Western Digital TV HD 1080i Mini Media Player
Posted by Notcot on Apr 17, 2010 in Portable Sound & Vision |
5 CommentsReply |
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Hello, my Grandparents have an extensive collection of DVD’s, dwindling space on the shelves and an old crt television set. Not exactly my idea of a Home Cinema set up. So when I saw this little gadget on Amazon I thought I’d take the plunge and test it out. Connecting the little Media Centre to your TV is as easy as connecting a dvd or video player, just plug it into your AV sockets or scart adapter and turn it on. I had already backed up a tonne of DVD’s to a 1.5tb Samsung Story External Harddrive, so I just plugged that into the USB port and ‘bingo’ it appears as a drive on the Media Centre. Now I set this up for my Gandparents, who are in their early 70’s and gave them a brief tour of the remote, and how to find a film and how to play, pause and stop. They were away within an hour or two, of painless experimenting, with remarkable ease.
Now, this media centre is great for older TV’s as it is only 1080i on a high def set and there is NO HDMI port, but it is so very cheap and easy to use, which is great.
If like me you want to change the way your parents or grandparents watch TV then this is a great introduction. Be aware though, there is only 1 USB port for your media library and you will need a POWERED USB HUB to connect another drive when it gets full. As far as file support goes it will play anything unless it is an MKV or the audio is DTS, (it will only do AC3 at the moment). Picture quality was as good quaity as the rip, but a good rip on a low def crt TV was good DVD quality. The remote is very responsive and very small, so if you are a bit quick with it you can hit buttons too many times, just slow down a bit and you are fine. The media centre itself is tiny, smaller than 2 cd cases on top of each other, small!
So, in my opinion, this media centre is a great entry point, it is cheap, easy to use, small and versatile. This is not for people who are already clued into media centres and the benefits of divx/xvid/mkv – but then you already knew that. Oh! one last thing, there is support for subtitle files and for audio stream switching too. Thanks for reading.
Rating: 5 / 5
I recently bought both a WDTV-Live and a WDTV-Mini.
I think they are excellent products, and very good value for money.
They each have their advantages and drawbacks: here are my views at the moment.
*** WDTV Live
I like:
* plays up to 1080p (some comments say it gets hot, but I haven’t noticed that yet)
* recognises ext3 filesystem on a usb drive – a real plus for me (cf below on WDTV-Mini)
* copes effortlessly over my LAN with both Windows/samba shares and my UPnP server – streams/plays video and audio – even plays mp2 audio (a distinct plus)
* online access to Live365 internet radio (and the network access in general)
I dislike:
* user interface a bit clunky – but the remote has a “Go Back” button which really helps – although confusing when to use that and when left-arrow
* should be easier to network wirelessly – only works with a small range of “compatible” usb wifi sticks
* even on hdmi interface, doesn’t send “switch input” control signal to TV – whyever not?
* why the small range of online services? Would like also: any internet radio by url; BBC iPlayer (of course); video sources other than YouTube eg TED talks, even MySpace
* some glitches on FastForward eg with audio/video sync
* [quite minor] won’t play RealMedia files (see below re WDTV-Mini)
Conclusion/summary on WDTV-Live:
- there’s a pretty powerful linux system inside this
- despite the limitations on network services, the access to shares and UPnP compliance/features make this great (mainly if you have wired access)
*** WDTV Mini – surprisingly good!
Like:
* has component output for HD, and upscales up to 1080i (but see below re file formats supported)
* upscaled output looks really good!
* very neat small box
* (bizarrely) it will play RealMedia v4.0 files, which the WDTV Live will not! (Yes, I double checked with an actual RealMedia video file at 736×412 24bpp 29fps)
Dislike:
* user interface clunky – but uses same remote as WDTV Live
* despite ability to output up to 1080i, reads/streams only a restricted range of video resolutions eg spec says mp4 up to 720×576 up to 30fps; so won’t play eg some iPlayer downloads which can be 1280×720 25fps. According to the docs, for most file formats 720×576 is the max, but for RealMedia it claims to do 1024×576 up to 30fps
* DOESN’T support linux filesystems on usb devices – supports only NTFS, FAT/FAT32 and HFS+. Quite a pain, as eg FAT32 supports individual filesize only up to 4GB, AND lacks good labelling, access perms etc.
* there’s been no firmware upgrade since launch, so might be orphaned and/or not very upgradeable
Conclusion/summary for WDTV-Mini
- although I like full 1080p HD, this is pretty adequate for my 37″ screen
- have to be careful not to expect this to play files with resolutions above 720×576
Rating: 4 / 5
Absolutely Brilliant. I did not see the point of spending an extra £20 to get the 1080P since all the AVI’s I download , the majority are rips and will be at a lower compression than the 1080I let alone the 1080P. This is more than enough to cover your current AVI downloading addiction.
Rating: 5 / 5
The key with this device is knowing its limitations. I required a device to play from a USB device AVI files – it does just this!
If you want HD or surround sound, this is not for you.
If you want to stream files, this is not for you.
If you want to simply plug in a USB device and play any number of AVIs, MP3s or JPGs on your TV, this is ideal. It’s compact, fast and makes watching downloaded TV series so easy to do!
I make my life easier by using a free backup application to synchronise the files from my PC onto a 120GB USB hard drive. I also wrote an application that allows to mark files are watched so that the backup application does NOT copy previously seen files across (useful for TV series).
Rating: 5 / 5
Really good device. Awesome as portable and easy to use. Good for holidays or for travelling. Not quite as good as quality as other products on the market or the larger WD media players, but this relates to the great price and portability.
If you are using it in just one location you may want to pay a bit extra for the higher quality, but for travel, go with this one. I will always carry this with me for photos, movies and music, as I travel alot. Nice to be able to choose which portable hard drive to plug into.
Rating: 5 / 5