Western Digital HDMI USB Media Player?? (WDAVN00BN)

[DarrellS]

Plays my WMV-HD VC-1 trailers but does not play the audio - Windows Media Audio Professional.

Plays 1920x1080.mov (did not play the audio - PCM big-endian)

It says it supports both PCM and WMA.

[Inspex]

Has anyone noticed random XviDs playing out of sync on the WD player? Either out of sync from the start or just after you've fast forwarded for a few minutes? I noticed it on a couple of movies that I encoded and it kinda erked me. The same files play fine on my Philips 5990 through USB.

Just curious if anyone else has had this problem with random video files going out of sync.

[yonidass]

Yes, I've noticed a few Xvids playing with the audio out of sync, either after fast-forwarding or just from the start. I haven't really looked into it as far as the details of how they were encoded, but this is definitely something I've seen. And these are files that play fine on an older AVel media player I have, which is very picky about what Xvids it will play well. And of course they play fine on the computer.

For the most part this unit plays everything I've thrown at it so far and I'm happy with, but there are bugs in the current firmware, no doubt.

[pandeyrajiv]

Yes, I've noticed a few Xvids playing with the audio out of sync, either after fast-forwarding or just from the start. I haven't really looked into it as far as the details of how they were encoded, but this is definitely something I've seen. And these are files that play fine on an older AVel media player I have, which is very picky about what Xvids it will play well. And of course they play fine on the computer.

For the most part this unit plays everything I've thrown at it so far and I'm happy with, but there are bugs in the current firmware, no doubt.

I have had this *exact* same problem with some Xvid files that were converted from 1080i HD programs and on one particular on I notice the audio starts to drift and gets progerssively worse.

I logged a ticket on the WD Support site (this was about 3 weeks back) and even offered to FTP or snail mail the specific file to the engineers at WD but after about 20-25 exchanges back on forth on their recommendations (Which were focussed more on treating the symptom and not the true cause - the support tech was very courteous though) the recommendation I got from WD was that I should simply re-encode the file using the packaged ArcSoft encoder (or other that I may prefer) as that is the only thing the engineers are willing to do at the moment.

BTW, for the record that Xvid file plays just fine on a computer with no audio drift issues.

Now all that said, I do find WDTV to be a very fine product out the door and it has a lot of plus points where I dont plan on returning it, but I would prefer that WD support be a bit more hands on in trying to solve the problem when a user is willing to give them the isolated issue and the file that caused it...They could have easily seen it for themselves and debugged the problem at their end.

[cameraz]

Yes, I've noticed a few Xvids playing with the audio out of sync, either after fast-forwarding or just from the start. I haven't really looked into it as far as the details of how they were encoded, but this is definitely something I've seen. And these are files that play fine on an older AVel media player I have, which is very picky about what Xvids it will play well. And of course they play fine on the computer.

For the most part this unit plays everything I've thrown at it so far and I'm happy with, but there are bugs in the current firmware, no doubt.

Count me in as a user who has experienced his audio out of sync. I have a couple of Divx files that I ran through VirtualDub and saved as .avi files. They play fine on my computer, but have the audio sync problem with the WD TV player.

However, if I take these same Divx files and convert them to .mov files using SUPER, they play fine on my WD TV without any audio sync issues.

Hope Western Digital fixes this problem.

[Squash]

I think I've found a work-aound for this problem. Hopefully some of you guys can test it and see if it works for you and report back.

I had the sync problem on one AVI file. I had converted it (DGAVCIndex/Avisynth/Vdub) from a 720p AVC/AC3 MKV file into a 720x400 divx/mp3 file for playback on my Philips 5990 player (this was before I had the WD), and it played fine both on my computer and the 5990. When I tried this file on the WD, the sync gradually drifted. Vdub shows video and audio duration to be identical.

The original MKV plays fine with no sync problems on the WD. One out-of-the-ordinary thing about this file was that the framerate was 24.000 fps, which I left alone when converting. I wonder if this could be related to the problem.

Replaced the mp3 audio with the original AC3 and it was still out-of-sync on the WD.

I opened the avi file in Avidemux, left Video and Audio on "Copy", changed "Format" to MKV, and saved it. No more sync problem on the WD, and no re-encoding involved.

