Why I buy this one ?
- Thumbnail and list views - Browse your content by filename or by thumbnails of photos, album covers and movie cover art.
- Media Library - This unique feature lets you view all your media by media type in one menu regardless of its location in folders or drives. You can view content by categories such as genre, album, artist and date. / Search - Search by genre, title, artist, filename and partial filename
- Create custom slide shows with a variety of transitions and background music
- Movie viewing - Fast forward, rewind, pause, zoom, and pan; View subtitles - Search by filename, partial filename, most recently viewed and date
- Music - Fast forward, rewind, pause, shuffle, repeat; Supported USB Device file systems: FAT-32, NTFS, HFS+ (no journaling)

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What our customer's say!

"I have to convert everything? Oh Man!!!! =[", I mean oh man whats the point of having to convert everything I have for this? I purchased this because I have several WD Passport Elites to store my files, music & video. I saw this & thought wow I could just plugin my externals straight to my 32" Philips LCD, cool! Then it says I dont have anything. I read the instructions or whatever & says I have to convert everything, what a bummer. So I will have to buy more externals to keep the converted content? oh man sounds like it will take forever to convert all my stuff plus the cost of externals for this. My apartment is small I will just connect my laptop to my lcd tv thru the hdmi connection. This thing is going back. It has alot of potential. If they update the software I will repurchase in the future. Right now though I have enough things frustrating me.

"Very nice but not perfect", So far, we really like this. We've loaded more than 30 hours of captured video from our digital camcorder, thousands of photos, and thousands of songs and are enjoying them all on this. The inferface is easy, it recognized the 1TB USB drive we connected with no problem, and it's small and unobtrusive near the TV.
My 2 complaints are:
It supports AVI but apparently not DVI AVI. We've used Windows Movie Maker 2 to capture 30+ hours of DVI AVI from our camcorder and unfortunately, it wouldn't play them directly. Fortunately, it was easy to convert them all to MPEG with Nero.
Complaint #2: Installing the included conversion software caused all of my other video capture software to stop working properly, and even uninstalling it doesn't fix it. I had hoped to use it to batch convert large numbers of videos but it's really caused me headaches. If you do video capture from any kind of digital camcorder, I wouldn't recommend installing the included software. If you have a solution that already works, don't risk breaking it.
All in all, we're very happy with this.

"media player", given as a gift to our son. He loves how it stores all of the video's for the 2 children.

"Almost Perfect", Just needs to add support for some 6 channel audio encodes used in HD video, ac3 etc.

Would also be nice if it could transfer files from usb1 & usb2 so you could use a thumb drive to add files to a connected external drive.

Plays most everything I throw at it (have had to re-encode some audio).

If you have a lot of media files, the WD HD is a must.

"Works well.. but you will need the firmware update.", [...]

Upon opening the box, I was surprised at how small the unit was. It is dwarfed by the Vantec HD dock as you can see in my test setup. Out of the box I had some trouble playing one .SRT subtitle file, and the subtitles started at the top of the bottom third of the screen. Also if there were more than one line to the subtitle the lines were spaced very far apart. Very distracting.

Imediately I checked the Western Digital website for a firmware update. Indeed there was. Ver. 1.01.02 dated 12/2/08. After updating the problems I was haver were fixed. The subtitle that wouldn't play worked perfectly. And, the subtitles were at the bottom where they should be and the line spacing was corrected. I also noticed some additions to the setup menu, including subtitle size.

So far all the files I have tested work fine, including the .mkv's which I really wanted this unit for. I am very pleased with the operation and menu system. The only improvement that I can see so far is that they need to give an option to change the subtitle color. The only option right now is white, which can be hard to read on bright scenes. The option of yellow would be very nice. Of course hardsubbed video subtitles look great.

WD also offers GPL code for third party developers, which I find awesome. (Sony please take a hint.)

I'll give it 4 stars only because it needs subtitle color options. I am sure this will happen in future firmware updates.

Read this reviews before You buy...

"Obvious, gaping flaw", I was fully expecting to love this media player. On the surface it's a great product for the simplicity and wide variety of file formats that it supports. I was very disappointed on first use, when I discovered that there was no chapter support for any kind of video files! This is incredibly frustrating to have to fast forward manually to try to find where you left off in a show. The 1.01 firmware update only added chapter support for MKV files. You can't even key in a specific time to jump to.

