jpg Do Google search in Images for your movie art | ||||||
| B2K24 posted 2009 Jun 16 21:01 | ||||||
whats the difference between the latest official and the beta? what are more people using? Any drawbacks to beta? does this unit allow downgrading to previous firmwares? | ||||||
| neomaine posted 2009 Jun 17 08:42 | ||||||
The WDTV has a network option? I've been going back and forth between the Popcorn Hour and the WDTV and was leaning towards the PH since it had network connectivity. Can you confirm/explain how you have this setup? Thanks! | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 Jun 17 09:13 | ||||||
| The firmware for the WDTV is open source so there are a lot of mods, including network (via USB network adapter) and external USB DVD drive support. For example: http://b-rad.cc/wdlxtv | ||||||
| JjMon posted 2009 Jun 17 19:51 | ||||||
| It's all explained here :) sorry for the short response... it's I have been working all day and very tired.
EDIT: If you are planing to do a NFS server I prefer HaneWin NFS Server if you are using Windows as an OS. I have had bad luck with other servers. | ||||||
| Trackerxx posted 2009 Jun 19 19:10 | ||||||
| Where to start, first time post here. While I love my WD, I am having some bad luck. I just want to know if anyone else is having these kinds of issues.
1. The unit is not powering on/off using the remote with new batteries after it is on for so long. I have to unplugg it and plug it back in to get it to respond. 2. I can't get it to come back to the main menu after the screen saver has been on for so long. Once again, I have to unplug.plug it in to get it to respond. 3. Trying to play mkv or iso files made from Blueray discs cause the unit to studder in video and loose all audio. The only way to return it to normal is to ff or rw then hit play. This get extremely annoying doing it every 5 minutes. I have a Samsung 52 LCD and 2 Lacie 1 tb drives that I use. All of which are not even 6 months old. I use the hdmi (Which plays at 1080i 60 hrz)to the tv and the optical ouput to a reciever for sound. The WD plays everything else I throw at it wonderfully. Just the Blueray seems to kill it? Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks | ||||||
| Supreme2k posted 2009 Jun 19 19:35 | ||||||
| Unfortunately, there's no real mkv standard for blu-ray, so the encodes may be a problem. I haven't had any problems with my BR rips or (mostly) conversions.
The problem may be more closely related to the other symptoms. You may have a faulty unit (no pun or joke intended). Have you tried upgrading the firmware? | ||||||
| Trackerxx posted 2009 Jun 19 19:55 | ||||||
| I did upgrade to the newest firmware, I was hoping that was it but, nothing. I even tried playing the bluerays in 720 format but still no help. I used the program MakeMKV and AnyDVD HD, both fail to play, although Makemkv play 10 times better. Perhaps it is the software I am using to encode? Any good suggestions, I have been reading framerate is a key factor, yet niether of those two softwares allow for framerate adjustment. I am hoping its not a faulty unit, I don't have the patientance to deal with that /sigh. Thanks for your replies. | ||||||
| Squash posted 2009 Jun 19 20:38 | ||||||
| Tracerxx,
As to your remote problems, it's pretty well known that the WDTV's remote is subject to IR interference from certain models of TVs, especially Samsung (which is what I have) and some Philips models. There are various workarounds listed on this page: http://wdtv.wetpaint.com/page/Remote+Control+Issues What I did was to cut a couple of small strips from a metallized Mylar bag such as hard drives and video cards come in, and tape them over the IR sensor on the front of the WD (one strip was not enough, but using two completely cleared up the problem. It probably depends on the IR reflectivity of your room as to how many you'll need.) There's a guide here: http://philips.samipupu.com/philips/wdtvhack/ that will show you how to put the strips inside the unit, if you so desire (I was afraid I might break it, so just taped them to the outside). That should hopefully take care of problems #1 & #2. As to #3, you could try remuxing the MKVs into m2ts, see: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=15270395#post15270395 The WD has some problems with 1080p files that exceed Blu-ray specs for Length X Height X number of reference frames. As I remember, just keep the reference frames to no more than 4 or 5 (I forget) and you'll be OK. That's been the subject of many posts here and at avsforum and should be easy to look up if you need to. As far as encoding programs for MKV, the only one I've used recently is ripbot264, but only for 720p. It's worked well for me. Others, such as Handbrake and Xvid4PSP seem to be highly regarded around here as well, though I've never used them. Edit: If the videos you're having trouble with are VC-1 rather than H264, make sure you upgraded the firmware from the pre-release page. The official WD page has version 1.02.07; the pre-release page goes up to 1.02.10. In version 1.02.08, one of the fixes was for "VC-1 MKVs playback poorly". You can check the video type with Mediainfo. The pre-release page is at: http://www.wdc.com/wdtvprerelease/ Oh, and disregard what I said about reference frames and such. I've since looked up MakeMKV and saw that it just repackages the video into MKV without conversion, so there should be no problem with exceeding Blu-ray specs. | ||||||
| LifeIsGd posted 2009 Jun 24 11:42 | ||||||
| I heard quite a few complains that WD does not power down USB HDD; but mine seems to be doing just fine.
