This is my first hands on of the Western Digital WD TV Mini Mediaplayer. If you have missed the unboxing, you can find it here. Basically, the unit itself is fuss free. The inputs are simple and the outlook of this unit is clean (except for the finger prints on the glossy part 🙂 ).
For this review, I am using a 40-inch Sony Bravia X series Full HD LCD TV.
Set Up
This is a very easy to set up unit. No skills needed. Plug in the power, connect the video out (Composite) cable to any free port on the TV set and that is it.
Power On
I messed up a bit on the power on. It shows me a screen to select to use the Composite or Component (or in layman term, the 3 RED, WHITE, YELLOW cable or the GREEN, BLUE, RED cable).
As a reviewer, I tried using the remote control to select up/down and I chose the wrong one. The screen starts to flicker and there is no way to see what is showing.
Finally, I did the good old reset (there is a reset button behind) and I am back in choosing the cables again.
In my opinion, since the default is the Composite Cable, use press OK and move on. It is meant to be THAT simple.
The User Interface (UI)
It is very neat. 5 icons to show the Movies, Music, Pictures, Files and Settings. If there is no media plug in, it will prompt you to input one. Once plug in, you can access the icons.
Above, you can see a thumb drive being inserted into the USB port. I am using a 2GB thumbdrive.
I did a short video on walking through the various menu.
Settings
The Firmware that Western Digital is using is Version 1.00.37
And the settings pages are shown below. There are quite a list of settings that you can set.
First Impression
For a non-techie user, this unit is simple to use. It is almost plug and play. You don’t need to adjust anything. The remote is easy to use. And the size is very handy. It uses 2 AAA batteries and they are provided.
The quality is good, a judgment from using the sampling files. I will be doing other file test. There is no buffer issue at all (means that it does not freeze screen unexpectedly).
Like
- Small and compact
- Easy to use
- Able to play background music while playing pictures slideshow.
Dislike
- Only one USB port
- No hardware button means you have to rely on the remote control for any function.
- Using a single port video out cable means that you must bring cable along to anywhere if you want to use the player. You cannot share with current DVD player which has a 3 input , 3 output configuration.
- Only plays up to 1080i max HD files. higher resolution files is limited.
I will need to play more files to actually review it properly. Will update in the next post.
[ad#boxlist]