Finally someone who is seeing the same problems has me. Great little toy. But thats all it is at this time. Can futur firmware solve these problem in the futur or should we return the WTTV before the 30 days. Thanks for your posting.

Milanof Canada

Milanof, I'm hoping to have a conversation with WD about this product. You might return it before your 30 days are up, as that will still enable you to buy it later should things improve. Since mine is a review unit, it's going back regardless.

You guys obviously missed a memo! :-) This is a great little player and its a first generation product. Considering this and the fact that it can play pretty much any codec under the Sun its a very good start. If you don't like it so much then by all means return it. Nothing is perfect and I think you have rather unrealistic expectations of a $99 player and what its feature-set suppose to be.

All I read is a lot of whining. Most of the issues you talked about are not with the player but between the remote and a couch.

PROS:
I have a boatload of ISO DVD movies, and the WDTV plays they wonderfully.

I have bought the Kodak zi6 HD video camera for family videos and it plays those wonderfully as well.

CON:
My Canon Powershot camera videos (AVI) play back video, but the audio is horribly distorted, sometimes doesn't work at all.

Overall, it does a very good job, still needs some tweaking. I would buy it again.

If you want a home media server, this is NOT your box! Go buy a PS3 or PopcornHour with network accesss. Or build yourself a HTPC. Stop slamming this box for what it CAN'T do (such as network access) and be happy for what it CAN do. It says right on the box that there is no LAN port.

IF, however, you (like me) want a compact little box that will interface quickly and easily with both HD and SD displays, play ISO/AVI/mp4/TS files with ease and save a trip to Blockbuster when you're visiting relatives, then by all means buy this little guy and you won't regret it!

It's obviously not meant to sit on the rack with your other components - it would be 18" wide if it was. It's intended as a portable media player - WD's ads always show it with a Passport drive! ;)

I think the negative comments and review I'm reading here go right to what the unit is designed to do and aren't trying to expect it to be all that and the Hubble Telescope.

The review says, for example, that the way the scrolling works is awkward. How do you take that and respond with, "Ak, go buy a $400 media server" when it is clearly a small matter of programming, and not a function of the hardware endowments of the box, to make a scroll function that behaves well?

For $99, it's an impressive device, but not without its faults. I've seen user interfaces both better and worse on media streamer/player units both more and less expensive than this one, so I really don't think that price is a reason to excuse the lack of thoughtfulness that went into designing how it works.

Is any device perfect? No, but isn't pointing out both the pros and the cons of a device the point of an objective review on sites like this? If all you wanted to hear were the good points, read the marketing materials...those are very good at pointing out what the device CAN do. My job is to also identify ways in which the device can be improved.

The bottom line is this: it's a promising piece of hardware, but some firmware updates will be needed before it's _enjoyable_ to use. It's functional now, but hardly pleasurable, and that should be the goal for any piece of consumer electronics from a name-brand company like Western Digital.

Anytime I read a completly positive review, I discount it. Every item has it's con's, and if none are listed, I am not able to make an informed choice.

There is something that may also be of interest here too. I store avi's that I download from Private Trackers in the UK to a 250gb WD Passport, and watch them via my LAN. That drive is plugged into a powered Hub.I noticed a couple of times the folders became corrupted on that drive, especially when they were being written to via the network. A bit of a Google search and I discover that this is a common problem with WD Passport drives. The suspicion is they cannot get enough power via USB and when they don't, corruption is the result (they do not have an external power port either). I have 3 of them, but I certainly will not be buying anymore.

What I see with Alex's post above is the common syndrome of Denial that occurs to people who have now commited themselves to something and can no longer be objective because to do so may mean admitting they made a mistake. This review has probably meant I will hold off on this for awhile, kind of like the Hauppuage WIN TV USB2 PVR that I wish I had never bought, but am stuck with withal.

I really enjoy my WD HDTV player. It plays everything I want it to and other formats I haven't even heard of. While it would be nice if it did have streaming capabilities you have to remember that this device is meant to be complimented by a portable hard drive. A product that WD creates and therefore supports. This latest firmware fixed the issues I have had with the product and I look forward to future firmwares as I intent to keep this little thing around for a long time.

I would say this is a pretty good unit considering the competition and price.
I mostly have Ripped DVDs and .MTS files, (High def video from my JVC Camcorder), that I play and they work pretty good.
I do agree that the Human Machine Interface (HMI) can use serious revamping and when the competition will catch-up that will be the selling edge.
One thing that I'm looking to see is good DVD interface since it already has the 4 arrow navigation buttons and the OK button in the middle. Now the four navigation buttons and OK button in the middle are horribly used and in some modes do not have any functionality.
The 10 min skip advance is an improvement but what I'd like to see is navigation into a DVD or any media file to a specific spot in time and that can easily be accomplished by displaying a time input field and with the 4 navigation buttons: the Hour Minute and Seconds could be selected then the OK button in the middle as GO TO.
I'd also add support for stand alone .VOB DVD files.
One other thing would be a way to navigate to a different, chapter title...
If this unit gets optimized I can see a spike in Hard Drive sales since this unit would be a convenient way to view media.