The trick is to connect USB HDD power first, then connect WD power supply. When you finish playing, press "Home" button first before press "Power" button. USB HDD will stop spinning. Don't switch power off for USB HDD. Otherwise, you might have to repeat the steps above. | ||||||
| Trackerxx posted 2009 Jun 24 19:12 | ||||||
| Squash,
Thanks you so much for all the help. I manage to resolve the remote problem by turning my power saving mode off for the samsung TV. I also replaced my HDMI cable with a 1080p 350 hz rated cable, a step up from my older cable, while this did seem to help some, it did not solve the problem completely. I did try handbrake, Makemkv, Ripbot and a few others, heeh. I used Transformers Blueray disc as a test subject. No program seem to fix the choppy play and loosing audio, although it was less frequent with makemkv then the other programs. The only way to get it to play normal was to ff for a sec or two and return to play. My last ditch effort was to resort to downgrading my firmware to 1.01.02. The scary part is now my blueray dvd's play without any hiccups although I do loose Digital sound oputput, but it still plays thru the hdmi cable just fine. I also loose the nice new kewl feature of having jpg art for my 1.5 terabytes worth of movies. Makes it hard for my son to navigate and pic his movies seeing how he can't read yet. I tried firmware version 1.02.07 and beta 1.02.10. I have yet to try 1.02.08. I plan on doing that soon to see if it will get me digital sound, cover art AND play my bluerays ok. I upgraded to 1.01.08 and everything is working smoothly, I set the audio setting to digital and the optical output is now working and movies are playing great! While I applaud WD for constantly upgrading firmware and adding great new features, it is a shame that something that worked so well before is so screwed up now. It took me days of converting and experimenting to get answers i needed. Sigh Now I just need subtitles and life would be good :) Hmmm using Tsmuxer, select the PGS stream you want to us as the subtitle, then Demux. Take the newly created .SUP file and used SupRip to convert it to SRT format. Name the .srt file the same as the movie file name, placed them in the same folder on the wdtv drive I am using. Bam, I now have subtitle for my blueray. I hope this helps anyone out there experiencing the same problems I am. Once again thanks for the help in this forum!! I have just been piecing together forum posts and testing them and stated what has worked for me. Awesome support here! Trackerxx | ||||||
| JjMon posted 2009 Jun 26 16:55 | ||||||
| There is now a public Snapshot of HandBreak :)
Core Lib: New build system, allowing 64-bit binaries (around 10% faster) Soft subtitles and Closed Captions Better support for non-DVD inputs: - Sources with no audio - TrueHD - DTS-HD demuxing - 8 bit audio sources - Preserves MP4 metadata Better AV sync libdvdnav and DVD angles support DTS passthrough for MKV Better sample interleaving Updated libraries, for better x264 performance Variable verbose logging levels Better, optional deinterlacer for decomb (EEDI2) Mac, Windows, and Linux interfaces: Live video preview New subtitle tab New filters and picture settings inspector Custom anamorphic mode Updated Sparkle Custom number of preview images Quality slider now works off actual rate factor/quantizer values instead of percentages Updated advanced x264 tab New built-in presets Mac: Core Audio AAC encoding H.264 video source decoding bug fixed Windows: New audio tab AAC audio source decoding bug fixed Improved picture settings controls Tray minimization is now optional Queue can now be started from main window Linux: Cosmetic GUI improvements Inhibits sleep mode while encoding Single title scan Chapter duration display Notifications when encodes complete Tray minimization Full screen preview CLI: Options to handle new subtitle, anamorphic, and preview features to download the snapshot go here | ||||||
| B2K24 posted 2009 Jun 27 13:26 | ||||||
| Because of this thread i bought the WDAVN00BN media player. I LOVE IT as it plays everything i have thrown at it with exception of DTS but thats easily fixed converting to AC3.