Note that if Avidemux says "Packed bitrstream detected. Do you want me to unpack it?", say yes. The first time I tried this I said no, and the sync was OK but video was choppy.

It worked on that file, let us know if it works on others. Of course other containers might work, but MKV's the only one I've tried. Sounds like MOV will work, but Avidemux didn't have that option.

All the other avi files I've played on it have had no problems.

[pandeyrajiv]

I think I've found a work-aound for this problem. Hopefully some of you guys can test it and see if it works for you and report back.

I had the sync problem on one AVI file. I had converted it (DGAVCIndex/Avisynth/Vdub) from a 720p AVC/AC3 MKV file into a 720x400 divx/mp3 file for playback on my Philips 5990 player (this was before I had the WD), and it played fine both on my computer and the 5990. When I tried this file on the WD, the sync gradually drifted. Vdub shows video and audio duration to be identical.

The original MKV plays fine with no sync problems on the WD. One out-of-the-ordinary thing about this file was that the framerate was 24.000 fps, which I left alone when converting. I wonder if this could be related to the problem.

Replaced the mp3 audio with the original AC3 and it was still out-of-sync on the WD.

I opened the avi file in Avidemux, left Video and Audio on "Copy", changed "Format" to MKV, and saved it. No more sync problem on the WD, and no re-encoding involved.

Note that if Avidemux says "Packed bitrstream detected. Do you want me to unpack it?", say yes. The first time I tried this I said no, and the sync was OK but video was choppy.

It worked on that file, let us know if it works on others. Of course other containers might work, but MKV's the only one I've tried. Sounds like MOV will work, but Avidemux didn't have that option.

All the other avi files I've played on it have had no problems.

Just so I am clear in what you are suggesting - you want us to open the problematic Xvid AVI file (the one with the sync issues) and actually have AVIDemux *change* its "format" to MKV and once you change the format in the header (of sorts) the file plays just fine - right?

If that works, that would be great as the whole point of having something like WDTV *is* to not have to convert and re-encode files from various formats and be able to play stuff as is...which is why I found the WD support answer kinda lame as that was not a solution but a workaround.

Will try and report back once I get the confirmation frm you.

Thx

[Squash]

Hi, pandeyrajiv,

Yes. All it took for me was to change the container format from avi to mkv, then the sync problem disappeared on the WD. I'm thinking there may be a problem with the WD's handling of some avi files. Maybe they should hire someone from Philips to teach them how to do it.

I was just curious if this would work on other people's problematic avi files, since my file had that 24.000 fps thing, which is pretty unusual, and I haven't found any other bad ones yet.

Hopefully they'll clear this up in the firmware update.

Thanks for trying this. It only takes a minute or so to save the new file. If you're not familiar with Avidemux, remember to give the file a .mkv extension when you save it, as Avidemux does not give file extensions automatically.

[Inspex]

Glad to hear I'm not the only one experiencing the audio sync issue. I don't really want to have to switch the container on all of my encodes just for the WD player, as they won't play on other DivX/XviD players if I do. I hope Western Digital stays on top of these little bugs as they are reported. Looking forward to a firmware update.

[zoe1271]

I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on one of these. I originally ordered from Best Buy when they were on sale for $99. They now have it on backorder and have upped the price. So, I tried Dell.com because they had it listed for $99 - backordered again!!! My third attempt is amazon.com who also had it listed for $99. We'll see if the order actually gets filled.

I have my music library flac'd up and tagged, so I think I'll just be able to plug 'n' play music with this device. But, I'm going to start ripping my DVDs to .iso on a spare 1TB external HDD to use with the media player. I can't find anything that will tag the .iso (movie name, DVD art, year, etc.). What do you use?

[cameraz]

I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on one of these. I originally ordered from Best Buy when they were on sale for $99. They now have it on backorder and have upped the price. So, I tried Dell.com because they had it listed for $99 - backordered again!!! My third attempt is amazon.com who also had it listed for $99. We'll see if the order actually gets filled.

Fyi, everybody,

It's on sale for 100 bucks at buy.com with free shipping.

http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=209975073

[fountainhead]

I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on one of these. I originally ordered from Best Buy when they were on sale for $99. They now have it on backorder and have upped the price. So, I tried Dell.com because they had it listed for $99 - backordered again!!! My third attempt is amazon.com who also had it listed for $99. We'll see if the order actually gets filled.

