My WD is loaded up with a bunch of different AVIs and they all play fine with the exception of 1 TV show where I get a message "Audio channel 1 not supported" although the video still plays, just without sound.
I usually encode my DVD collection to h.264 with mp3 audio in an AVI file, plays fine and looks great. Most of the TV series I have downloaded are a combination of divx, xvid aac mp3 etc, and they all work fine.
I can confirm the unit won't play ISO image files, but when you can have the same quality in a smaller h.264 file why fill your hard drive unnecessarily? Also this means all my movies are under 4Gb so I can leave my hard drive formatted as Fat32 and can plug it into Mac and PC (unlike NTFS where a Mac can only read data, not write)
For blueray or HD I would recommend encoding to a HD h.264 file (which is one of the blueray standard formats anyway). The WD supports HD.

Yeah I thought i did. I put the update on the harddrive and it updated when i played it. Should I do it again? I hope I didn't do it wrong but it seems like I have.

Hmm, if you did it already then it should be fine. I agree with Roger now that I think about it, the AVIs I have downloaded and worked have been xvid and divx.

For blueray or HD I would recommend encoding to a HD h.264 file (which is one of the blueray standard formats anyway). The WD supports HD.


So how does one get their blu-ray disk image into an h,264 file? I have a blu-ray burner, and AnyDVD HD and have ripped entire Blu-ray disks to my PC hard drive. It is stored in a folder using the same exact directory structure as a bluray. I can use PowerDVD to point to this directory and it plays, but exploring the directory leads to no specific movie file, just hundred of .mkv files. I assume these contain the movie but how do I know what to do with them?

People have posted that it works and plays blu-ray files but nobody has answered how or what exactly that are doing to achieve this.

Thanks.

I don't know what kind of AVI's I have. Most are clips I have capture onto my computer from my DVX100 and others are movie movie files from Premier.

Should I redo my update?

What I did is download the update, extracted the Zipped folder and plugged it in.

something strange I noticed yesterday. I got an HDMI cable and watched some HD files I had. I set all the settings correct but when i tried to watch an SD movie it stretches the image out and I didn't want it in the "full screen" mode. I think you should be able to choose what format you want it in without switching from video 1 to video 6 like on my tv now.

> I don't know what kind of AVI's I have.

Yeah, well, that what GSpot can do for you. See my earlier post.

If I downloaded HD movies from XBOX live and saved them onto my external HD, would i be able to play them on my tv?

I'm just trying to find ways for getting HD movies I purchase onto it. I know itunes is a no go and I dont want to go out and buy a blueray burner.

I just love this Little device, I recently jumped into the HD arena and bought the WD mediaplayer to show my clients what a wedding could look like on their lcd.
Today was my first wedding client who had a very large lcd and I connected the WD player with hdmi to their tv and used a usb stick that contained a 10 min mpg2 file (1440x1080 -18mbs) and it looked sharp as a razorblade and put my regular dvd to shame. (showed that as well to them on their dvd player)

They were well aware about the limitations of their lcd with a normal signal, their non HD tv channels also looked like crap on their lcd. They did not have a BR player yet so I will have to supply regular dvd's (also for family and friends) but I will supply them with a mpg2 file with the same quality I showed them, probably with a higher bitrate on a usb or external harddrive which they supply me. in that way they can play it on their pc of mediaplayer if they have one or just safekeep it to have it transfered to BR when they buy one later.

being able to show my clients HD on their lcd, if they don't have a BR player yet is a big advantage for me, other videographers can also say they deliver in HD but I'm sure that I"m one of the few that is able to also show it to my clients that don't have HD players yet.

This is one of my best and cheapest investments yet.

Well my initial tests with blu-ray files didn't work. I grabbed the main m2ts files from the blu-ray image and copied to my portable drive. The WD unit sees the files and plays the video portion but tells me that the audio stream is not supported. I am going to try a different blu-ray since this one has DOlby True-HD.

So ripping blue ray movies and playing them on the unit doesn't work? I almost bought a blueray external player for my computer just for this purpose but I will hold off and wait for other to figure out way to gets HD on it.

thanks

So ripping blue ray movies and playing them on the unit doesn't work? I almost bought a blueray external player for my computer just for this purpose but I will hold off and wait for other to figure out way to gets HD on it.

thanksothers say they have it working. I was able to play the main video with no audio. The WD player doesn't support true hd audio I guess.

How were others able to do it, maybe different ripping software?

today stripped the .m2v (mpeg2 video stream) directly from EX1 file and played fine on the WD HD TV from a USB key (Corsair Flash Voyager).
I think the perfect combination would be the 16gig Corsair Flash voyager GT (twice faster) with the WD HD TV.

The m2v was extracted from the .MXF file with the free Snell&Wilcox converter (don't know what to do with audio , since the .AES format is not recognized by none of my audio software), itself extracted from the BPAV folder with the Sony Clip Browser.
rendering is perfect...

others say they have it working. I was able to play the main video with no audio. The WD player doesn't support true hd audio I guess.