I notice with i power off the unit my 1 TB WD external stays with a constant blue light. When it's playing or seeking data the blue light is moving as the drive is working/spinning. If i use this media player every day is it better for the external to stay plugged in with a constant blue light when the player is not in use? I worry to many times powering on and off is bad for my data and the drive? Whats better for the long term? | ||||||
| ocgw posted 2009 Jun 27 17:20 | ||||||
I would turn it off, heat is the killer of HDD's and externals have limited cooling capabilities ocgw peace | ||||||
| FulciLives posted 2009 Jun 28 03:37 | ||||||
| @Trackerxx
Try encoding using pre-sets made for a Sony PS3 as these will be compatible with the Western Digital Media Player. My guess is that your encodes are not being done "correctly" i.e., they are not up to DXVA specs. Using a PS3 profile will ensure that. XVID4PSP is a great program to use. It has a PS3 MP4 profile or a M2TS profile that works basically the same way. In fact if you don't need multiple audio files nor subtitle files for a particular movie then I would go M2TS vs MKV. - John "FulciLives" Coleman | ||||||
| LifeIsGd posted 2009 Jun 28 14:30 | ||||||
Blue light means USB HDD has power switched on; it does not necessary mean HDD is spinning. USB HDD built in recent years has the ability to stop spinning when it senses no USB signal. You should be able to feel it with your hand or hear it with your ears (close enough) when HDD spins. As long as HDD does not spin, device should stay cool. There shall be no heating issue. | ||||||
| vhelp posted 2009 Jun 28 21:57 | ||||||
| Its unfortunate that the WD gets hot, too, even when the unit is off. In the summer season, its hot to the tuch though not sevearly hot. So, I unplug it when not in use. So far, I have not had the chance to update to latest firmway, any for that matter. They are on sale at bestbuy for $119 currently. I picked up another 1T HDD, (diff brand this time: SimpleDrive) on sale for $109 also, was last one, so I grabbed it. I'm still investigating optimum xvid playback on the WD..but it keeps me busy.
[OT]The WD TV is a great piece of equipment. And now I'm investigating, of all things, Digital Picture Frames the past month. They are awsome, too. I have several, one at 1024x768 and picture (and videos, inc h264) come out really well, I'm surprised! The HP and Sylvania are the best. I'm going for the HP one, 800x600 when they get more in stock. I may do some reviews at a later date.[/OT] -vhelp 5149 | ||||||
| LifeIsGd posted 2009 Jul 05 23:02 | ||||||
| The unit gets into "standby"mode when you try to shut it down.
I hope WD engineers can add a power saver option so that when you press the power button it can shutdown completely. I do not mind the time it takes to reboot. In the summer, the unit gets pretty hot in standby mode. Unplug is a sensible thing to do, but annoying... | ||||||
| Rudyard posted 2009 Aug 12 22:35 | ||||||
| I have just been lead to this thread, ive skimmed many pages but there is so much info, I was wondering if anyone could tell me if you can somehow use chapters or skip to time without physically fastforwarding in real time? | ||||||
| Supreme2k posted 2009 Aug 12 23:56 | ||||||
| Get the latest firmware, then you can skip by 10 minutes by using fast forward and next chapter.