Hello,

First I'd like to thank Craig for his 2 reviews on this little unit. After reading them and looking over the WD main site I'm pretty confident that this will work for my purposes quite well.

I just recently purchased a WD My Book(1T) for archival and backup purposes, while I realize that I could connect this to the WD Media Player my hope is that I could just use a smaller 8-12g USB drive to drag and drop assorted .avi video files (tv episodes mostly) while keeping the My Book as a stationary storage drive.

As I said, form what I've read so far it seems that this would be a fine plan.

But I thought I'd just toss it out here to make sure I didn't miss something or misunderstand something that would keep this from working.

So I'd like to know if smaller USB devices (non AC-powered) would work the same as the mentioned Passports or My Books?

Thank you for any and all comments and or clarification, I'm a bit new to this ;)

Regards,

Stu

Stu,
The flash drive I used for part of my testing -- an 8GB Patriot unit -- worked just fine, so I imagine any FAT32 USB storage will be OK.

I hope you like it.
- Craig

Got this unit and after firmware upgrade, love it. The HDMI support and optical audio port are very nice to have. Can't complain much on this unit, especially you just can carry it to your friend house to watch video or listen to music. they just need to give me their hd or usb drive.

Expect more on codec supports for future (.flv will be very helping), poor interface doesn't bother me much.

Hi guys,
I just have one quick question.
Some USB drives have small management software in them (the kind that let you passowrd-protect some of your files .. etc)
Would This unit recognize such USB devices with such program? or would it interfere ?

I only had about an hour with this unit but it has worked great with a 500 Gig Maxtor USB drive.

The interface is clunky - but fire up a 42 minute TV show or 1-2 hour long DVD file and you dont spend much time with the interface.

I suspect the engineers spent their time testing and supporting lots of file types instead of slicking up the menu system. Between the two - effortless playback of files is the more important part. I think they spent their time well.

I would love to get a sageTV HD Theater and do a side-by-side comparison, but so far I am very happy with this $100 unit.

Been using mine for a couple of days now. It is great to use as a travel unit, or to watch things on TV instead of computer (or connecting computer to tv). HD quality is great.

I do agree with the usual complaints about navigation etc, but i also understand that the unit has to scan the attached drive everytime you reconnect it, so it does make sense in a way.
To get album art you need to edit the audio / mp4 files in itunes - Not sure if there is a way to accomplish same for AVI files?



What would my recommendations be to WD?

Keep the standard scan-the-drive-for-changes option, but also give users the option to create drives for the WD TV. If i have 250gb drive with some movies/music on, and it does not change often, why not let the unit write an index to the HD of all the info it needs to read.. so if it finds this index file in the root(maybe linked to firmware version), it confirms it with a few checksums and then it is ready to play. BUT leave the option to do a manual re-scan if that is what i want to do.



Another option - Software that end users can use to customise a drive for the WD TV. I plug in my drive, and assign artwork / display names to folders, individual files etc. Let me create playlists etc.. Let me assign my own genres to my video files (series/TV/Comedy/Movie whatever) and save all to the proprietary index file on the HD. When i connect it, the unit uses the index file created by the software to enhance end-user experience...

If everything is pre-indexed, nothing stops you from giving the user an itunes style flip interface to select things. If a file listed in the index but no longer on disk, just pretend the user clicked stop and don't try to go find something to play (or ask if he wants to do a scan and re-index).



It is a great little unit, but some firmware upgrades and indexing software can make it brilliant (for certain uses). You can't compare it to a popcornhour unit - it is not intended for the same use.

Hi guys,

Have been mucking about with this WDTV Media Player now for about a month. Plays ripped DVDs well. I have not had any video or sound lag problems although sometimes it does do funny stuff. I guess its not perfect, but for the money it does what I want it to do. Plays 1440 x 1080i mpeg2 files well also. Plays .m2ts, .mts & .tp files awesomely. Now for the best part. For those who have not already discovered it, it also plays back ripped Blu-rays !!!!

Ohh !

I just remembered. Bye the way, I'm about to hook up two 1TB HDDs to this beauty. One for my Music, Photos & Private Video Files and the other HDD for DVD & Blu-ray Movies. One more thing guys: It's better to have HDDs with a built in power supply, otherwise leaving the HDDs still attached even after they are switched off, still allows the power adapter to stay warm or hot.

Cheers :-)

It works great but some .mkv files will play the picture with no sound. Other then that I love it.

my wd tv hd media player does not have a firmware upgrade icon.

great until update.... now can't forward or reverse chapters, so I'm stuck watching beginning to end... any ideas/help out there? I am not a tech.