New WD TV Live (WDTV v2)

stiltman · Hi Ladies Joined: 10 Jul 2003 Location: Studio 54

Thought I'd start a new topic on this player.
I'm picking one up tonight. The main feature I like in the new one is component output.

Here's the BestBuy link

Here's a link to the AVS Forum topic

Here's a like to WDTV Forum topic

Here's a link to the B-Rad website. This is where to go for the modded OS

I'll post my first impressions after I get one

Edit: add links
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Loader09 · Member Joined: 26 Aug 2009 Location: United States

this looks like its going to be really good. I just found out about their players and read about them a week ago, sigh i wish i had moneyy lolzz

jagabo · Member Joined: 09 Dec 2005 Location: none

bmo · Member Joined: 13 Dec 2006 Location: United States

Looking forward to your impressions as well. I have the first version, and while it's a great player by itself, it was missing a few key features that the new version has (ethernet, component out, dts decoding). If you could test the dts decoding capabilities that would be awesome.

ChiMarticus2 · Member Joined: 28 Jun 2009 Location: United States

Bummer! BB has it currently Back-ordered On-Line, 1-2 week wait estimated, but may be available at some store locations, but unfortunately again, not in my immediate area.

stiltman · Hi Ladies Joined: 10 Jul 2003 Location: Studio 54

I bought it at BB. They had 2 on the shelf. The price at the register was $139.99. I told them the website listed it at $119.99, they checked and honored the website price.

I unboxed it.
First impressions, the cables leave MUCH to be desired. Very skinny
I have it hooked up to my older HDTV via component. It automatically found the component output and set it at 480i. First impression of the menu, well it's different than the first model. Guess they had to change it up because of the added features. Kinda strange getting used too. Not bad, but you end up using the back button and navigation left arrow to get back to the top menu. The menu system seems about the same to me speed wize. I don't see how people are saying it MUCH faster.

I went to change the video settings and it strangely had composite listed, even though I was viewing it via component. I changed it to component and then to 1080i/60 which is the max for my TV. This changed the picture quality too WAY better than it was before. All the text was VERY clear.

I shut down the system, and inserted my 2 WD 500GB portable HDDs
Turned on the system. It took about 1 minute for it to scan both drives.
I went into settings and changed video to list view

They did add a new view to the video section. It's called preview. It will show the list view on the left side and on the right side it plays the video and also lists the file type/size/genre

I went to video and then all video. It had all my videos listed for both drives.
I picked one of my highest bitrate Xvid AVIs, it was like 5200kbs. It played perfect. The picture quality was much better than the original model connected via composite and the same as connected via HDMI -->DVI.
Hit FF and then Play, there is still the 3-4 second lag before the sound comes on. No chapter support via next button. If you FF then hit next while FF, it will skip 10mins. I don't know if the original did that or not.

Next up, MKVs. Played them perfectly.

Zoom went 1.1x, 1.2x, 2x, 4x, 8x

I would say the upscaler in this player is much better than my TV and also much better than my Samsung HTIB.
However you can tell it's upscaling. The picture quality also seems a bit darker. Not sure yet. I was concentrating on darker videos to see if there was much pixilation. I compared 2 videos, both from the same exact source. 1 encoded Xvid at 94% constant quality and the other encoded H.264 at 65% constant quality. The H.264 looked better. I looked at both of them zoomed in at 4x. The H.264 really won out big time.

All my encodes have the original AC3 audio, and when you play a video it will tell you for 2-3 secs what audio stream is playing.

What most people want to hear about

Sorry, I do not have a network connection yet. I did try a USB wireless dongle, but I knew it wouldn't work. It's a FA1200G and it takes a special driver. It actually locked up the player while trying to power down. I pulled it out and the system then shut down. I knew WDTV's were picky about the wireless adapters.

I didn't try hooking it up via my HTIB HDMI input. The original wouldn't work that way and I doubt this one will because it went from 1.2 to 1.3 compliance

I will have to download some HD test clips to see the real picture quality hooked up via component.
In any event, I'm keeping it, as it has component output and it looks better than the original I had hooked up via composite. It will also allow me to hook up wireless without using one of those modded OSs. Funny how they call it firmware when it's just Linux

I'll also most likely hook up the toslink output to my HTIB for full surround sound.

