Western Digital TV HD Media Player 1080p - €100 delivered [Expansys]

Basq · 30-06-2009 05:35PM

cormie wrote: »

I've a WD 500GB passport elite, so I just plug that straight into this thing and it will read what's on the passport? All I need is one plug socket and this will power the passport if I understand correctly?

Yeah, presuming the WD 500G Passport Elite is USB powered which I'm sure it is.

cormie · 30-06-2009 06:25PM

Yup

So, anyone want to buy an argosy 500GB media player for €101 off me ?

Basq · 30-06-2009 06:38PM

I have one of those Argosy's too!

Going in the bin!

DermoMIO · 30-06-2009 07:55PM

thanks basquille for this I ordered one yesterday with the €10er off

has anyone who ordered off expansys got their's atleast dispatched yet ? mine is still 'awaiting stock'.

I rang expansys this morning over another order I had and as the girl on the phone was looking at my account she noticed this order and said that it shouldnt be awaiting stock and that she would get them to look into it and email me, nothing yet.

im thinking of cancelling the order and buying off komplett

cronos · 30-06-2009 10:51PM

i take it a normal external harddrive wont work with this device?

Basq · 30-06-2009 11:08PM

cronos wrote: »

i take it a normal external harddrive wont work with this device?

Any external (formatted as NTFS / FAT / FAT32) HDD will work.. but USB powered is best, but you can also plug in the HDD nearby and it'll still work the same.

pauly3 · 01-07-2009 03:12AM

I just bought this media player from Komplett for €89.00 (Vat €15.75) with free pickup in Dublin. I was wondering if anyone got it working with a USB to Ethernet adapter, to connect to their home ethernet? And would it be possible to hack the firmware to get it to play 1080p video at 30fps?

Mixie · 01-07-2009 06:34AM

KrustyUCC wrote: »

Has anybody tried to use this with just the Composite A/V cable? getting mixed reviews on how good this is without HDMI. Have a 1TB external hard drive and 32 inch tv so this would seem to suit my needs very well

I bought it as a present for someone for use over HDMI but given there was no HDMI cable in the box (doh) when it came time to test it we hooked it up over Composite.

Playback video quality was as you'd expect and apparently just limited by the content/source. Unfortunately the WD Menus for navigating the drive weren't as sharp as I'd like (fixed on HDMI) and there was a bad flicker to some UI elements (again, fixed on HDMI).

Slightly irritating - when you hook up a new USB drive it takes a (short) time to scan the drive for media. None of my 1080p content would play back well - some files would play but you couldn't even fast forward/rewind while others displayed bad blocking/pixilation (same as on other SIGMA devices, possibly the fault of the file itself). Finally, for movies - if you rip your DVDs to 2 separate files (e.g. Movie.CD1.avi and Movie.CD2.avi) it will play them back in sequence automatically but the screen goes black for a period between switching. Not a big deal but can be annoying if the join is in an awkward spot (I'm an XBMC user myself which is why this bugs me I guess

).

Pros: Nice, small and quiet. For regular (not hi-def) content it works perfectly well. It's an appliance with a simple remote, just about anyone could use it.

Basq · 01-07-2009 08:25AM

pauly3 wrote: »

I was wondering if anyone got it working with a USB to Ethernet adapter, to connect to their home ethernet?

Read the link I posted earlier in thread.. it is possible!

madmoe · 01-07-2009 09:01AM

Tried mine out last night guys over composite and noticed slight flickering, I hope this will be resolved when I connect via HDMI tonight.

I have a number of music videos in .MKV format and it would not play them :-( Very disappointed about this I have to say. My hi-def movies that DID play are in .MKV format as well and they played fine so not sure what is going on there? Would a firmware upgrade fix it? Are there different types of .MKV files?

M

Basq · 01-07-2009 09:05AM

madmoe wrote: »

I have a number of music videos in .MKV format and it would not play them :-( Very disappointed about this I have to say. My hi-def movies that DID play are in .MKV format as well and they played fine so not sure what is going on there? Would a firmware upgrade fix it? Are there different types of .MKV files?

Could be an unsupported audio stream used.

What firmware are you on madmoe? You just bought it so it should come pre-installed with firmware 1.02.07. But if not, try a firmware upgrade.

1.02.07 has this as a added feature:

# More audio formats for MKV container

Basq · 01-07-2009 09:24AM

DermoMIO wrote: »

has anyone who ordered off expansys got their's atleast dispatched yet ? mine is still 'awaiting stock'.

Mine was shipped this morning..

delly · 01-07-2009 09:58AM

Aye folks, two points others have mentioned above;

The first thing being the official firmware update. Don't bother doing anything until you load the update. A lot of bigs are fixed and new codecs loaded which may just frustrate you if you try it without loading it.

The second being the first time you hook up your harddrive it will take a few minutes to load up all your content and build a catalogue, but this shouldn't last too long and only happens on the first hook up. Any further files that are added later won't require waiting to load.

Sad Professor · 01-07-2009 10:40AM

I'm very tempted to get one of these.

How does it compare to XBMC? Aside from being able to play HD content, what are the benefits and drawbacks?

Basq · 01-07-2009 10:46AM

Do a google for reviews / opinions SP.