I have my music library flac'd up and tagged, so I think I'll just be able to plug 'n' play music with this device. But, I'm going to start ripping my DVDs to .iso on a spare 1TB external HDD to use with the media player. I can't find anything that will tag the .iso (movie name, DVD art, year, etc.). What do you use?

zoe, please catch up. WD should play your FLAC files just fine, but for DVD ISO (DVD in general) this player is NOT even good. The DVD playback support is atrocious. WD doesn't even claim that it's good.

To your question...ISO is a container file. You can't find anything to "tag" it with metadata because there's no such thing.

[dun4cheap]

While more and more media players are becoming available, I still think there is room for advancement. From the popcorn player, the Buffalo Linktheater, SMC EZ Stream player, the Klegg player which there seems to be a lot of different brands of this player not to mention the Phillips DVD players with USB support, or even the DLink players. Without even having the WD version I must say that with no Lan support it automatically loses here. Whether it can play ISO dvd's, MKV files at 1080P, it flat out is not enough in my opinion.

Anyhow, I am personally tired of being teased. Its time to see an upgradeable device that supports the following:

Gigga Lan and Wireless Support
HDMI/SVIDEO/Component/Optical/Analog Digital Support
USB/Firewire Input
Support the installation of a hard drive and a combo HD/BR and DVD Rom Drive.

Standard SAMBA Support without requiring special unique server software
DVD/ISO Play Back
MKV Support 1080P/1080I
Mpeg2/Vob/Elementry Streams at High Bit Rate 25mbps (HD)
WMV,WMV-HD all version/Upgradeable
DivX/Xvid/MP4 Support
AC3/DTS/PCM Audio

While I don't use this feature, Sub Title and CC support is a must for those that do.

These options are not to much to ask for, matter of fact there are a few products on the market that come close. The Buffalo Linktheater is one such device, advanced for its time, then there is the popcorn. The Klegg device was close as well, it has all the right connections and plays DVD ISO Files menus and all. But they were gone just and quickly as they showed up.

Anyhow, I am just venting because the technology is there, but nobody wants to offer it all in one.

So the WD box to me is just another poor attempt. Especially since it does not off so much as LAN support.

[citanool]

Will those problematic AVI's play fine if you only use MPEG4Modifier to unpack the bitstream?

[Squash]

citanool,

I used mpeg4modifier to unpack the avi later and it didn't help on my file; sync was still off on the WD. I then tried re-muxing that unpacked avi into an MKV with Avimuxgui and got good sync but jerky video (but I didn't mess around with all the MKV container settings it offers; just used the defaults). I also tried re-muxing the unpacked avi to mkv using MKVmergegui; again, good sync, but somewhat jerky, though not as bad as the avimux version.

[festmaster]

While more and more media players are becoming available, I still think there is room for advancement. From the popcorn player, the Buffalo Linktheater, SMC EZ Stream player, the Klegg player which there seems to be a lot of different brands of this player not to mention the Phillips DVD players with USB support, or even the DLink players. Without even having the WD version I must say that with no Lan support it automatically loses here. Whether it can play ISO dvd's, MKV files at 1080P, it flat out is not enough in my opinion.

Anyhow, I am personally tired of being teased. Its time to see an upgradeable device that supports the following:

Gigga Lan and Wireless Support
HDMI/SVIDEO/Component/Optical/Analog Digital Support
USB/Firewire Input
Support the installation of a hard drive and a combo HD/BR and DVD Rom Drive.

Standard SAMBA Support without requiring special unique server software
DVD/ISO Play Back
MKV Support 1080P/1080I
Mpeg2/Vob/Elementry Streams at High Bit Rate 25mbps (HD)
WMV,WMV-HD all version/Upgradeable
DivX/Xvid/MP4 Support
AC3/DTS/PCM Audio

While I don't use this feature, Sub Title and CC support is a must for those that do.

These options are not to much to ask for, matter of fact there are a few products on the market that come close. The Buffalo Linktheater is one such device, advanced for its time, then there is the popcorn. The Klegg device was close as well, it has all the right connections and plays DVD ISO Files menus and all. But they were gone just and quickly as they showed up.

