WOW! It actually works! WD TV

[rallyshark]

After thinking I was going to have to start building a movie PC to play my movies on the TV(I have began to store all my DVDs on HD), I was pleasantly surprised when I decided to take a chance on this neat little box called WD TV HD Media Player. Here's the link to the product page at Western Digital:
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=572
It was only about $100 bucks, so I figured I would buy it and see if it actually worked. For the price and what it was supposed to do, it was definitely worth a shot. I'm happy to say it performs as advertised, and actually works better than I expected:) I plugged up the HDMI to the SR 6003, and plugged up a usb hard drive that I had started backing up movies on. It worked immediately and the controls were second nature, so no instructions for me:D The picture quality is top notch, and the Dolby was sent through the HDMI along with the video. The Marantz picked right up just like I was using the DVD player. Another plus is the remote controls are available on the trusty Harmony One! It all works like a charm! I haven't had much time to really monkey around with it, but my initial impressions are very good. I just thought a $100 solution to playing your digital movies for HT could be very useful to those of us on a tight budget. Oh yeah, it does music and photos to of course. Anyway, I hope some find this useful. I sure did!

[thsmith]

A friend has one and loves it, does FLIAC as well.

[speakertweekar]

This is marvelous, truly

This sounds to good to be true. How does one acquire 1080p content?
What would the sound be like? eg. will it rival a standard bluray player

[apphd]

I see from thsmith it does FLIAC any idea if this will handle (decode or pass) DTS-HD master audio and/or Dolby True HD?

[AudioGenics]

great information...thanks

[Marty913]

I've been using mine for 3-4 months now and it is pretty cool for the money (less than $90 some places). Doesn't do Ethernet but will play pretty much anything you can throw on a USB hard drive or flash stick. A lot of coverage over at AVS. Here's a link.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1080840

[cnh]

A laptop with a huge hard drive and google's PS3 MEDIA server....will let you send whatever you want to the PS3--ISO DVD files, Lossless WAV, digital photos..and so on. Just leave your PC on anywhere in the house and use the PS3 remote and your HDTV, and receiver, etc.

And it's a FREE download!!


cnh

[rallyshark]

I tried the PS3 media server, but it just wasn't cutting it for me. The wireless I have just couldn't handle the bandwidth of HD movies and such:( That's what led me to try out the WD TV. I know it does Dolby Digital, but I don't know about the latest formats. I do know the firmware can be upgraded, so maybe in the future if not now? Still, the bang for the buck of this think kicks ass! I'm a happy customer anyway. Maybe someone can chime in on exactly what formats it can play as far as surround goes. Anyone else have one of these? I'm curious to how your experience with the WD TV has been as I haven't had a whole lot of time to thoroughly evaluate it:)

[cnh]

You're absolutely right...unless you've got great bandwidth....the google PS3 server will hiccup on High Resolution video. But if you're pretty fast and are just running SDVDs it does fine.

cnh

[Marty913]

I tried the PS3 media server, but it just wasn't cutting it for me. The wireless I have just couldn't handle the bandwidth of HD movies and such:( That's what led me to try out the WD TV. I know it does Dolby Digital, but I don't know about the latest formats. I do know the firmware can be upgraded, so maybe in the future if not now? Still, the bang for the buck of this think kicks ass! I'm a happy customer anyway. Maybe someone can chime in on exactly what formats it can play as far as surround goes. Anyone else have one of these? I'm curious to how your experience with the WD TV has been as I haven't had a whole lot of time to thoroughly evaluate it:)

My experience has been good the several months I've had it. I can't speak to everything it can play/pass but here's what I do use it for. I'm hooked up HDMI to my HK processor and then on to my Sony 60". I have also run it directly to the Sony (HDMI) & Optical to the HK. I have a 5.1 setup. I'm using a Seagate 320gb Free Agent Go drive with a docking station but do plug in an occasional thumb drive (photo's). On boot-up (quick) it scans the drive so the menu is always current.

I have a few thousand FLAC songs and they play very well. The menu system is fine although it can take a few button pushes to find a specific song. Playing an artist or album is easy. It does have a search function with an onscreen keyboard which is cool. Shuffle works great. The menu system is pretty responsive. Thumbnail graphics show up great.

Right now I use it primarily for concert videos and a few favorite regular SD movies. I rip them in ISO or MPEG/VOB (movie only but multiple audio streams are fine) There is no chapter skip or DVD menu navigation but there is FF & REW at 4X so it's manageable. It does not decode DTS but does pass it through fine so my HK takes care of it. Can't speak to audio formats other than DD 5.1, DTS pass-through, and PCM which all work fine. Picture quality is excellent via HDMI. It does not upconvert and just puts out whatever resolution is there. My current HK upconverts everything to 1080p but when I hook directly to the TV I get 480, 720, etc. The menu system is great and finding a movie and playing it is extremely simple.

Photo's are the weak point although I really don't use it much for that. They look OK but display response is slow. Wouldn't recommend it for a photo viewer / manager. It works, just not as easy to use as music & movies.

I have upgraded firmware 3 times and it has been very easy. Just drop the file on the USB drive and reboot. As far as dependability, I have had zero problems. The big missing piece is Ethernet / Wireless but there isn't anything around for $90 that will do that. I used my wireless laptop for a while but then you lose the onscreen menu system and remote control capabilities (plus it ties up the laptop). Undocking the WD-TV USB drive and plugging it into my PC to pick up new files is not too tough.