WD TV HD Media Player Review

by Jerry Jackson

Do you download high-definition movies and TV shows online and play them on your notebook? Do you ever wish you could watch those videos on your big screen HDTV without connecting your laptop to your home entertainment center? Well, Western Digital has the perfect product for you ... and it's priced low enough to make the perfect Christmas gift. The WD TV HD Media Player is a pint-sized device that lets you watch 1080p movies and more on your HDTV. Let's take a closer look.

Combined with a Western Digital My Passport portable drive (sold separately), the WD TV ($129.99 MSRP) is an extremely convenient way to play HD movies or home videos, listen to digital music and show high-resolution slideshows of your family photos on your HDTV. The WD TV is essentially a tiny Home Theater PC with an easy-to-use interface. Even if you don't have a My Passport drive, the WD TV works with any USB flash drive or USB external drive. Not only that, but you can connect the WD TV with any digital camera, camcorder, or portable media player that can be recognized as a mass storage device with a USB cable.

Package Contents:

• HD Media Player
• Stand for My Passport portable drive
• Compact remote with batteries
• Media converter software (Windows only)
• Composite AV cable
• AC adapter
• Quick Install Guide

System Requirements:

• Any USB storage device (such as the Western Digital My Passport portable hard drive) with supported video or audio content stored on it.
• Standard- or high-definition television with HDMI or composite video connections

Build and Design

The WD TV HD Media Player is an extremely compact device measuring just 1.57" x 3.94" x 4.94" and weighing just 0.67 pounds. To give you some idea of how small the WD TV is the photo below shows the WD TV next to a standard DVD for scale.

The WD TV itself is made of black glossy plastic so it looks great next to most home entertainment center devices. Unlike most media center PCs or Home Theater PCs the WD TV offers hassle-free playback of HD movies, home videos, digital music, and photos on your HDTV. There's no clumsy Windows interface here, just plug-and-play simpliciy.

Setup and Use

Setting up the WD TV is as simple as plugging in the power cord and connecting the WD TV to your HDTV either via RCA composite video cables (included) or an HDMI cable (sold separately). Next, all you have to do is put your digital photos, music, and video on a USB storage device (such as a USB flash drive or hard drive) and connect the drive to the USB port on the WD TV. Now you're ready to start watching your digital content on your huge HDTV.

The WD TV has two USB ports located on the back and left side of the device that allow you to access two USB drives simultaneously. The "Our Media Library" feature automatically scans both drives and combines the content from both drives into one directory that is sorted by media type.

Once you plug in a USB device to the WD TV you can use the included remote control to browse your content using either thumbnail or list views. This is great for selecting the file you want either by filename or by the thumbnail image. You can also search by genre, title, artist, filename or partial filename. There's no limit to the size of your media collection; just replace or add more USB drives for more space.

The Photo viewer lets you create custom slide shows with background music, or manually zoom or pan your images while viewing them on your HDTV. The Video/Movie viewer allows you to fast forward, rewind, pause, zoom, and pan your movies. You can even view subtitles if the video file supports them. The music player features basic controls like fast forward, rewind, pause, shuffle, and repeat.

For those of you who don't already have a massive library of digital movies and music, the WD TV includes free media conversion software (ArcSoft MediaConverter 2.5) that helps you quickly and easily convert photos, videos, and music files into formats optimized for use on the WD TV HD Media Player.

Although it's nice that Western Digital includes the ArcSoft MediaConverter software, I can't help but wish Western Digital would work with movie studios to make 1080p movies available for purchase and download online. That way consumers would have an easy (and 100 percent legal) way to put digital copies of movies and music on the WD TV.

In terms of file formats, I tested every video file format I personally use with the WD TV, including MPEG1/2/4, WMV, WMA, AVI (MPEG4, Xvid, AVC), H.264, MKV, MOV, VOB, and AVCHD. Most of the time the files played perfectly and the only times I experienced trouble were when a file was encoded incorrectly and the audio didn't playback correctly. The only obvious omission in terms of file format support is VC1. No matter what I did I couldn't get the WD TV to to play VC1 files.

Potential Problems

First, the biggest issue you might encounter when using the WD TV is that this media player does not support protected content such as movies or music from the iTunes Store, Cinema Now, Movielink, Amazon Unbox, or Vongo. Although this might be frustratiing to some people, it shouldn't be a surprise. Any downloaded video or audio files that have digital rights management (DRM) usually cannot be played in other devices or software-based players.

Just look at this as additional proof that DRM stinks.

Next, the thumbnail display for the video browser doesn't work as easily as it should. Thumbnails have to be embedded into the file and this doesn't work on MKV files. This means you end up with generic icons for your movie files rather than pretty pictures.

Another minor headache is the video player's lack of skip back or skip forward. Sure, you can rewind or fast forward the movie that you're watching but if you restart a movie and want to jump forward to the part you were at you have to sit there and slowly fast forward until you get to the scene you want. Considering how great the WD TV is the lack of a quick skip button is something of a disappointment. UPDATE: Western Digital just released a firmware update to the WD TV HD Media Player and the WD TV now has a 10-minute skip forward or skip back feature! Just download and install the firmware update to get this feature.

Conclusion

If you have a ton of movies, TV shows, music, and photos on your notebook and want to put them on your HDTV then the WD TV HD Media Player is probably the best value and easiest overall solution currently on the market.

For last-minute Christmas shoppers, my recommendation is to run (do not walk) to your nearest electronics store and purchase the WD TV HD Media Player. It makes a great gift for loved ones ... or a great gift for yourself if you're in need of some self-love around the holidays.