Anyhow, I am just venting because the technology is there, but nobody wants to offer it all in one.

So the WD box to me is just another poor attempt. Especially since it does not off so much as LAN support.

I think you are describing the ideal media center, and after spending a lot of money trying to build the ideal HTPC, i now believe some sort of media center that is not a PC is what we really want for our big screen TV's. That being said, the WD device is not attempting to be a media center. It is a movie player. It's cheap, plays most of the formats you listed, low power, noiseless and simple. I can envision telling my wife that we have one and trying to teach her how to use it once I have a drive full of her movies attached. The popcorn hour is very nice but it is more than twice as expensive...for now. I think Western Digital has made this sector much more competitive and we will see better products as a resutl.

[DarrellS]

the WD device is not attempting to be a media center. It is a movie player. It's cheap, plays most of the formats you listed, low power, noiseless and simple. I can envision telling my wife that we have one and trying to teach her how to use it once I have a drive full of her movies attached. The popcorn hour is very nice but it is more than twice as expensive...for now. I think Western Digital has made this sector much more competitive and we will see better products as a resutl.

Exactly. That's why I bought mine. You can't find anything near this price that will do what it does. I would love to have the Buffalo wireless Link Player but not only would it cost close to $500, the courts will not allow them to sell it because of a pending lawsuit. It's been off the market because of this suit for almost two years so I don't see them being able to sell it anytime soon if at all.

[cameraz]

... the WD device is not attempting to be a media center. It is a movie player. It's cheap, plays most of the formats you listed, low power, noiseless and simple. I can envision telling my wife that we have one and trying to teach her how to use it once I have a drive full of her movies attached. The popcorn hour is very nice but it is more than twice as expensive...for now. I think Western Digital has made this sector much more competitive and we will see better products as a resutl.

Festmaster,

I couldn't agree with you more. The WD TV doesn't try to be all things for all people. It's a great little movie, photo and music player. It's the best 100 bucks I've spent on a piece of electronic gear in a long time. Before, if I wanted to watch videos I've downloaded from the Web on my TV, I had to convert them and burn them to DVDs. Now I pop them into a USB drive, plug it into my WD TV, and it works!

[dun4cheap]

You hit my point exactly, the WD type device is nothing new but it surely is over priced. There have been external media share boxes available for as little as $30. The klegg box which was selling at Fry's for $99 was an external drive box with NDAS, LAN and plenty of audio and video connectors. I purchase 3 Buffalo Linktheater for $200 all totaling less the $99 for more functionality. Even the phillips DVD players offer similiar support for $49. The point here is are continually being teased with nothing more than a lot of repeats. The WD box should not cost more then $40 for what it really is.

Lastly, when you say that the wd box is not meant to be a medial center, this is not true. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck its a duck. I am not looking to burst anyones bubble, but it gets frustrating collecting all of these boxes that just miss being what we really need.

I don't know about you, but I really want to do away with the 2 dvd players, media player, htpc and cable box and have one device sitting in my living room. (I am ready for this.)

[pandeyrajiv]

Hi, pandeyrajiv,

Yes. All it took for me was to change the container format from avi to mkv, then the sync problem disappeared on the WD. I'm thinking there may be a problem with the WD's handling of some avi files. Maybe they should hire someone from Philips to teach them how to do it.

I was just curious if this would work on other people's problematic avi files, since my file had that 24.000 fps thing, which is pretty unusual, and I haven't found any other bad ones yet.

Hopefully they'll clear this up in the firmware update.

Thanks for trying this. It only takes a minute or so to save the new file. If you're not familiar with Avidemux, remember to give the file a .mkv extension when you save it, as Avidemux does not give file extensions automatically.

Sorry, I am on vacation now so have not had a chance to try this changing of container to get rid of the audio drift problem...Has anyone else tried...Maybe I will have a definite answer before I get back on Sunday night to try this out

[shadow_cruiser]

Can someone tell me what the file character limit is for FAT32 formatted drives using the WDTV HD?

[Squash]

shadow_cruiser,

Probably 255. I renamed an avi by typing in the alphabet 10 times (well, cut & pasted), but Vista said the file name was too long, so I took off the last 26, for 234 characters, not counting the .avi on the end.

