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Western Digital TV

I received my WDTV a couple of days ago and spent a few minutes testing it out. Overall, I love it. Since I already have all of my media backed up on external USB drives, it's real easy to plug them up and start watching. I also like that it has composite video as well as HDMI, since I still have a standard TV in the bedroom.

It plays everything that I have, but with one problem. All of my videos are encoded using Handbrake and the WDTV won't allow me to fast-forward through them. Even movies with chapter stops. The other annoyance is that it does not display thumbnails for my videos, even on the movies with poster art inserted. Has anyone else dealt with this?
 
Was just getting ready to pull the plug on one of these baby's and I see the resellers (i.e. Amazon, Buy.com and even NewEgg) have jacked up the price around $20 smackers. What's up with that? Is this their version of a Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale? Next we'll be hearing them complain about a slow weekend and us buyers are being tight with our money...
 
grozier said:
I received my WDTV a couple of days ago and spent a few minutes testing it out. Overall, I love it. Since I already have all of my media backed up on external USB drives, it's real easy to plug them up and start watching. I also like that it has composite video as well as HDMI, since I still have a standard TV in the bedroom.

It plays everything that I have, but with one problem. All of my videos are encoded using Handbrake and the WDTV won't allow me to fast-forward through them. Even movies with chapter stops. The other annoyance is that it does not display thumbnails for my videos, even on the movies with poster art inserted. Has anyone else dealt with this?
Click to expand...

Yes, I've dealt with it. If it was a file converted to m4v for ATV I couldn't fast forward. I had to convert to mp4 using Handbrake. There might have been another format or two I couldn't fast forward with, I can't recall, I played with it a lot in the last four days. And I had the thumbnail problem too - generally, if I could apply the artwork in iTunes, it carried over. What I typically have ended up doing is rip using MTR, convert to mp4 with Handbrake and put it on the external harddrive, then load it into iTunes without importing it just pointing to it on the external (approximately, iTunes=>preferences=>advanced, check box). Then in iTunes, approximately: File, Get Info, Add Artwork, and you can drop an image file. That was such a pain I stopped doing it and just go list view.

I've been using the Handbrake Normal setting to convert to mp4. Other suggestions?
 
TheZA said:
Yes, I've dealt with it. If it was a file converted to m4v for ATV I couldn't fast forward. I had to convert to mp4 using Handbrake.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip. Simply renaming the files from .m4v to .mp4 enabled fast-forward on the WDTV. No conversion necessary. However it still doesn't recognize the chapter stops.
 
grozier said:
Thanks for the tip. Simply renaming the files from .m4v to .mp4 enabled fast-forward on the WDTV. No conversion necessary. However it still doesn't recognize the chapter stops.
Click to expand...


Oh yeah, that works for the fast forward fix, but then don't you end up running into problems if you care to import into iTunes to add artwork.
 
I have tagged some videos with MetaX and their thumbnails show up fine.

I prefer list view and find scrolling faster that way, although it makes it not nearly as elegant as the AppleTV.

Do you guys have the media library option turned on or off?
From my understanding it doesn't work with Journaled HFS+ drives. Journaling can be disabled with disk utility.

I haven't tried yet since I have some FAT32 WD Passport drives hooked right now.
 
I have mine on a WD Passport still formatted to the factory set FAT32. I figured I might want to carry it over to a Windows machine at some point. In one instance I did run up against the 4 gb FAT32 size limit when attempting to copy over a ripped DVD unconverted to mp4. Oh well, I figure I'll just use that drive for WDTV only for converted video, music, and pictures and the 4 gb size shouldn't be an issue.

I've organized my media in to files, and have the library enabled on WDTV. For the music, I just copied over the iTunes music file as it was already organized in files.

I really don't like WDTV thumbnail view. It would be better if the names appeared right at the bottom of the thumbnail.

I downloaded the latest Mac Turbo driver, or whatever they call it, for the Passport HD from Western Digital. You get a goal looking icon on your desktop, and transferring files to it seem to be slightly faster.
 
i read the TrustedReviews on this yesterday, and it does seem impressive... although it would be much better if it had a network connection (ie, wifi) in the least.

If I wasn't already using my macbook hooked up to my HDTV for watchinf films/tv shows then i would probably go for it .. and at the prioce £79.99 @ play.com you can't really go wrong.
 
after reading the reviews, I am gonna go buy a wdtv from bestbuy, test it out for a few days, then either return it or the apple tv i bought last week.
 
