My Review: Western Dig HD TV

[MSIC]

After bleating on for a while about getting this device, i finally stumped up the cash and got it delivered from Scan for the princely sum of £77 or thereabouts.

I've been using it for around 2 weeks now, and wanted to share my thoughts.

It's a small device, a bit bigger than my fist, and although it's made of plastic it looks smart and feels solidly made.

Mine is connected to a Panasonic 37" plasma (which actually only has a resolution of 1024 x 768 (and is therefore stretched to be widescreen) but actually still appears to be sharp and very pleasurable to watch. I certainly had some concerns in theory about a stretched image, however they are not bourne out in practice. But I digress....).

I connect a self-built external 2.5" hard drive to the device (120GB hard drive cost around £35 ish plus the case around £10 all from scan), and have loaded it with mostly high def mkv's, although some standard def avi's and some photos and mp3s too. There remains a second USB port for adding a second device if i wanted, with one port on the top and another around the back. It's hooked up to the TV by a HDMI cable (£5 from Tescos).

The interface is simple but nice and clean, it kind of reminds me of what i've seen of Sony's more recent systems of a 'cross hatch' approach - up and down through audio and video options, and left and right across other choices within those options.

The remote responds well, and the picture is really nice and easy on the eye - it looks crisp and detailed on my TV, either through the main display or when overlayed over a video image.
It has laughed at all codecs i've thrown at it so far, playing .mp4 apple files as easily as h264 codecs inside of .mkv's. The one it cant do however is DTS audio - trying to play something allows the visual stream to play whilst remaining silent. A shame, and i gather than due to hardware limiations it can't be simply added by a firmware update either, so something to be aware of.

The device itself is silent, with no moving parts and no annoying buzz of any kind. And since i use a really quiet external drive, it's effectively silent. Of course as time goes by, flash sticks will continue to grow in capacity and we'll probably be plugging in terrabyte USB sticks before you know it.

The options menu is a little limited, with video scaling limited to just 'widescreen' or 'normal' modes. It's easy however to scroll though different audio tracks if they are included, and the same is true of subtitles.

Other than that, it's simple, it works, the quality i cannot fault (i'd love to compare it directly to blu-ray but i dont have one yet), and at under £80 delivered it's brilliant.
It is, however, still somewhat of a limited device and i'm not certain it'd ever be able to become a mass market item, and this is down to getting the AV files onto the device. For the likes of us Hexites, either transcoding our own DVDs, Blu-Rays or (like myself) doing our own video editing to produce files is fair enough, but most people want a simpler approach, which either means putting a disc into a spinny thing, or (at best) downloading a simple file from itunes or similar, and it just working. And with DRM the way it is, i dont know if this device is simple enough. At least, not with current market conditions, a lack of suitable infrastructure and money-grabbing, DRM obsessed studio execs

[format]

Nice review.

This can't be networked, can it?

[MSIC]

No, there is no ethernet or other networking port on it at all. Just USB inputs.

[Lydialv]

Did you try other hd media player? such as i-box? from ZHC technology Co., ltd

Who ever test this product? It seems that is not bad.

[shaffaaf27]

a FW update and usb to ethernet connector can be used for natworking

[MSIC]

I've discovered a fantastic feature - you can plug in a USB hub to one of the USB ports, and then simply plug in as many USB drives as you want into the hub - each simply sits in an extra folder / layer as seen in the WD HDTV's menu.
Simple, and perhaps obvious, but good to know that this works. Since i now have 2 x 1TB drives under my TV i was worried that these would get full and i'd be stuck for further additions... well not now

I'll also add that in the 6 months now that i've owned it, there have been 2 firmware upgrades (nice to know that WD are still supporting the device), the best extra feature is that when the device is turned off it stops polling the external drives, hence allowing them to power down too. Nice!

[jimborae]

Nice review but I have to point out that the picture on your Panny is not stretched in any way, shape or form (unless you make so). Unlike a pc monitor, which has square pixels at this resolution, your panny, like my 42" one, has rectangular pixels. Hence the ability to give a widescreen, distortion free, amazing picture.

[format]

Originally Posted by MSIC

I've discovered a fantastic feature - you can plug in a USB hub to one of the USB ports, and then simply plug in as many USB drives as you want into the hub - each simply sits in an extra folder / layer as seen in the WD HDTV's menu.
Simple, and perhaps obvious, but good to know that this works. Since i now have 2 x 1TB drives under my TV i was worried that these would get full and i'd be stuck for further additions... well not now

I'll also add that in the 6 months now that i've owned it, there have been 2 firmware upgrades (nice to know that WD are still supporting the device), the best extra feature is that when the device is turned off it stops polling the external drives, hence allowing them to power down too. Nice!

Does this mean I could connect a NAS to its USB port, and stream it that way? Or even just transfer the files to the NAS then it could be accessed by the WDTV?

[shadowmaster]

Originally Posted by MSIC

I've discovered a fantastic feature - you can plug in a USB hub to one of the USB ports, and then simply plug in as many USB drives as you want into the hub - each simply sits in an extra folder / layer as seen in the WD HDTV's menu.
Simple, and perhaps obvious, but good to know that this works. Since i now have 2 x 1TB drives under my TV i was worried that these would get full and i'd be stuck for further additions... well not now

I'll also add that in the 6 months now that i've owned it, there have been 2 firmware upgrades (nice to know that WD are still supporting the device), the best extra feature is that when the device is turned off it stops polling the external drives, hence allowing them to power down too. Nice!

I bought one of these a couple of weeks ago and I have to say its a superb device. I currently use it to play my vast collection of kids cartoons. (Its the ONLY way I can keep my nephews and nieces quiet!), plus it plays every video file I throw at it with ease. Its vastly better then those other cheaper media players (Sumvision, etc), and definitely worth the extra £40 or so.

[antd]

Cool review. I like the WD company and so I'm thinking of getting one of their TVs.

[shaffaaf27]

Originally Posted by antd

Cool review. I like the WD company and so I'm thinking of getting one of their TVs.

lol they dont make the TV

[MSIC]

Originally Posted by jimborae

Nice review but I have to point out that the picture on your Panny is not stretched in any way, shape or form (unless you make so). Unlike a pc monitor, which has square pixels at this resolution, your panny, like my 42" one, has rectangular pixels. Hence the ability to give a widescreen, distortion free, amazing picture.

I know what you mean, and i wasn't implying that the picture looked incorrect in any way, but thanks for the clarity there.

Originally Posted by format

Does this mean I could connect a NAS to its USB port, and stream it that way? Or even just transfer the files to the NAS then it could be accessed by the WDTV?

I think so... i'm strongly considering trying to get hold of some type of NAS device (either an ethernet to USB convertor, or a device with Ethernet plus USB ports..
If anyone else wants to try this out, please post here!