I think the issue is that the Dolby AC3 audio is 5.1 and is piped output the optical output for an external decoder. If you don't have a Dolby audio receiver, you have to reencode the audio to another format and remux. I haven't done this yet, either.

today stripped the .m2v (mpeg2 video stream) directly from EX1 file and played fine on the WD HD TV from a USB key (Corsair Flash Voyager).
I think the perfect combination would be the 16gig Corsair Flash voyager GT (twice faster) with the WD HD TV.

The m2v was extracted from the .MXF file with the free Snell&Wilcox converter (don't know what to do with audio , since the .AES format is not recognized by none of my audio software), itself extracted from the BPAV folder with the Sony Clip Browser.
rendering is perfect...

I did this also. For the audio, I first rendered an AC3 5.1 file from the mxf with Vegas Pro. Then I used the Snell and Wilcox mxf desktop to unwrap the native .m2v essence video. The final step was to mux the .ac3 file from Vegas with the .m2v file from S&W, and play it back on the WD TV. It plays back at the full EX1 HQ 35mbps bitrate, from both the USB key or a USB portable hard drive. Nice.

yes, i tried to extract the audio from the mxf file from premiere.
working fine, it is just an annoying step, since we already get the .aes file.
This file contain PCM uncompressed AES3 audio, so it should be easy to write a converter to wav or mp3. unfortunately i found known until yet.

I think the issue is that the Dolby AC3 audio is 5.1 and is piped output the optical output for an external decoder. If you don't have a Dolby audio receiver, you have to reencode the audio to another format and remux. I haven't done this yet, either.

I have played other .m2t and .ts files that have Dolby Digital and it works fine. I think this issue is specific to Dolby True HD which is a prominent format on Blu-ray disks. The .m2ts stream I was using has 6 audio tracks. The primary one is True HD which will not play on my PC either. However using VLC media player I can check the other 5 tracks and they are Dolby Digital, but unfortunately are all foreign language versions. The only English track is the Dolby True HD, which cannot play on the WD player.

Any reason why this wouldn't work with a USB DVD-ROM (or Blu-Ray, for that matter) computer drive?

It was reported and I have confirmed, a problem with the 1.01.02 firmware if the display resolution is set 1080p 24hz output. It is outputting 24hz instead of 23.976, causing a slight but observable jerk from the dropped frame once every 41.7 seconds. It's more noticeable if it happens during a slow pan.

Just received a WD HD TV unit yesterday. Hooked it up this morning with the new firmware ready to go at "root" level of the hardrive. Everything went swimmingly. This unit, as you the owners know, is essential if you deal with HD footage. It pretty much works out of the box as advertised. I did up a couple of test files - one as an mp2 at 25 mBit CBR, as recommended by someone here. I also did up one at 25 mBit mp4 H.264 using a ramped up gamma setting (I am on a Mac) to try and match a 2.2 gamma but I overshot it a bit. No audio problems as some have reported.

I encoded both files, one using 44.1 kHz and the other at 48 kHz. Both played fine. With the Toslink digital out I wonder if it is possible to do 96 kHz sampling rate (as that is the Toslink / SPDIF standard). Will have to dig through the instruction manual more.

Had a thorough go through the user manual, on page 71 it clearly states the video and audio resolutions the unit can handle. Some subtle but interesting things.

Here are a few..

In audio formats it WILL play PCM (yes PCM audio), some of the obvious ones like mp3, mp2 & 4AAC, all flavours of mp (1,2,3 & 4). It will play the lossless format FLAC (this is big news for some audio buffs) as there are few players that will do FLAC that have limited functionality. It plays ogg vorbis. So it pretty much plays any audio you through at it as long as the bitrate is no higher the 48 kHz. It still might pass through higher sample rated audio files through the toslink / SPDIF port. I haven't tried it yet.

In the video formats it will play what most people expect now that the basic news is out about it but there are a few small limitations that people should know about. It appears the H.264 format is the one that has the widest unqualified support. it will accept files with resolutions in that format upto 1920x1080. If your files are WMVs you have to be careful about the way you crunch it (see attachment). MP2 is accepted upto 1080i/p.

The attachment has a thorough list of acceptable formats for the unit.

So I came across this. This looks just as good if not better than the WD unit.

Multimedia Hard Drive: Multimedia Ethernet and USB PC to TV Video Hard Drive (http://go.iomega.com/section?SID=967336a34acd2d66004efce372c903e1634:4760&secid=40419)

So I came across this. This looks just as good if not better than the WD unit.

Multimedia Hard Drive: Multimedia Ethernet and USB PC to TV Video Hard Drive (http://go.iomega.com/section?SID=967336a34acd2d66004efce372c903e1634:4760&secid=40419)

Couple things to note. No Mac support, only goes up to 1080i and I can't determine what type of inputs it has to record to the box or whether it can record in HD.

This looks just as good if not better than the WD unit.

That one is a lot more expensive, there are more mediaplayers in that price range that offer more then the WD player but non come close to the price of the WD player.

Yes, but one you buy a 1tb HD it's the same price.

you can get 1t drives for $100 these days... and nice ones too...

yes, and after that's all said and done it's almost as much as that other unit. But I have the WD unit and dont plan on ditching it.