Despite a few minor omissions in terms of file format support, the WD TV is quite simply the best low-cost, compact media player we have reviewed.

Pros:

• Low price
• Easy setup
• Compatible with most video and audio formats
• Fantastic video and audio playback over HDMI

Cons:

• Some file formats (such as VC1 or DRM-protected content) not supported
• Awesome My Passport storage drive not included (understandable considering the price)
• It would be great if Western Digital worked with movie studios to make 1080p movies available for purchase and download online

Price and Availability

The WD TV HD Media Player ($129.99) is available on the Western Digtal website. You can also find the WD TV at many retail stores.

 

actually sounds pretty nice, if i didn't just get my e6400 with the displayport, i seriously would be buying this. Pair this up with my netflix roku box and im set....

 

I have had this box for about 2 weeks now and am just letting you know that not all mkv's work perfectly. 1080p content with a high number of Reference Frames will not play correctly on the device and will appear very very pixelated or not play at all. Only about 25% of my 1080p stuff plays correctly on this box. The video needs to be encoded with a lower amount of Reference Frames at 1080p to play correctly. This box also does not decode DTS Audio inside movie files either. You will need to convert it to a different format using Popcorn Audio Converter program or something else if you do not have a receiver that can decode DTS Audio. And also just in case you wanted to know, when the device is "off" it is actually still on and powered but the Audio and Video output are just cut and the LED's on the device are off. You can plug in a USB drive while it is "off" and it will still scan the drive for media files. There is no way to fully turn it off unless you unplug it. Other than the things I mentioned above, this device is amazing and I would consider a very good value for what it is. Hopefully there will be new firmwares that come out that will address these problems.

There is a huge thread at AVSforum
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1080840
There are many there that lists the incompatibilities of this device as well as testing the max output of the device.

 

If you like this you should check out Popcorn Hour. Its the same idea, but you can install an internal hard drive and can stream movies over your network directly to the tv. My dad bought one and had me set it up...its pretty interesting. I think its roughly twice the price of the wd though. Fun toys.

 

If you haven't already, you might want to try installing the new Firmware update. It corrects some (but not all) of the MKV file compatibility issues. Full details about what is corrected with the firmware update are available on the WD website:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/wdtv/

 

Has anyone been able to tell me if there is such a thing like the Hauppauge 1800 that can have HDMI input and output?

 

Looks interesting......could see this as a viable alternative if I had a boatload of HD content (currently just 'plug N play' with my iPod)

 

I have been using one of these for the pst 2 weeks and just bought one for my dad for christmas. It's an amazing little device. I've not had any compatibility problems yet, I have a lot of MKV's and various other file formats and have yet to experience a problem with it!

Overall it's great! I used to use my PS3 w/ an external HDD for videos, but having to convert them and even split the larger videos to smaller sizes just to fit it on a drive the PS3 could read was annoying.

It's certainly worth the price if watching digital content on your TV is something you're after. However, shop around, I was able to pick this up from BestBuy for $99.95 last week.

 

Nice review. I have to say, I was super impressed with these things when I played around with it. My one real desire is for network functionality, since I don't want to have to unplug the drive every time I want to update the available content. It'd be nice to be able to draw from a central repository over gigabit-E or something (even though I know this was built to sell storage, I can wish).

 

Yeah I have tried the new firmware update and many people who have the new firmware have complained about DTS issues about it cutting out every 40 seconds or so, so I would wait and not upgrade if you have a DTS receiver. There is no way to go back yet. There are more expensive units with network functionality and performs a little better but for about double the price at around $200, such as the Popcorn Hour A100 or A110 or other Networked Media Tanks. I think what some people are doing are buying NAS devices with USB interface as well so they can moves the files around over their network and have the WD TV still access it. I have not done this personally yet but will definitely do this very soon.

 

Another recommendation for people who dont care about hi def content, is a modded Xbox.

Has all the same features of popcorn hour(ability to stream from a network or play off hard drive[which you'll need to upgrade yourself]) plus it can play video games. Oh... and you can pick up used ones for about $50 from craigslist. Softmod it(you might have trouble tracking the req. tools down, but that process also shouldnt cost more than $10 if you want to have someone do it for you), put XBMC in and you're golden. The only time you'll run into playback problems is if your video's bitrate and resolution is too high.(most things above 1080i) Obscure codecs and odd file containers are almost all playable though.

 

Nice review Jerry!

It looks to be a nice *gadget* addition for someone!
And, it's reasonably priced, to boot!

Cin

 

Yeah this plays Divx and Xvid just fine. I heard there were some problems with 720p Divx after the updated firmware though.

 

"Do you download high-definition movies and TV shows online"...lols i would never do that...that's illegal!

Yeah this machine rocks...only thing i dislike is that the AC3 or DTS tracks which are found in most HD mkv files need to be passed through a receiver for decoding or you get no sound.

 

Oh, now that's a clever idea.

 

My AC3 audio works just fine, it's the DTS ones that are annoying, I don't have a receiver that can decode it yet. What I do now is process it through a program called Popcorn Hour Audio Converter and convert the DTS audio to AC3. It takes about 10 mins for a 2 hour movie to convert the audio.

 

I got one of these, great device!

Is it safe to upgrade to the new firmware? heard bad things about it so far.

 

Nice review. I would like if it had the capability to work with a NAS. Still I'll keep my eyes on this one.