| The Sub-$100 Western Digital HD Media Player |
 The Western Digital HD Media Player is a media player that basically connects to your TV and plays digital media. I have to write about this player, because it is one of those bang-for-your-buck gadgets that is almost too good to be true.Western Digital is a relative newcomer to the media player scene. Considering the price of the HD Media Player ($99.99 at Best Buy, as of 09 Feb 2009), it seems that Western Digital was aiming for a low-cost device to play media on your TV. However, the HD Media Player is definitely not low on features or usability. Even at this price, the HD Media Player supports up to 1080p high-definition video over HDMI. CharacteristicsFirst, the device is much smaller than you would normally expect. Looking at a picture of the HD Media Player, it doesn't look too small. Then again, the only thing you have to compare to is that remote sitting on top of it, but the remote is also incredibly small! The HD Media Player is only about 5 inches long on its longest side, and about an inch and a half thick.The HD Media Player has no internal storage of its own; You must supply the external storage (connected through USB). Personally, I actually like this more than having built-in storage. For one, having internal storage would have significantly increased the price of the HD Media Player, no doubt. Second, being able to connect up to two external drives to the media player allows you to greatly increase the amount of media available to play. Third, you can choose the size of your own drive(s), which is fantastic because other devices will leave you "stuck" with a size that you may or may not like, and may in fact cost you more in the end if you run out of space. Finally, if your friends have their own external drives, it is very easy for them to simply bring their drive(s) with them, hook them up to your media player, and instantly begin watching with no problem! Pros The user interface is very intuitive, and very sleek in appearance. The following are just a few nice interface features:
ConsThe only big complaint I have about Western Digital's HD Media Player is thumbnail support. If you venture out onto Googleland and search for more information about this device (which you may have already done... since you're here), you'll quickly find a common voice regarding the player: Better thumbnail support!It's true. Let me confine the subject to videos only: In order to get thumbnails displayed for your videos, the video container must either be MP4 or WMV (as of this writing), and the thumbnails must be embedded in the video's metadata. Again, if you search Google for embedding images into video files, you may come up a little short. Luckily, I know how to do it, and I'll gladly show you in just a minute. Of course, it would still be a pain to have to use only MP4 or WMV files (if you have to choose, please choose MP4, for everyone's sake) in order to get thumbnails, because no one likes being confined to scrolling through generic DVD icons. Although there is a saving grace: You can switch the browser to a list view, so you only see the names (but aren't thumbnails pretty?).  Moreover, I've seen that if I have a video (i.e., "Finding Nemo.mp4") without a thumbnail, and I add a thumbnail to that video's metadata, the HD Media Player will "remember" the video's lack of a thumbnail (or an old thumbnail, for that matter), and will neglect to update the icon. I end up having to rename the video in some way (i.e., "Finding Nemo.mp4") in order to see the new thumbnail. Maybe it's stored in the database somewhere (the HD Media Player appears to index files in a SQLite database on the root directory of your hard drive). Another small (very small) gripe is the response time from the remote. It's not a huge delay, probably about half a second. I've only had a problem when I'm fast forwarding or rewinding, and I hit "Play", only to hit it again thinking I didn't press the button hard enough and it ends up playing the video with the timeline showing up paused. A simple double-hit of "Play" fixes this minor issue (you will probably never run into it anyway). The HD Media Player supports up to 1080p HD video, but it doesn't come with an HDMI cable. Don't worry, I purchased a 6' HDMI cable for $4.99 (free shipping). That's right, don't waste your time going to those ridiculously overpriced retailers that are playing the "Monster Cable will give you better HDMI than other HDMI cables for an extra fifty bucks" game. HDMI is a standard. All HDMI cables support the HDMI standard. Now get out there and search Google for some cheap HDMI cables! Finally, the HD Media Player doesn't have a built-in DTS decoder. What this basically means is that if you have a video with Dolby Digital Surround, you won't hear anything unless you have an optical audio connection to a device with its own DTS decoder (most home theater systems do anyway). Should I Buy It?The answer is a loud, unequivocal "YES!" At $99, the HD Media Player is a device in its category that simply cannot be beat. It's so easy to use and just outright great that I recommend this player to everyone I meet.The cons to this media player are so small that I really can overlook them with ease, and besides that the guys at Western Digital are diligently working on new releases of their firmware. Updating firmware is a snap: Just copy the two firmware files to the root directory of your drive, and when you turn on the HD Media Player, it will notify you that firmware has been detected, and prompt you to upgrade. A few minutes, and that's it! I've hooked up my HD Media Player to my TV via an HDMI cable (sold separately), and to my home theater system