If your media has chapters (mkv, among others), press option, then select the chapter from the top menu (along with audio, subtitles, etc.) | ||||||
| Rudyard posted 2009 Aug 13 01:15 | ||||||
Thanks for the reply, sounds very promising. Can you help me with one thing. I am about to encode 50 hours of VHS captures for my mother to play through a media player. I was advised to use high bitrate MPEG2, can I somehow add chapters to this the player will read or does it need to be MKV (that is a video format??) | ||||||
| stiltman posted 2009 Aug 20 11:17 | ||||||
| Just picked one up last night.
just composite and HDMI I haven't tried any of the modded firmwares on the new one Guess this is the old one | ||||||
| vhelp posted 2009 Aug 21 20:01 | ||||||
| @ stiltman
I'm pretty sure that the *new* 'er version will have either a new packaging and/or name, something like WDTV pro WDTV plus 'er something like that. bestbuy had the original wdtv's on sale for $99 bucks last week. Its prob still going that price today. On the other hand, there's another mediaplayer device, similar to wdtv, but in addition to wdtv, it comes with component outputs. The unit was more sleeker and flat versus the wdt'd 4-pack (cigarette) size. I was tempted to pick it up but I passed it up on due to my cards spending limits/per/day :) maybe tomorrow will re-consider it unless someone already has and can spare pros/cons about it. -vhelp 5174 | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 Aug 21 20:33 | ||||||
That's pretty much the going price these days. Fry's and NewEgg has them for that. Amazon too with free shipping. | ||||||
| jman98 posted 2009 Aug 21 21:02 | ||||||
Well, it's the ONLY one available. The "new" one hasn't even been announced yet, so it could be released next month or December or never for all we know. Nothing in the prototype photos that I saw makes me regret the one I bought last year. | ||||||
| vhelp posted 2009 Aug 21 21:15 | ||||||
| ..and here I was thinking that I was helping, oh well.
. . . Well, i'm not looking to replace my wdtv, i like it very much though i've been only using it with my 8gig sticks and not to its fullest, like a nice size ws monitor, etc., i guess i'm not too picky or else i'm that lazy..anyway. ..just me going off the deep end here.. What i want to do dump all my vids to 1-t drive, but i can't justify dumping whole vids (w/out re-encoding them) even with that size hdd. seems a waist of space and don't understand some peoples rash in doing this. the only problem with dumping (after re-encoding) is the process behind it. You see, depending on the codec format, you either have to: deinterlace=faster, determine if ivtc'able=slower, or worse, break each video into smaller segments for deinterlacing / ivtc -- some TNG and Babylon 5 are examples of these, they have 30p and telecine mixed in. The point I'm trying to make here is that it takes time, lots of it if you have tons of stuff, or in my case, many tv series. And it gets much messier (when dealing with tv series) on an episode-by-episode bases because in my dealings I've come up against many insonsistant ep's that are mixtures of fallups in telecine videos..so much that I sometimes feel like giving up. I could let a popular invtc algo/plugin do the guess work but there that slight change of hope that the video is restorable, either 24p or 30p, and that's the time kicker: do you take a chance and go that route or go a simple "auto" route and let the algo/plugin think for you. So I was trying to decide on what route I want to take: deal with each videos telecine aspecs or just do it all one way--deinterlace but not deinterlace :lol: if that makes any sense to you. I've been experimenting on this idea. You see, you take a telecine (not all-interlaced) video and instead of deinterlace it you decompose it, where you restore the progressive frames, and anywhere where it interlaces, you decompose it (for lack of appropriate term) or keep the dup frame keeping 29.970 aka 30p framerate, if that makes any sense to any of you guys. I did a few videos this way and I like the way it came out though i'm still debuggin algos. I dont have any receipies or do-it-all functions because i'm still working out the idea as an alternative