I put it in the WD and it showed 49 characters and an ellipsis. When that title was highlited, however, the entire filename scrolled by.

And it uses a proportional font, so the number of characters displayed in a non-highlited title probably depends on how wide they are.

This was on a fat32 thumb drive.

[shadow_cruiser]

Squash,

Thanks for the response. I've had 3 Philips players with USB support and was told it wouldn't support more than 25 characters because its a fat32 limitation. I now know its a Philips limitation. My WD is on the way, can't wait to test it out

[cameraz]

I think I've found a work-aound for this problem. Hopefully some of you guys can test it and see if it works for you and report back.

I opened the avi file in Avidemux, left Video and Audio on "Copy", changed "Format" to MKV, and saved it. No more sync problem on the WD, and no re-encoding involved.

Note that if Avidemux says "Packed bitrstream detected. Do you want me to unpack it?", say yes. The first time I tried this I said no, and the sync was OK but video was choppy.

It worked on that file, let us know if it works on others. Of course other containers might work, but MKV's the only one I've tried. Sounds like MOV will work, but Avidemux didn't have that option.

OK, guys,

I tried this technique with Avidemux and it worked flawlessly. The only problem is that .mkv videos won't play on my computer, but they play great on my WD TV.

[Squash]

Thanks for the confirmation, cameraz.

I just opened a support ticket with WD with this info. Maybe it'll help them figure it out for a firmware update, which is rumored to be coming in January. I didn't want to submit one earlier in case it was just something peculiar to my file.

[rkp_india]

Okay, I used to be a collector of media includes Divx/XVID/Video CD etc. Now to decrease my complications in life. I moved from home built PCs to an IMAC and for 3 years ripping and encoding DVD's using handbrake at 2500kbps as mp4 (apple quicktime compatible). Originally I did this because I was going to use an apple TV as my SILENT HTPC box. But i hated the fact that i had to have the movies in my itunes and the hard drive was only 160GB. I bought the WD TV to play movies off passport 2.5 hard drives but i noticed some skipping that IS NOT there when i am playing these files on my Macbook and Imac. I ran a 2500kbps handbrake encode off a Sandisk Titanium 4GB cruzer and it still had a few (5-6 times) millisecond pauses. Nothing that ruined the movie but annoying to my wife. Is it the WD hardware??? which seems unlikely because the stuff you guys throw sounds more complex!. IS it the USB bus?? should i buy a faster USB key? or a faster USB hard drive? (7200 rpm non portable) -wrv

[thinhtut]

I don't have the player yet but I'm wondering if this player can play .FLV files downloaded from U-tube.

[cameraz]

I don't have the player yet but I'm wondering if this player can play .FLV files downloaded from U-tube.

I don't think it can, but they can easily be converted using a program called SUPER.

[justFuR]

so i picked one of these up and i'm just starting to play with it...

reads off usb card reader just fine, reads from my 60gig classic ipod...

but i can't get it to recognize my external hd. it's an acomdata 500gb
that is usb2.0 formatted fat32.

ideas?

...

[pandeyrajiv]

Thanks for the confirmation, cameraz.

I just opened a support ticket with WD with this info. Maybe it'll help them figure it out for a firmware update, which is rumored to be coming in January. I didn't want to submit one earlier in case it was just something peculiar to my file.

Squash, you sir are a gentleman and a scholar!!! I came back from my vacation and tried it and viola! The file plays perfectly with no sync issues at all.

The only part AVIDemux asked me to do (when I tried to save it) was to build some audio sync info. and some other indexes (I forget the exact message as I am at work)...It did tell me I could do it later, but I chose yes anyways...But essentially all I did was kept the audio and video to "copy" (which is the default and as you suggested) and changed the container to "MKV" and saved it as a new file with a mkv extension and it worked.

Now what I ought to do is - try to save it back as an AVI as well and see what this new file does...could it be that the extra indexing and other processing AVIDEmux asked me for be the reason the audio was synched up or was it the container? I want to try and isolate it by experimenting.

Overall, thanks again and I sure hope they fix it via a firmware update...I also updated my open ticket with WD to tell them this solution and pointed them back to this page.