From reading, it doesn't support USB hubs

It turns off power to the USB portable drives when you turn the unit off. I like that! Not just stopping the spining, but all power.
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jagabo · Member Joined: 09 Dec 2005 Location: none

Thanks for the report. This post has links to some challenging high def files:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=17329247#post17329247

Regarding navigation speed, did you have it in thumbnail mode? I seem to recall that's what was really slow with the original WDTV.

stiltman · Hi Ladies Joined: 10 Jul 2003 Location: Studio 54

jagabo · Member Joined: 09 Dec 2005 Location: none

I don't like thumbnails and prefer to see as much text information as possible. Like Windows Explorer in Details mode.

stiltman · Hi Ladies Joined: 10 Jul 2003 Location: Studio 54

If you are wondering which wireless adapters work, here's the link
http://products.wdc.com/library/other/WDTVLive_Wireless_Adapter_C ... y_List.pdf

It was a pain, as google search kept going to the same page and the same link kept going to their KB article for USB drives

Finally on the third try, it went to this pdf

stiltman · Hi Ladies Joined: 10 Jul 2003 Location: Studio 54

Well, it looks like the ppl at AVS are complaining about upscaled SD picture quality compared to the original WDTV. I'll do some more testing and also hook it up via HDMI-->DVI to see if that makes a difference. I knew there was a difference between the 2, but for me it's not a deal breaker. It still looks better hooked up via component as apposed to composite. That's the whole reason I wanted it.
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T-Fish · Member Joined: 07 Apr 2009 Location: Switzerland

was the remote control bug addressed ?
i got a samsung le40b530 which is the main reason i didn't get a wdtv.

couldn't see anything related to that problem..

stiltman · Hi Ladies Joined: 10 Jul 2003 Location: Studio 54

What remote bug?
At least for me, I had no problems with the WDTV and now the WD Live TV
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ChiMarticus2 · Member Joined: 28 Jun 2009 Location: United States

Squash · Member Joined: 27 Aug 2006 Location: United States

The old guy · Member Joined: 02 Jul 2007 Location: United States

I have V1 so I picked up V2 so as to compare.

Detected HDMI connection, detected and connected to wired network on first power up! Powers up faster than V1 in my opinion even with 2 500G passports connected to it.

Played several .TS, MPG, Xvid AVI's, Windows WMV, and .MKV over the network. Every once in awhile video would stop and I'd see an error of lost the network connection. Power off and then on and same video played just fine. That only happened twice. Dunno what that is all about.

Using ClownBD, I usually convert DTS to AC3. Converted XMEN and kept DTS in there and video and DTS audio played just fine on V2. I'm not using the passthru to a receiver.

The only gotcha I have found so far is I have a Thermaltake BlacX docking station. V2 did not detect the drive in the dock using USB connection to computer. Changed BlacX to the ESATA and it detected the drive and played the .TS files on that drive with no glitches.

And I feel V2 the remote and the menus respond faster. Overall I'm very pleased with V2.

misterbill · Member Joined: 12 May 2007 Location: South Florida

Rudyard · Member Joined: 19 Feb 2004 Location: Australia

Hey Stiltman, can you use chapters on MKV files?

jagabo · Member Joined: 09 Dec 2005 Location: none

stiltman · Hi Ladies Joined: 10 Jul 2003 Location: Studio 54

jagabo · Member Joined: 09 Dec 2005 Location: none

I'll start at the beginning:

1) Output

I connected the WDTV2 to my Samsung LNT 4665 via HDMI and set it up to output 1920x1080p60 RGB. The TV is set to "just scan", Samsung's pixel-for-pixel mode with no overscan. I used a 1920x1080 Belle Nuit test chart to verify that each pixel of a source image and video is displayed pixel for pixel all the way from the file to the HDTV.

An uncompressed BMP of the Belle Nuit chart viewed in slideshow mode filled the screen perfectly and there was perfect pixel-for-pixel mapping. The individual lines in the "1" area, both vertical and horizontal, were fully resolved, both black/white and red/blue.