I might try to stick with it through the next firmware version to see if things improve, but it will sit unused until that point.

"Silver Lining for HPTC searchers", Background:
I have been in market for some time to either build or buy an HPTC (Home Theater Personal Computer). Basically, it is a computer that runs your home entertainment, music movies, internet etc. There is plenty of info on the internet about these if you want to find out more.
My immediate goal was to get all of my music stored on digital media (more about this later). I found the WD-HD by an internet search. They just released it in early November and the reviews that I read were very impressive.
After reading more info on it on WD's website, I decided to give it a shot. I can say that it is a very small package that packs a powerful punch.
No rotating or mechanical parts, simple embedded firmware that can easily be upgraded (WD just released a new version) and the embedded software is simple, I repeat simple to use.
Two USB ports to handle either thumb drives or external hard drives, one HDMI port, one TOSlink port, and composite ports. I have my HDMI hooked up to my TV, TOSlink to my receiver. The remote is just as small and has the basic functions to navigate through the software.
Now back to storing music digitally... People have opinions about doing this and for me, it listening to endless music and that is just fine for me. No more searching for a CD that I want to listen to, because it is all stored on my external hard drive. I also have a back up copy stored on another hard drive. THe WD will display all of the album art, shuffle the music follow set playlists etc. I have not done much with the video yet, but that is my next adventure.
I can say that I do have an 5-disc CD changer up for sale as that is no longer in my home theater. Any takers?

A couple of notes about digital music. Make sure each song has the album art attached. If you download your music for Itunes or Amazon it will, but ripped music from CD's will not. I found out that it stores it in the album folder but it was not attached to each song. Maybe it was my set up with Windows Media Player, but I had to attach all of the album art to my music. It took a while but it is done. Also, when you want to remove the external drive always use the eject button on the WD remote.

As I previously mentioned, WD recently came out with a new firmware revision and I expect more in the future. WD-HD forums and blogs are starting to form and the users are talking about future improvements. If you are in the market for a cheap HPTC, this will do the basics and it will not set you back that much.

The only thing that I would like changed so far is it's name. WD-HD is a little weak!

Cheers!


"Love this product", I used to download movies and burn them unto a DVD disc and watch it on my player. With this product I download my movies onto my external hard drive and plug it into the WD Media Player and just enjoy the movies I like.

I wish I knew about this before I bought all those darn blank DVDs.

"Flawed out of the box, great after firmware update", I ordered it and received it a week before the new firmware v1.01.01 was released and had issues with a few 1080p mkv files (artifacts throughout video rendering it unwatchable). However, all tested 720p mkv files played flawlessly.

Another issue with mkv files were that the player would only play external srt files, it had no support for embedded subtitles in mkv files.

After the firmware update, which was very easy and took a few minutes. The artifacting issue on the mkvs I had problems with before are gone. Also, embedded subtitles viewing is now enabled.

With continued support from WD, I think this player is going to be even better with additional playback capabilities. The video quality for mkvs are amazing on this device!

I also purchased a 15 feet usb cable to hook it up to an external hdd that is located next to my pc so I wouldn't have to constantly move the hdd back and forth.

The remote is small and simple, but I don't use it since I can control it with my Logitech Harmony One universal remote. The media player itself is also small and simple, which is great because it saves space.

*Reviewed with: Sony Bravia KDL-40V4150 TV, Sony HT-SS2300 Home Theater System

"Will not play audio files seamlessly", I bought this unit primarily to play my collection of FLAC audio concert files, and was very disappointed to find that it will not segue directly form one track to the next. There is always a two to three second pause between each selection. This renders any recording with music that flows from one track to the next completely unlistenable, like, for example, The Beatles Sgt Pepper and Abbey Road albums, almost any Pink Floyd album, most classical recordings, and almost all live recordings. I contacted WD technical support, and they said the unit was designed to play audio tracks individually, and offered no indication of a future fix. I have downloaded and installed the latest firmware update, and the problem remains. Since the unit can be updated via firmware updates, I hope WD eventually realizes that a media player must be capable of audio segues to be listenable, and comes up with a fix.
The video capabilities are nice.