Prayer's Answered? Western Digital HD TV

The Xbox HD-DVD drive is USB

Good point, for some reason I was under the impression that the player would start to drop frames when pushing heavy stuff like 1080p. I've had similar experiences with USB pen drives but I assume that is maybe down to something else.
 
Some USB pen drives have very slow read/writes so any problems would be down to a particular pen drive.
 
I have had absolutely no problem using a USB pen drive. I did re-format it to NTFS so that I could fit larger files onto it. It just seems to play everything I try.
I have noticed that it improves the look of an AVI file compared to my XBMC (on old modded XBOX) seems to sharpen it up somewhat.
The networking link looks like something to definately look into.
 
How is this at handling different aspect ratios? i.e. 1280x528 will show properly with black bars and not be stretched to the full 16:9? Same with 4:3, will it add the correct black bars?

Would be a bit silly if it stretched them, just want to make sure it wont :)
 
I bet if Spie puts it on "this week only" most of us in this thread will probably buy it ;)

Hint if you're reading this big man! :D
 
Thinking about it this just goes too show u popcorn player is like £100 too much overpriced and should really be £99.99 or £129.99 at most, cos all it is is some plastic small box with some software and silicon.

I hope they release another updated version of this WD HD wonder and add a network/wireless option, gladly pay an extra 30 quid for that.
 
Thinking about it this just goes too show u popcorn player is like £100 too much overpriced and should really be £99.99 or £129.99 at most, cos all it is is some plastic small box with some software and silicon.

I hope they release another updated version of this WD HD wonder and add a network/wireless option, gladly pay an extra 30 quid for that.

So would I.
 
This stirs my pot tbh I feel like going on popcorn forums and saying why is there player charging £100+ or 2x for a network port ;)

Either way imo these WD babies would make better sense if one can simply unplug it and take it round too a m8s or too any LCD telly and plug in the hdmi/power cable and sit back and enjoy some 720/1080p mkv loving.

Rather still buy 2 of these over the popcorn just means its tad more tedious/slower for transfering the goodies over.

I guess one can easily use it as a external drive/backup media box still:)
 
it could be worth holding out on a purchase of this. QNAP seems to have made a similar device but it can take a hard drive and connects to a network. Not quite out yet but looks pretty much identical spec wise.

engadget linky
 
Ooohhh, now that's tempting. Never seen these before. Might have to get myself a new External with one (I guess Portable Passport Drives would be slightly too slow?).
 
it could be worth holding out on a purchase of this. QNAP seems to have made a similar device but it can take a hard drive and connects to a network. Not quite out yet but looks pretty much identical spec wise.

engadget linky

Someone said on the comments its the same chipset/firmware proberly as the popcorn so proberly same price as well....

I think the WD is still looking the best media box going specs/price wise, give it a while I guess and I bet we will see price wars and units around £99 for these all in one media boxes afterall it is just a Caddy box with a small daughter board+chipset on the inside :)
 
This seems like a good idea but is it really feasable to be downloading so much HD content? Obviously Im talking about free unlicensed non-copyright material but the ones Ive seen are around the 15GB mark. On a 6meg connection you arent going to get many of those a week...
 
This thing looks really really really tempting! It would be nice to have the network ability though it must be said. Been trying to think of a good and relatively cheap way of playing my vids ( which are stored on an external drive ) on my tv, currently just use the ps3 but it obviously has file limitations. This however looks great
 
Well just had a play with one first hand. My mates has just arrived here at work, and as we are currently setting up the new CCTV, we have an LG 42" plasma to test it on !

We threw some 1080P Apple trailers at it, and it looked stunning.

We are trying various file formats and so far it's been excellent. I even tried an Xvid on it. 3/4 hour length video with a file size of around 350 meg. Honestly expected it to look like youtube, but it was much better than I thought.

ISOs are a bit weird, they play fine, but seem to miss the menu. Currently ripping a DVD to test this further. So far so good.

If your mkv has a DTS soundtrack though, it will not send it through the HDMI cable, it must go via the optical out and into a surround amp.
 
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