Up until now, we've seen DivX players and media drives. These were good enough as temporary solutions for media lovers. Now, with the lowering of prices of large capacity drives and unlimited broadband access, people have taken to increased downloading of content. Many have large LCD displays at home. Such movie buffs want it all, but their system is not cut out for it. They want a huge video screen up front, surround sound, and a couch to sit on with a bowl of popcorn; that's their movie experience. Well, the DivX players and the media drives are quite good, but we still need something customizable to enjoy a movie experience, don't we? Check out Western Digital's WD TV Media Player.
Bundle
HD media player
Compact remote with batteries
Media converter software (Windows only)
Composite AV cable
AC adapter
Quick Install Guide
Build and Design
The WD TV has a simple design. It reveals the finish of some Western Digital HDD products like the MyBook - glossy on the broader sides and featuring a grill like that of a car's front grill.
Its is fairly small in size because it doesn't read any kind of optical media, nor does it have its own inbuilt memory. The player is just a black box with input and output ports.
The WD TV has a simple design. It reveals the finish of some Western Digital HDD products like the MyBook - glossy on the broader sides and featuring a grill like that of a car's front grill.
Its is fairly small in size because it doesn't read any kind of optical media, nor does it have its own inbuilt memory. The player is just a black box with input and output ports.
You have two USB ports, one on the left and the other at the rear; you can insert either a thumb-drive, a portable drive, or an external HDD into both and the player will read off it. These comprise the input ports.
Output ports include composite (RGB), SPDIF, and an HDMI. It's minimalistic and can play any format; upscale it and you'll have a surround home theatre system with digital audio signals.
For display purposes, the WD TV has just two indicators. One being power ON/OFF LED and the other a USB connected LED.
Remote
The WD TV comes with a fully functional remote. It isn't very big, but is quite up to the job. There are navigation buttons along with playback, next/previous, and search and eject (safely remove drive) buttons as well.
The remote though small is easy to handle and works well within a range (open). The buttons of the remote are made of a hard rubber-like material and at times you need to hit a button twice.
Interface
The WD TV has a slick-looking interface. It reminds you of a PSP, Windows Media Edition, and the end result is a combination of all. This is all about the initial navigation screens, later on for movies and images, you have a preview view or a list view, while in music its album art or list.
The browsing media is fairly simple and anyone can get accustomed to it quickly. You have a folder view option, much like a File Explorer if you're comfortable with PC-like browsing. This option, though, will restrict your file viewing to one drive, i.e., if both ports are being used. The WD TV has no restrictions and no issues when reading sub folders. Also, file names and folder names are displayed in full, even with extension. The names scroll if they are too long.
On the fly, playback options are limited to just video zoom in/out, subtitles, pan, and rotate in images. Nevertheless, if you wish to make more changes you can go ahead and come right back to the point from where you went ahead. WD TV makes a tiny folder in every drive that you connect to, and maintains a log of which files it played and where it left off. So you can get back to the same point where you moved off, for several movies that maybe on various drives.
The WD TV interface continued to showcase its music playback as well as image viewing/browsing capacity. The only time I was left confused was at the time of the firmware update. While the WD TV can read media off any portable drive (be it FAT32, NTFS, HSF+), it can't read its firmware update files. It needed a FAT32 formatted thumb drive, and then it detected its firmware within. That was the major glitch in the interface.
Format Support
Let's now have a look at the formats the WD TV is capable of playing.
Let's now have a look at the formats the WD TV is capable of playing.
Performance
For our performance testing, we put the WD TV through our compilation of video format test files.
The player churned out a good result. It played almost every file format, except for 3ivx, which was surprising. Anyways, going on ahead, we tried all HD video formats.
As the WD TV is gaining popularity for its MKV playback capability, we tried playing MKV files, 480P, 720P, or 1080P rips; the player played them well, except for the sound and a minor glitch.
Earlier, the player couldn't play surround digital sound, which was solved by a firmware update. The glitch still remains as there is a slight playback speed issue. At times, the movie slows down and then comes back to normal playback pace. The best part is that the audio and video never went out of sync.
The WD TV upscales videos well for them to look good on your panel, but a lot depends on your panel as well.
It managed to play most video files, but missed out on either format or codec.
The WD TV can read MOV files, but at the moment it's restricted to only Mpeg4 and H.264 encoded MOV files. It is able to detect the file as media; all it needs is a firmware update to decode the codec.
The perfect example for this was a full HD WMV video that we had, which wouldn't play earlier, but with the firmware update installed, it could play it just as any other MKV file.
The Western Digital WD TV Media Player sells for Rs. 6,500 with a one-year warranty. The player is a good buy at this point because it doesn't seem priced at a premium (i.e. over DVD DivX players) inspite of being one of its kind.
The player is a great choice for those looking to finally bring HD content onto their screen without spending too much on a HD Media (Blu-Ray) Reader and without the additional expense of purchasing the media, which is not easy to find in India. The WD TV will surely do justice to your screen and will provide you with a great movie experience depending on the capability of your LCD/plasma TV. The only problem is that all the media you have burnt and deleted off your drive will need to be copied back as the WD TV has no optical media reading capabilities.
Test unit sourced from Text 100
Specification
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