It's not only the cheap price that's making this small device an interesting piece of hardware, I use it mainly for client visits and I use a usb stick with 720p HD demo's on it. Being able to carry such a small device with such great image quality on a full hd lcd has made my life a lot easier trying to sell my work. The fact that I don't have to carry an extra external harddrive makes a difference for me.

The fact that I don't have to carry an extra external harddrive makes a difference for me.

So true. This level of portability really changes how the WD TV will be used. My gripe with the unit is that it doesn't really turn off when you turn it off, so I unplug it.

I just made the switch from a PC to MAC and I hooked my mac formated harddrive up to my media player but and tried to play a .mov clip I edited and it's not playing, saying its not a supported file type. I have the latest firmware and everything. Any advice?

Yeah, it seems as of now the only MOV formats supported are MPEG4 and H.264.

oh ok, I'll try MPEG4.

thanks

Hallo, just a quick question:
How can you update this device with your pc?You should have a USB-USB cable right?
I bought mine wd a few days ago....
What's the best hdv format to render from original footage shot from a Z1?

Copy the new firmware onto a flash drive and go to firmware update in menu, will detect the new firmware on the flash drive.

Sorry Nick, will an usb pen useful for that?

thx and sorry 4 the silly question!

Yes a USB pen will be fine for firmware updates, actually I am now using a 16gb usb stick for all my video files and it works great with apple tv H264 mpeg4 at 5mbs.

ok well I have a sony 1080i TV and when playing HD clips from the WD player it comes up as either a stretched image or theres a black border around the whole entire clip. I have an HDMI cable running from the player to the TV and the settings are on 1080i on the unit.

Any idea how to get the clip to fill up the entire screen?

scratch that, I figured it out.

Yes a USB pen will be fine for firmware updates, actually I am now using a 16gb usb stick for all my video files and it works great with apple tv H264 mpeg4 at 5mbs.

Yes, I've found that the Apple TV H.264 setting is the only one that gives a good result with the WD Media player.

Although I've used Compressor to add chapter markers to the file (.m4v), the WD won't recognize them and you also can't fast forward or rewind. So basically you have to play the movie all the way through to get to the part you want to watch.

I've also tested using the preset H.264 setting in Compressor - "QuickTime H.264 video with PCM audio at 48 kHz. Settings based off the source resolution and frame-rate".

The WD player didn't recognize the PCM audio at all, but it did play the visual track.

I re-compressed with the same settings, except I changed the PCM audio to AAC, and the sound then worked. However, the player would occasionally stagger and even briefly freeze on certain pan and tilt shots. Most disappointing, but at least the WD player could fast forward and rewind with this .mov file.

The movie was 89 1/2 minutes long and the Apple TV file (.m4v) was 3.16 GB which yields an average bitrate (per my calculations) of 4.7 Mbits/sec.

The same movie with the preset H.264 setting (.mov) was 16.11 GB which yields an average bitrate of 24 Mbits/sec.

Hopefully I'll find the time to further experiment with the H.264 bitrate settings and determine the maximum bitrate limit which doesn't freeze the WD player.

I tested the Apple TV file on a large widescreen plasma using an HDMI cable and it looked very nice. I also tested the same file on the plasma using the composite RCA connectors, just to compare. And it stood up reasonably well (surprisingly so). I'm not sure if going out the composite connectors (analog) causes the WD player to automatically downconvert the signal to SD (PAL), but it still looked pretty good to my eye.

BTW, for any locals reading this post, I used a 32 GB USB stick with the WD player. They're only $89 at the local MSY store (here in Melbourne). While there, I also bought a 10 metre HDMI cable for the test. Only $20. Worked really well.

Since this player is having issues playing certain audio / video formats, what are the chances WD will be releasing another update soon?

Since this player is having issues playing certain audio / video formats, what are the chances WD will be releasing another update soon?

I have no issues with 1080i and 720p .mp4 files other than my encoder (Sony Vegas 8) doesn't allow me to output 720p60. Consider avoiding the Quicktime format for this player.

Excuse me guys:using Vegas 8 wich is the best render format to set to have smooth Z! images on a LCD screen using the WD?

Does anyone know a good dvd ripper for mac? I have "mac the ripper" but I couldnt figure out how to make the movie 1 file so i can drag over to my external drive to play on my tv.

Greg, try Handbrake

I use MPEG Streamclip for pulling clips off of my own archival DVDs (mostly of multicamera live switched sessions).

I am really excited that Pavtube have released the Blu-Ray Ripper for Apple. It has been really annoying and frustrating going in to Windows to rip Blu-Rays

The Pavtube Bluray ripper performs exactly as I expected and with a full disc backup of our precious Blu-rays - means we won’t have our discs scratched when they are borrowed.

Back up blu-ray movie- How to make full copy of blu-ray disc on Mac? (http://www.pavtube.com/guide/copy-blu-ray-disc-to-mac-back-up-blu-ray.html)

Nice, is there a free blueray ripper for mac? If not, I'll have to buy this I suppose. is the quality better or the same when playing a ripped blueray through the WD player?