Alternative HD distribution vs. the failing Blu-ray format!
 

Read about this unit on my blog... its fantastic!
http://blog.jcdv.com/2008/11/03/alte...ry-vs-blu-ray/

Thanks for the post and link Jerome, I jumped to HD just recently and have been reading a lot about the best way to show my clients the benefits of HD.
Most of my clients have a HD ready or full HD screen but allmost all attach a plain dvd player to it, I was thinking of buying a playstation or some other type of HD player with a build in harddrive to attach to the customers tv but after reading your post I definitely will wait untill it's available in Europe.

Just thinking out loud; considering the low price I even could consider adding the mediaplayer incl a usb stick into a HD package that I offer. No worrying about incompatible BR players that choke on the BR disk. Just plug and play, right?

btw, your link is not correct, I had to manual search on your site to find the post.

Edit: YES! allready found it at a Belgian supplier for 99 euro, ordering one tommorow! and a interesting youtube link about the product: http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=9kI_PO...eature=related

Thanks Noa, I fixed the link... something got whacked.

What a great device and so cheap. I bet they sell a pile of them.

I am using a tv pc at the moment and like the ability to stream or copy from my main pc. This would be THE greatest invention if it had network support. I don't like the idea of having to go back and forth copying media on the externals.
Maybe I am just lazy.
Still I might just have to buy one for the portability.

Such devices are potentially useful, but your estimated net cost (with hard drive) of $200 is more than some places will be charging for Blu-ray players at this month's "Black Friday" sales. And Blu-ray is hardly a failing format: standalone player sales are up an estimated three-fold this year with another doubling (to 4 million units) expected next year.

Your gadget review mentioned lack of standard navigation menus or chapter advance, two important features for consumer video delivery. We've had devices like this in various forms for several years now and they've never caught on as a mainstream delivery solution, regardless of lower prices. If you can make it work for some of your customers that's great, but Blu-ray is the global standard now for HD content delivery.

If your clients would have an external harddrive so it would only leave them with a 99 dollar device to play it in HD, if you do video and photo you could make both available on their ext drive. What I'm curious about is the performance and quality if you write it to a usb stick.
In that case portability because a big advantage, I don't see people dragging their BR player to friends who have a lcd tv but no BR player. The WD hd player and a usb stick will fit in their pocket.

I think as for menu and such, why not just deliver the parts of a weddingday in seperate files and put in a a folder. Ofcourse it doesn't come close to a real BR disk with menu options but that will work as well. It could work for weddings as an add on, especially for those who have an external drive.

For myself I see it as very usefull to display HD at my clients who don't have a BR player and for that price and if it performes good I don't see it as a gadget.

Did you read the whole thing? Here's what I just copied off of it:

" I wish you could build custom menus like a DVD or Blu-ray disc, but you can’t. "

"This doesn’t allow chapter skipping or the like, but has a relatively fast 16x forward search. It reminds me of VCR days, but faster. You can update firmware (although this unit is NOT currently listed on Western Digital suppoer site) so I would think that they could add a “skip forward 5 minutes” or something like that in a firmware update… who knows."

I did just realize I never copied the file specs over that it says it will play....

Jerome, how does it look if you play a mpeg4 file on a usb stick. Does it stutter in playback and is the quality much better then with regular dvd?

Another review of this interesting unit here....

MaddHat.com Blog Archive New WD Media Player Reviewed, Stripped Naked

Anyone know of a UK supplier/stockist?

I just came across this yesterday

Galaxy Metal Gear, Inc.

It looks to be a similar product. It is an enclosure for a hard drive that has multimedia playback capabilities. They have several versions and it looks like you can navigate an ISO file just like you were playing a DVD.

Does anyone know how this compares to the WD unit?

Thanks,

Lloyd

One media machine is ready for nearly both: The Sony PlayStation 3.

Sure, MKVs need to be converted and it only accepts 1080p60 via XviD (AVC 1080p60 drops tons of frames). And even that could be ready for a movie purchasing service on the PlayStation Network (but of lower quality).

But for purists that just need that high-bitrate HD (with nearly no perceptible artifacts) and uncompressed or lossless sound, then the market is still there for Blu-ray.

With this machine, you're ready for both.

Right, those are the comments I was referring to when I said this device won't meet the expectations of many consumers. The price is right but it's not a replacement for Blu-ray, which isn't failing and not going away any time soon.

Hi Noa, can you tell us please which Belgian supplier this is?

Thanks in advanced!

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