There are plenty of detailed reviews: http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=lRH&q=wd+tv+hd+media+player+review&btnG=Search&meta=

Daemonic · 01-07-2009 11:11AM

Got one of these a couple of months ago from Amazon along with a 500gb passport drive. It's used to watch divx movies mainly and looks great on a 1080p samsung using a hdmi connection.
With the supplied composite cable it was ok but the hdmi really made a difference.
Biggest (potential) problem I can see is if you lose/break the remote there's no other way of using it.

madmoe · 01-07-2009 12:28PM

@basquille,
Thanx mate. I will update the firmware tonight. What are the benefits of having a hacked firmware?

Also, is there a way to use thumbnails for movies etc?

Cheers,
M

Basq · 01-07-2009 12:34PM

madmoe wrote: »

@basquille,
Thanx mate. I will update the firmware tonight. What are the benefits of having a hacked firmware?

Some of the features already added:

* connect to wired network via a Ethernet-to-USB device
* connect to wireless network (experimental)
* mount network attached storage (Samba, NFS, SMB) and stream video (reported speeds around 20-60Mbit/s, fastest with NFS)
* run a light webserver and execute PHP pages, e.g. to mount network drives
* run SSH, telnet, ftp servers
* run other software which can be added as separate (not part of firmware) "app.bin" packages
* support additional file systems, especially ext2, ext3
* support for attaching external USB-connected optical drives (i.e. CD/DVD players)
* modifications of the theme (background images, etc)

madmoe wrote: »

]Also, is there a way to use thumbnails for movies etc?

Cheers,
M

This any use?

beanhead · 01-07-2009 12:44PM

So you can actually stream wirelessly? thats pretty cool. you won;t be able to get teh bandwidth to stream full 1080p. I've got a hdx1000 with a fully supported wireless g usb dongle, 3 com wireless g gateway & can't get enough.

the most anyone has managed i think is 1.3mb

all in all this is a great buy though. if it wasn't for the other gadgets such as support for YAMJ & P2P direct on the player itself & room for an internal hard drive I would have gotten one. I had a iomega screenplay HD before & was just fed up with the file listing interface

WEST · 01-07-2009 12:44PM

Use the scrapper found at the below link for quick way to get all the thumbnails for your moves. I use it for MediaPortal, however the WDTV automatically detects the folder.jpg too.

http://www.team-mediaportal.de/dateien/Download/HTPCcustomization/MovieCoverCollector/

Voodu Child · 01-07-2009 03:10PM

WEST wrote: »

Use the scrapper found at the below link for quick way to get all the thumbnails for your moves. I use it for MediaPortal, however the WDTV automatically defects the folder.jpg too.

http://www.team-mediaportal.de/dateien/Download/HTPCcustomization/MovieCoverCollector/

That is a very sweet and simple app. I recommend doing a batch resize of all the images to 120x180, as they load up quicker on the player at that size (that is the size that it natively displays them on the menu).

madmoe · 01-07-2009 03:18PM

Hi mate, how does one go about doing a batch resize of all the images?

Cheers,
M

Voodu Child · 01-07-2009 03:24PM

It depends on the image editing program you are using, most of them (Photoshop etc) have a batch utility. I use GIMP and a batch plugin I downloaded. Did around a thousand images in a few seconds. Google might find you something better/handier.

acquiescefc · 01-07-2009 04:34PM

hi, im a bit thick but can anyone say why this would be better than playing a movie through xbox 360 with hd hooked up to it.?

is it a picture difference or the fact more file types can be played?

this is not an argument, im tempted but I dont know the benefits..

ta

Basq · 01-07-2009 05:07PM

acquiescefc wrote: »

hi, im a bit thick but can anyone say why this would be better than playing a movie through xbox 360 with hd hooked up to it.?

is it a picture difference or the fact more file types can be played?

More file types mainly.. the very popular MKV (for HD) for one.

Though rumours are Xbox may add this in the next big Dashboard update.

Rsaeire · 01-07-2009 06:17PM

I'm very close to buying the WD TV HD, however, the lack of DTS audio support is annoying; especially since I have a lot of mkv (H.264) files that only have a DTS 5.1 audio track. I know there is a digital out, but I won't be able to make use of that in my intended setup.

Western Digital no doubt wanted to save money and didn't bother acquiring the license from DTS to support their audio format(s), however, has anyone heard any rumors that the WD TV HD will eventually support DTS audio?

Voodu Child · 01-07-2009 07:59PM

Rsaeire wrote: »

has anyone heard any rumors that the WD TV HD will eventually support DTS audio?

There is very little chance that existing models will have DTS decoding added via (official) firmware, so if that is an important feature, you should buy something else.
(Keep an eye out on the Asus O!Play which should launch soon).

madmoe · 01-07-2009 08:56PM

Hey guys,
Playing around with my new toy but can't see a shuffle fucnction at all :-( So need this function for my music as I just like to put the music on and let it play whatever it wants. The I can skip the ones I don't like.....

Please tell me it does support shuffle......

Cheers,
M

Basq · 01-07-2009 10:19PM

madmoe wrote: »

Playing around with my new toy but can't see a shuffle fucnction at all :-( So need this function for my music as I just like to put the music on and let it play whatever it wants. The I can skip the ones I don't like.....

Please tell me it does support shuffle......

Never thought I'd get a chance to say this but RTFM!

madmoe · 01-07-2009 10:23PM

Brill, thanx man! It does not seem to work like that for videos? Would be nice to be able to do a shuffle here too......

Also, can u create playlists? I hate reading manuals as you have probably gathered.....

Cheers,
M

Western Digital TV HD Media Player 1080p - €100 delivered [Expansys]

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