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More…The Western Digital WDTV ($110 as of March 5, 2009) marks the hard-drive maker's first foray into the field of media players, but the move makes sense as an extension of the company’s existing hard-disk products. The WDTV box lets your HDTV play media transferred from any USB storage device (flash drive or external hard drive), without any need for a streaming network device to bridge the distance from your storage drive or PC to the TV. Western Digital’s first-generation WDTV accomplishes its core task fairly well, but its menu system is slow.
Western Digital WD TV
3.5
6 User Reviews Add your own »
$92.00 - $109.95
From 3 Vendors
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Pros
HDMI, 1080p support
Straightforward menu design
Cons
Slow menu interface
No automatic sync software
Western Digital WDTV Media Player
WD TV Review, by Nick Mediati, PC World March 20, 2009
The WDTV can connect to any standard-definition or high-definition television; it has composite audio/video connectors and HDMI, as well as optical audio output. HDMI is actually missing from its competitor, the Seagate FreeAgent Theater player.
The WDTV's two USB ports--one at front, one at back--let you keep two storage devices connected to the player simultaneously.
The WDTV ships on its own, without a hard drive, but it will work with any hard drive, not just Western Digital models (the dock that ships with the drive will perfectly fit a Western Digital Passport portable drive, however). One bonus for multiplatform households: The device can read disks formatted for either Windows (FAT-32, NTFS) or Mac OS X (HFS+ without journaling), so you'll be able to view media files from every computer in your home even if you have a mix of Macs and Windows PCs.
The WDTV outputs video at resolutions of up to 1080p. It can play a wide array of popular media formats, including MPEG-4, WMV9, H.264,and AVI (various codecs) video; MP3, WMA, AAC, and WAV audio; and JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP images. In my informal, hands-on testing, the unit handled everything I threw at it. Western Digital continues to add functionality via a firmware upgrade (for example, it added 1080p 24Hz support, and EXIF orientation flag functionality for automatically rotating pictures) since the product first launched.
Setup is minimal: You hook the WDTV up to your TV, power it up, plug in a USB storage device, and you're set. The device finds your content in real time, and displays it in specific categories. The WDTV displays media in a grid layout with a thumbnail icon (or album art for music) and the title at the bottom. Navigating items is simple and works as expected, though I would have liked the option to view items in a list instead. The WDTV does offer a few playback options. When viewing photos, for example, you can zoom in on photos and pan around, and you can create slideshows. Pressing the option key during playback will bring up these image controls, or similar controls for music or video playback (such as a shuffle mode for music, and subtitles for video playback).
The included remote makes navigating the intuitive menu system easy. Use the up and down arrows to move between media types (music, photos, and videos), and use the left and right arrows to select browsing modes (such as for viewing photos by date or by folder). My one gripe involves the menu system's sluggishness: The lag was just annoying enough to make my experience with the WDTV distinctly less enjoyable than it otherwise would have been.
Some similar players--notably Seagate's--include a simple software program for syncing media from your computer to a hard drive for easy transfer and playback, but the WDTV lacks media transfer software. While dragging and dropping files isn't difficult, an application for syncing media would streamline the process somewhat. That said, Western Digital includes ArcSoft Media Converter software for converting your media files into formats that the WDTV can play.
Overall, if you want to skip the home networking approach and connect a media-filled hard drive up to your television, the WDTV is a good bet. Full 1080p support and HDMI connectivity makes it an especially viable option for home-theater users.
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User Reviews
Average User Reviews for Western Digital WD TV
1 Review Add your own »
- Latest User Reviews 1 review
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Reviewed by: edgar53
Duration of ownership: 3 Months
Strengths: Plays just about any video file format.
Weaknesses: No hard drive but for 99 dollars it's great.
Overall: The player will play multiple VOB fileS as long as they are in an ISO file or just one big VOB can be created and played. I have not found a file it won't play well, have used external HD and flash drives. So far Western Digital has issued two firmware upgrades in the 3 months I haved owned it.
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User Reviews From Around the Web
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Reviewed by: dylan915
Strengths: Easy To Use
Weaknesses: Another PC Restricted Product
Overall: I bought this product because I thought the idea was great.Im tired of DVDs all over the place, and I wanted an intelligent MENU DRIVEN product that I could store movies on, and actually browse through a MOVIE MENU to see what's in the drive.I have a brand new Seagate 320 Gig hard drive, but apparently its a Mac format, so immediately after setting up the entire system, I turn on the WD TV Box, and the first thing that pops up on my screen is that it does not support the format.There is no menu to see the films that I had stored , about ten for the test.Still it says it will play the movie, which it did, but there was a lot of black clogged pixilation on the images of all the films I tested.Bottom line is YES, I guess I should have asked the people at Best Buy if this product supported Mac. You'd think with Mac now at almost 40 percent of PC users that companies like Western Digital would format their products to accept Mac hard drives.Im not sure if the poor video quality is because the products don't sync, or if this is actually what the WD TV quality is, but either way I'm really pissed off .I don't recommend this product to any Mac users who expect quality from their products !!
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Reviewed by: Sandiegoparis
Strengths: Quality of the picture and simplicity of use
Weaknesses: none
Overall: I got tired of looking around the house for DVDs misplaced and kids complaining that they could not find them. I backed up all the DVDs on a WD Passport hard drive. Plugged the WD TV into to my television and plugged the hard drive into the WD TV. Now I never have to lose my mind looking for a missing DVD or worry about a scratched one! All I do is turn on the WD TV and search through the menu to pick a video and play it!!!! Such a great product. Does everything it says it will do.
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Reviewed by:
Strengths: Ease of use, full HD playback via HDMI and optical audio, small footprint.
Weaknesses: None.
Overall: Excellent product, I would highly recommend it. Hey Nsup, instead of blaming a great product for something it never claimed to do, how about you do some research before you rant nonsense in your review. If you had looked at the product description, you would have noticed that it doesn't mention VOB playback support anywhere...You having to return this item is due entirely to your lack of research.
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Reviewed by: JoyceH
Strengths: Plays everything
Weaknesses: non
Overall: I love the product,it does plays all my video,save money and save time and make life easier. I think its very creative and friednly deisgn.
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Reviewed by: windz
Strengths: Plays everything I throw at it. Great UI. Plays all my MKV files! I can finally enjoy the movie I have on a big screen TV. Super easy to use
Weaknesses: Doesn't come with HDMI cable.
Overall: I got this product last December and have been using it every weekend since to watch all the movies I ripped and backed up. I love this thing! My friends came over all got very interested in this thing. One even wanted to borrow it from me and I just tell him to buy one since I got it from Dell.com for $99. The setup is super easy because there is practically ZERO setup. It works just like plugging in my DVD player. All I have to do is plugging in my USB drive to it and this little player can play all the video files I throw at it. I no longer need to use my PC or notebook to watch my movies. I've also tried solutions from D-Link and Netgear. The performance is just way better. You'll love it if you download lots of video and rip lots of movie. The few downside of this product is, it didn't actually came with a HDMI cable. Com'on WD, stop being cheap. Even the cheapo DVD player I bought came with a HDMI cable. This is a 1080p HD product! If you are to purchase this product, also make sure you upgrade it to the latest firmware that WD posted a couple months ago. I couldn't play some of the MKV files with VC-1, but since the upgrade. They all play flawlessly.
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