via a TOSlink optical audio cable (for digital surround sound), and it's fantastic. The only things that could make this player even better would be a built-in DTS decoder, and, dare I say it, built-in wireless. Or at least just a standard Ethernet jack, and let me hook it up to my wireless bridge. But really, this HD Media Player is a breath of fresh air in the HD media market, and another device to add to the growing preference of digital media over those soon-to-be-old-fashioned circular discs (yes, I'm including BluRay in that category... don't waste your money). ExtrasBuy an HDMI cable... it makes a difference. I mentioned above that it only cost me $4.99 to have one delivered to my house, and it works great. There's no excuse. If you can afford this player, then you can afford the cable.Buy an optical audio cable if you want digital surround sound (of course, this only applies if the encoded audio track supports digital surround, such as AC3). You can find them for maybe just slightly more than the HDMI cable (read: slightly). Replace your DVD collection by ripping everything to a hard drive. I have a Western Digital MyBook 750GB drive that I ripped my entire DVD collection to, and I have room to spare. I used HandBrake to rip everything, with H.264/AAC encoding in an MP4 container, and it all looks fantastic. Most of the videos ended up somewhere between 1 GB - 1.5 GB, but I make absolutely certain that they do not exceed 2 GB (because the program I mention in the next paragraph for embedding thumbnails does not support files larger than 2 GB... and I need my thumbnails). Embedding ThumbnailsThere's a great program out there called AtomicParsley (Ubuntu users, click here). This program works on Linux, Mac OSX, and yes, even Windows. To embed an image into a video file, simply use the syntax "AtomicParsley <mp4_video> --artwork <jpg_image> --overWrite". The "--overWrite" part is optional, but it's better to just include that so it automatically replaces the original video file. Once you have all the dependencies, go ahead and extract the files from the zipfile. There should be two files: a Python program and a Glade interface file. Be sure to place the Glade file in your home directory (in "My Documents" on Windows), or the application won't start. Run the program by typing "python DVDCoverEmbed.py", or double-click it (on Windows). If you're using Linux, it makes it much easier to simply create a menu item for this program. Once you run it, it should look like this:
Select a directory (default is "Video" in your home directory), and click "Scan". This will trigger the program to look for MP4 files within the selected directory that do not have embedded thumbnails. Once found, you will be presented with a list of videos that are yet missing thumbnails.
Select a video by clicking on it, and then click "Search Internet For Matching Titles" in order to search for titles that may have DVD covers (based on the filename of the video). You will be presented with a list of available titles.
Once you choose a title that looks like a good fit (you can easily change it later), click "Retrieve DVD Cover" to attempt to find a DVD cover for that title. If it doesn't have an associated cover, you will receive an error message to let you know. If a cover is successfully downloaded, you will receive a message to inform you that the download was successful.
Click the "Embedding" tab, and you will be presented with a new section where you can crop your image repeatedly (cropping is in pixels, and is measured from the left side of the original image).
Enter an amount to crop, and click "Crop Image" (315 is usually a safe bet, and you can adjust from there). The image will automatically update itself to the requested cropping amount. Once you're satisfied, click "Embed Thumbnail", and a progress bar at the bottom will indicate the completion of your thumbnail!
Once you're finished, a popup will appear letting you know. And that's it, you're done!
Now your MP4 files will show up in the Western Digital HD Media Player with thumbnails, and not too much trouble! Please let me know if you experience any bugs so I can fix them. |
| Last Updated on Wednesday, 11 February 2009 06:05 |
After searching on the net to find out why I couldn't hear anything, I found out that I need to have some sort of home theatre system or convert the files somehow. If I had known this' I wouldn't have bought it. Most people who have HD anime have it in MKV format and would assume this device would be ok to handle this. I do not have the cash for a surround sound system or the time and energy to convert around at least 2000 anime episodes which may not even allow me to see the subs afterwards. Is there an easier way around this, is there a possibility that they could someday release some firmware to sort out this problem, or should I send this back and wait for a newer version without this issue to come out. Your feedback would be much appreciated.
I converted all my movies to AVI only to find out that only mp4 or wmv allowed the thumbnail...any good suggestion to convert my AVI to mp4?
cheers
http://getvideoartwork.com/
I was wondering if you tried dual audio mkv files with xvid or h264? I like collecting anime with soft subtitles and you can find them dubbed with an english audio track as well.
I am wondering if it will play the 2nd audio and how much of a pain it is to switch audio tracks if the default wasn't what you wanted.
Also, I actually have an example of a dual *video and audio* mkv file. Yes, there is indeed two video tracks with a corresponding audio trach for each. Now, I actually don't expect it to handle this one but it would be interesting to see what happens. :)