to those videos (tv series) that would otherwise take too long to deal with and consiquentially ware me out. For example, I have the complete Babylon 5 series, all five seasons. Its CGI's are 30p and videos are 30i telecine. The problem with this series is that they are not as clean as I thought. The begin/end points from 30i to 30p to 30i is inconstant and you have to deal with them, assumng your route in the manual one. I'm talking about trying to make perfect 24p restoration, which is not posible w/ this series since its a mixture of 30p/30i. But there are many other tv series that are drulling to work with. As for this series I would think it best to 30p it completely and let those inconsistant begin/end points be delt with by the deinterlace algos. But, I do wonder how others in the WDTV boat are fairing on this endeavor, especially for tv series. Are they just dumping dvd iso's onto 1-t HDD's or are they re-encoding them painstakenly or re-encoding them with the help of some auto assist algo, etc. I just think that dumping dvd's or iso's is not making the best use. -vhelp 5176 | ||||||
| festmaster posted 2009 Aug 21 22:04 | ||||||
The majority of my DVD collection is TV shows, too. The vast majority of those are interlaced, which I correct when I convert to Xvid. My Xvid files on are on portable drives 250gb-500gb. The WDTV doesn't play nicely with ISO files of TV shows since it will only play the first episode. I am happy with the output of the Xvid files on the big screen. | ||||||
| stiltman posted 2009 Aug 24 10:07 | ||||||
Well, i was playing with it this weekend. It will not recongnize my TV HDMI to DVI (the old HD-DVD A3 wouldn't either) I went through a range of videos and all were playing fine. Then after playing a mpeg2 file, it stopped playing any files, even the ones it played before. I have to remove the external 1TB Terabank drive, delete the wd folder and let it scan the drive again. This is all on the OEN original firmware. It might be going back to the store, if I can't get it to do HDMI to DVI on my TV what a pisser | ||||||
| jman98 posted 2009 Aug 24 10:15 | ||||||
Some are defective out of the box and have to be returned based on reports we've had here. Mine had no playback problems, but I had to have the support folks send me a new remote control within days of setting it up. A new remote fixed my issues. You might try contacting the support folks and ask them if HDMI to DVI is unsupported. If so, it sounds like that will be a deal breaker for you, stiltman. | ||||||
| stiltman posted 2009 Aug 24 11:17 | ||||||
I was thinking about exchanging it tonight or tomorrow to see if it's just a bad box. On the remote, the up arrow works about 50% of the time. It's also extremely slow responding to remote inputs (arrows, entering, back) is that normal? | ||||||
| jman98 posted 2009 Aug 24 11:20 | ||||||
No, that's not normal. My player simply refused to respond to the remote control 2 days after I bought it, but after I got a replacement remote it has been fine. The response to remote inputs is just about instantaneous. It sounds like your player is definitely defective. | ||||||
| stiltman posted 2009 Aug 24 11:41 | ||||||
| Now to find that bestbuy reciept :(
Edit: Ok, I just replaced it with another one. This one is much more responsive. However it's still a no go with HDMI to DVI This time however I get the WD logo when it's booting up, but once it does, it goes blank on the HDMI connection and my TV says no signal. One another note, I have to repace my current upconverting surround sound system because it sucks. I compared a Xvid to the original DVD and the Xvid transfer played at 720x460 via composite actually looked better than the DVD Wow, what a strange setup I must have....Now it makes me wonder if any HDMI to DVI devices will work....I guess so much for early adopters, as my HDTV is a 1st generation model. This 42" TV now might become my Bedroom TV and to be replaced with another Plasma TV in the family room....more current of course Edit 2: It had no problems playing my high kbs Xvid files 4000Kbs + It wouldn't play regular VOBs for some reason, even though it woiuld play DVD ISO files | ||||||
| stiltman posted 2009 Aug 25 21:44 | ||||||
| Just a follow up.