The wdtv sounds very interesting if it only supported video_ts or .iso files (with menus). Is there anything out there that does that and does a good job of it? I have used XBMC on the Xbox and both XBMC and Plex on the :apple:TV with mixed success; the XBOX version was the most stable, but the Xbox is so loud and has no wifi or gibabit ethernet. I also don't think it had any sorting capability (genres, etc).
 
danny_w said:
The wdtv sounds very interesting if it only supported video_ts or .iso files (with menus). Is there anything out there that does that and does a good job of it? I have used XBMC on the Xbox and both XBMC and Plex on the :apple:TV with mixed success; the XBOX version was the most stable, but the Xbox is so loud and has no wifi or gibabit ethernet. I also don't think it had any sorting capability (genres, etc).
Click to expand...

From what I've read (haven't bought the WD tv yet) it DOES support video_ts folders AND .iso. This thing is magic, seriously.

"ScottWD says:
Re: First Look: Western Digital WD TV
WD TV does support folder_ts along with .iso and .vob.
Scott Rader
Sr. Product Manager
Western Digital"

http://www.macworld.com/article/136510/2008/11/wdtv_first_look.html
 
vadim.iablokov said:
From what I've read (haven't bought the WD tv yet) it DOES support video_ts folders AND .iso. This thing is magic, seriously.

"ScottWD says:
Re: First Look: Western Digital WD TV
WD TV does support folder_ts along with .iso and .vob.
Scott Rader
Sr. Product Manager
Western Digital"

http://www.macworld.com/article/136510/2008/11/wdtv_first_look.html
Click to expand...
Yes, but it only supports the individual VOB files, which means you ahve to select each file in turn. You cannot simply select the directory or .iso and have it play like a dvd with menus. at least that is what I have read, I don't personally own one.
 
You are right about not having menus, maybe in the next frimware update, does anyone know of any WD TV hacking communities anywhere on the net, to get some technical advise.

I just ordered mine off NCIX.com, I'm canadian so my choices were limited to ONLY this site, but they still had a great deal. 149$ plus shipping+handling.

How I miss the days when the Canadian dollar was stronger than the USD...
 
I'm selling my aTV for this, it's exactly what I wanted the aTV to do/be minus the networking.
 
Same here.. since I cant access the iTunes store anymore its been all WDTV. The compatibility with this thing is jsut insane as well. The whole family can have their own USB drive full of shows/movies/coughporncough to suit their tastes too. love it!
 
Anyone know any UK shops with it? I don't want to buy online as I am away from home until Christmas but can get to Liverpool to do some shopping this weekend...
 
Has anyone else had trouble using the Popcorn Hour audio converter? I started with a ~4 gig mkv and ended up with a ~1.2 gig mkv. What gives?

I might have to try out the command line later. If that works it will keep me from having to find ridiculous ways of going from HFS to NTFS and then back to HFS.
 
Yes!

Got mine in the mail today. The audio works great with a DVI only input tv as long as you connect the audio through the composite cables. Although, now I'm having trouble with my journaled 500GB external drive. I have a ton of media on there (200GB) and I don't want to erase the drive in order to reformat it. I'm trying to create a new partition in the empty space and make it a non-journaled format, but it keeps failing the partition saying that there isn't enough room for the partition. Which is BS. So I'm erasing all the free space on this drive and see if that helps. But so far this little box works pretty damn well! :)
 
pulsewidth947 said:
What did you convert your audio to?
Click to expand...

Sorry, not following the thread close enough.

I converted to AC3. It outputs a file that's functional, but only the first 45 minutes or so of the movie.

I then tried the command line stuff you linked to earlier and, unfortunately, the standalone program no longer exists because the guy maintaining it got himself a receiver and is able to decode dts now. Not sure why the files couldn't have been left for people to download though.

Since that program was gone I decided to go the command line route. After installing all the programs I got to this step:

dcadec -o wavall /tmp/dts.file.dts | aften - /tmp/ac3.file.ac3

Terminal told me something about not being able to find aften, which makes sense after looking at my home folder where there are a bunch of files and folders strewn about that one of the installers left behind. I have no clue where these files should be for me to be able to use aften from the command line.

This is so frustrating knowing that this conversion is very much within reach, but everything I try has some problem along the way.

I'm gonna go take my computer equipment outside now and light it all ablaze. ;)
 
Turn off journalling

vadim.iablokov said:
Got mine in the mail today. The audio works great with a DVI only input tv as long as you connect the audio through the composite cables. Although, now I'm having trouble with my journaled 500GB external drive. I have a ton of media on there (200GB) and I don't want to erase the drive in order to reformat it. I'm trying to create a new partition in the empty space and make it a non-journaled format, but it keeps failing the partition saying that there isn't enough room for the partition. Which is BS. So I'm erasing all the free space on this drive and see if that helps. But so far this little box works pretty damn well! :)
Click to expand...