This is harder to test with video because most compressed format use 4:2:0 chroma subsampling. This causes the thin colored lines to be blurred together. The black and white lines aren't effected by this. I couldn't find any non sub sampled video formats the WDTV2 supports so I just converted the image file to a 1920x1080 square pixel Xvid AVI (4:2:0 subsampling). The WDTV2 showed perfect pixel-for-pixel mapping of the black/white lines. The colored lines were blurred, as expected.

Conclusion: I can get perfect pixel-for-pixel mapping all the way from a 1920x1080 image or video to the screen of the HDTV. Scaling of any other frame size will be done solely by the WDTV2. The HDTV will not resize the image again so what I see on the screen is strictly a product of the WDTV2's scaling. Since the WDTV is set up to output 1920x1080 progressive there will be no deinterlacing within the HDTV.

I have my HTPC set up the same way so I can directly compare the WDTV's playback with the computer's. I'm using a Nvidia 8600 GT with Windows XP Pro SP3. Most tests from the computer were run with MPCHC.

2) (up)Scaling

Looking at 720x480 4:3 DAR MPEG files with sharp, high contrast edges, it appears the WDTV2 is using a Bicubic upscaling filter. Similar to VirtualDub's precise bicubic resizing filter and AviSynth's BicubicResize(). This causes a little overshoot and undershoot at sharp edges. It enhances noise and DCT ringing artifacts. Upscaling is very similar to the computer with MPCHC set to use the "EVR Custom Pre" with Bicubic A=0.75. I usually use EVR's Precise Bilinear which isn't as sharp but avoids those over sharpening artifacts.

3) Deinterlacing

I ran several interlaced MPEG test files through the WDTV2. It does not suffer from the common "chroma upsampling error" that many players (hardware and software) display. It shows no blending between the the two fields' chroma channels.

It appears to use something slightly better than a simple Bob. When playing some standard definition animated material most high contrast horizontal edges bounce and flicker. Very similar to VLC's Bob deinterlacer. I don't have a WDTV1 to compare to. KMPlayer's ffmpeg deinterlacer works better.

I'll post some more tomorrow about playback containers and codecs...

T-Fish · Member Joined: 07 Apr 2009 Location: Switzerland

MJA · Member Joined: 05 Jan 2005 Location: IL

does anyone own the ASUS O!Play and WDTV2?

btw I think the WD was selling for less than $70 few days at newegg.com using a %10 off coupon

jagabo · Member Joined: 09 Dec 2005 Location: none

MJA · Member Joined: 05 Jan 2005 Location: IL

stiltman · Hi Ladies Joined: 10 Jul 2003 Location: Studio 54

The mini will do Realmedia encoded files, but doesn't do HD
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stiltman · Hi Ladies Joined: 10 Jul 2003 Location: Studio 54

stiltman · Hi Ladies Joined: 10 Jul 2003 Location: Studio 54

Here's a great write up by B-Rad (the WDTV alternate OS modder)
http://b-rad.cc/974/wdtv-live-unboxing-undressing

Now I'm looking forward to his WDTV2 modded OS to support DVD drives and USB hubs
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yoda313 · Regular joe Joined: 15 Jun 2004 Location: sector 001

So is the only major difference between the wdtv2 and the original model the ethernet port?

I don't really need that and I barely use my wdtv as it is. Now if I didn't have a ps3, xbox360, and my vista pc hooked up to my hdtv with cable internet I'd be more interested.

So this also has network sharing ability as well as interent access? Does it support a keyboard or is it just remote control only with its own point and click browser?

It is an interesting change to the unit but I am not in the market for it.

But thanks stiltman for giving the update.
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jagabo · Member Joined: 09 Dec 2005 Location: none

It can access files on Windows (or other SMB) shares. Windows computers can see the files on its attached USB drive. It has native support for YouTube right now. It has a lot more RAM and internal flash memory so lots of future updates are possible. I'm hoping for Hulu.com and NetFlix support someday. In the mean time (or maybe forever) I'll check out PlayOn.

No keyboard support. Same remote. Same GUI but faster (so I hear -- I haven't used the original). Like the original it runs Linux and is open source. It has a lot more RAM and flash memory so there's lots of room for growth.