I was able to get HDMI working. Kinda screwy though. I had to have both HDMI and Composite hooked up. I then selected HDMI at 1080i. Max for my TV is 1080i The system took for ever to do anything, then all of a sudden it turned itself off. I turn it on, it turned itself off. Did this about 4 or 5 times Disconnected HDMI and turned it back on. I went and selected HDMI again, this time I selected 480p Boom it works. I then changed it to 720p, it did fine I changed it to 1080i and it went, but it was like a little shaky. I went back to 720p Took the HDMI cable off and put it back into my surround sound system Put a HDMI cable from the WDTV to my surround sound system Selected HDMI pass through on my surround sound system, and zero nada ziltch Went back from WDTV to TV and all is good again. Bummer Now I'm wondering if I should waste money on a HDMI port switch, as that may not work either, Then on top of that having to get a digital out cable for the WDTV to connect to my surround sound system. I have to admit though, the picture is outstanding. All my encodes are really high kbs. With handbrake, I usually set the constant quality to 94 or 95 In the end, I think I'll keep it | ||||||
| vhelp posted 2009 Aug 26 19:18 | ||||||
| keep it..!!
hey stiltman, i'm glad you got it going finally. this usually only happens to us faulks who make such idle threats--at the first sign of trouble, back it goes--but keep it in the end. Looks like you are slowly setteling down with it--great! I haven't quite tested bitrates with the wdtv. been too busy in many things. but most of what I threw at it played fine, even those said not possible. So it all depends on the video, the codec and the arkaine encoding params we cooked into each video. I'm still deciding on a final codec. Its become more complex than I had initially thought. but I did pick up an LG portable player, (built in 500g hdd, though different menu system) also to test, and so far, its a champ too. i got it because the price was screwy at the store and I managed to pinch the salesrep at the lowest price. Like you, i haven't tried and firmware updating. I'm too scared that i'll miss some wdtv functions. And, the only thing I want changed on the wdtv is the filename and menuing (searchability) needs lots of work. Don't know what they were thinking when they created the menus on this devices. same with the LG though it at least plays a stamp-size video as you scan through the files on the hdd. If they improve on the wdtv's searchable menu function, i'd prob go for the firmware. should you or someone else figure out an alternative, pass it on. yeah, there is are other uses for this gizmo too. and I agree, the quality of the unit's output is very nice indeed. The beauty is its portable, don't have to drag a pc around, not to mention electric and all that nonsense. -vhelp 5179 | ||||||
| stiltman posted 2009 Aug 27 09:52 | ||||||
| Here's what i found it wont play (not sure if its been listed before or not)
MOV files created on a Casio cameria (I'll check with dvdinfo to see what they are) VOB files (both home moves and DVD rips) AVI files with panasonic DV codec It has played files with Xvid bitrates up to 5600kbs so far I have pretty much standardized everything with Xvid H.263 with AC3 5/6.1 audio. In handbreak I set it to constant quality of 94 or 95 Yeah I know it's going overboard on the bitrate, but I stopped backing up my DVDs and just started cheeping digital copies. This will give me the best results if I need to reconvert back to DVD format | ||||||
| Supreme2k posted 2009 Aug 27 13:49 | ||||||
| Are you talking about your specific WD TV? Mine plays all of those. You may need to exchange yours for one that works. I have tested it with VOBs in SD and HD. I've never checked the exact codec on the Casio files either.