You can just turn off journalling, there is no need to reformat.
Use Disk Utility, select the hard drive in the left column, hold down the "option" key then click on the File menu, then there will be an option to "Disable Journalling."
 
New Post~
---------------------------------------
So after using this thing for a day I've actually done a 180. I'm seeing more and more issues. As I posted on another post I thought I throw them on here to let people know what's happening. I'm going to wait for the next firmware update due in Jan to see if things improve but I'm really thinking of returning this thing.

---
I have both an TV and a WDTV and I can tell you they're like night and day. The only thing WDTV has going for it is its Sigma chip can play hi-def 1080p rips and the thing plays on both widescreen and 4:3 TV's. Beyond that it has quite a bit of lacking features and/or bugs. It really feels like a beta to me.

- navigating my music (large library) takes 30 sec on average to jump around (say from artist to album and drilling in)
- scrolling caches 3 rows then you sit for 20 sec until you can scroll again
- cover art is limited to only the metadata so you don't see artwork on albums (i.e. can't see external JPEG files for cover art)
- navigating into an artist and album to the songs, there's no listing of who or what you're looking at other than the song names (say you walk away and come back a few hours later and you don't remember who you were looking at)
- cannot play .mv4 videos so your TV collection is unusable unless you rename them as .mp4 and then your TV can't play them
- can't play the Hanbraked AC3 + AAC movies correctly as it ignores the AC3 file
- no video genre navigation
- no network access so to add/change stuff you have to unhook and move it to another machine
- and when you rehook the drive back up it takes about 10 min before it recognizes it
- I don't use subtitles but it can't use external subtitle files from what I hear

--------------------------------------------------------
Old Post~
Got my WDTV a day ago and spent some time playing with it tonight. My first impressions:

- Works great with most formats.
- I don't have a DTS capable receiver so I have to convert those using Popcorn Audio Converter. I've also run into a few issues with older .mov files.
- But my biggest issue is the WDTV cannot read my :apple:TV formatted .m4v files and I have to change the extension to .mp4 (and now my :apple:TV can't see them). I hope this gets added/fixed in a firmware update.
- And my :apple:TV files are Handbraked to the :apple:TV preset of AC3 + ACC yet the WDTV cannot see the AC3 and can only play stereo (even hitting menu & audio doesn't let me switch it). This is a big bummer as I need both and I hope this can be fixed.
- I also saw this same issue where I used PAC to convert a MKV DTS track to both AC3 and stereo. Again, only saw stereo and I had to set it to AC3 only.
- Haven't watched to whole video but 1080 looked and played great!

So far pretty happy!
 
A few responses to the last post-

I use it differently than others. I don't own an AppleTV, and now probably never will. When I was looking at an AppleTV, I didn't like that it was limited to particular files types. WDTV, I get it on there any which way, it works. So renaming files between m4v and mp4 = no drawback. That is a drawback of AppleTV.

Music file cover art - I don't care at all. Music is something I don't use WDTV, or my computer for, other than organizing for loading into an iPod. If I were going to play music from my computer or TV, I would use the computer and get Airport Express and some speakers, or I suppose something to hook up to the iPod. I don't keep all my music in that format. I'm still largely a CD keeper, loading select songs into iTunes and on to my iPod. Music on WesternTV is an afterthought.

I've gotten my work flow down such that I'm not often disconnecting the hard drive and taking it over to the computer. I gradually rip and convert stuff and keep it on the external over at the computer, and then once in a while go over and load it on to the portable that goes with the Western TV in a batch. At the beginning where I didn't have much on the portable drive, I was constantly updating it. But now it is a gradual/batch occassional thing.

The biggest selling point for me: the WDTV is pretty cheap and now I'm not burning a bunch of DVDs all the time. And it is a hell of a lot easier to get something on to the WesternTV that will play and look nice than it is to get something to burn. Backing up a DVD on to another DVD, you're only have way there until you get it burned. And I'm not filling my computer's hard drive up, or the drive of an Apple TV. Just the dedicated drive for the WDTV, and I could always just get another one (I suppose you could just always use an external at the computer to stream to your AppleTV).

Biggest issues with WDTV: (1) You can't skip ahead chapters, (2) sometimes when I power it off, it won't come back on unless I unplug/replug - I think this is when I power it off if it is still playing a video, and (3) the menu could use some improvements that are minor and I won't go in to.
 
I almost bought a WDTV today at Best Buy just to give it a try, but eventually decided against it because the WDTV only has Composite and HDMI outputs, but no S-Video or Component. Since I don't own an HDTV I would be limited to composite, which kind of stinks.
 
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