Did the link filter actually work with handbreak (rather than Handbrake)? | ||||||
| stiltman posted 2009 Aug 27 14:56 | ||||||
| That's the strange part. It will play a DVD iso all be it with out menus, but it wont play a standalone vob
My mistake, it's not a Casio, It's a Panasonic Elixim A broken hand or a car's brakes....what's the difference :wink: | ||||||
| Kryton posted 2009 Sep 06 12:43 | ||||||
| It does play VOB files. I ripped most of my colection to merged VOBs and they all play without issue. | ||||||
| festmaster posted 2009 Sep 06 20:56 | ||||||
| You were right the first time, Exilim is Casio and mine plays fine, though the camera is 3 years old and is standard definition 4:3. The Panasonic DV camcorder uses standard miniDV, and it has been known from the beginning that miniDV is not supported by the WDTV. | ||||||
| mysticgohan17 posted 2009 Sep 08 13:42 | ||||||
| this is how i get cover art for thumbnails
I search the movie or tv show on amazon. do a right click + "copy image location" on the cover paste it into a new tab the url looks like this http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5186HA35JEL._SL160_AA115_.jpg i change it to this (delete '_AA115' part) http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5186HA35JEL._SL160.jpg the '160' defines the height of the image. just change that to 180 and save it as the title of the movie in the same directory. if the width ends up being larger than 120 you can crop it in photobucket or something. i'm sure there's an automated way to do this but i like my way. | ||||||
| hanugro posted 2009 Sep 20 02:49 | ||||||
| Hi there I just bought WD TV and found out that it can't play WMA3/Pro that come with many of my WMV HD video. Is there any application that let me re encode the audio only to WMA2 that is easy to use and fast? Thanks! | ||||||
| Baldrick posted 2009 Sep 20 04:33 | ||||||
| hanugro: Please try NOT to cross post. Solution: http://forum.videohelp.com/topic373289.html | ||||||
| hanugro posted 2009 Sep 20 04:42 | ||||||
| Sorry, you can please lock my other thread. WMVMuxer seems to be the answer. | ||||||
| Teutatis posted 2009 Oct 02 18:46 | ||||||
I would like to follow up with one more question regarding the audio on BD (Yes, after 5 months!). Do BD contain standard DD and DTS soundtracks alongside with their HD counterparts. For example, if a movie has DTS HD Master Audio, does it also contain the standard DTS track? I know that Blu-Ray players will output the standard DD and DTS tracks through the digital coaxial or the optical audio output, if the HDMI output is not used. Do they do this by simply selecting the existing DD or DTS track on the disk, or does the player convert the DTS HD to standard DTS? In which case, the standard DTS track does not exist on the disk. So if the standard DD or DTS track is present on the disk, and if I rip the BD using AnyDVD to m2ts files, and keep both the HD and the standard version of the soundtrack, can the WD TV do the same thing as a Blu-Ray player and bitstream the DD or DTS track through the optical port to my receiver? | ||||||
| IceBone posted 2009 Nov 18 06:55 | ||||||
| Hey, I'm new here and also have a problem with HDMI on my WD TV. It works great via composite and when I change the output to HDMI, it just stays black for a few seconds, then turns back on with composite. I tried switching the input to the correct HDMI, when it's plugged in, but it just reports no signal. I took it to a friend, where it did exactly the same, the cable, though, worked with his player. Am I doing something wrong or is the HDMI port possibly kaput on my brand new player? :( | ||||||
| jagabo posted 2009 Nov 18 08:01 | ||||||
| I have an WDTV Live (new version of the HDTV). I don't know if the process is the same but here's what happens on the Live. After selecting HDMI output you are presented with a confirmation dialog. I don't remember the exact wording but basically if asks if you want to accept the new setting or revert back to the previous setting. If you simply press Enter (or just wait a while) it will revert back to the original setting (composite in your case). You have to use the arrow keys to highlight the correct response and then hit Enter.
What I think is happening in your case is after selecting HDMI output the composite output is switched off (you see a black screen) and the HDMI output is enabled. The confirmation dialog is on the HDMI port now so you don't see it. Then you are hitting Enter, or just waiting, and the WDTV is reverting back to composite. When the screen goes black, switch your HDTV to the HDMI input right away. You should see the confirmation dialog. | ||||||
| IceBone posted 2009 Nov 18 09:22 | ||||||
| I have done so, however it I still get no signal. I'm away from home right now, when I come home, I'll try pressing the right arrow and confirming. Maybe then it'll send the right signal to my TV and complete the handshake.
EDIT: This is getting weirder. I've done what I planned and on some resolutions (720p, 576p, auto, and some others) it now DOESN'T default back to composite, but it doesn't show on HDMI either. :S EDIT 2: I called tech support, they told me to bring it over, they'll check it out and give me a replacement if it's busted. EDIT 3: Went to the place, they hooked it up to their tv with their cable, works like a charm. Used my cable, nothing. Bought 3 metre cable for 6 euro, tried it, works. Will be home in about 5 hours, will give final test then. |
Login/Register to our forum to be able to post here.