Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 30
 Bring your Grandparents into the digital media age! November 27, 2009
Daniel James
107 out of 109 found this review helpful
Hello, my Grandparents have an extensive collection of DVD's, dwindling space on the shelves and an old crt television set. Not exactly my idea of a Home Cinema set up. So when I saw this little gadget on Amazon I thought I'd take the plunge and test it out. Connecting the little Media Centre to your TV is as easy as connecting a dvd or video player, just plug it into your AV sockets or scart adapter and turn it on. I had already backed up a tonne of DVD's to a 1.5tb Samsung Story External Harddrive, so I just plugged that into the USB port and 'bingo' it appears as a drive on the Media Centre. Now I set this up for my Gandparents, who are in their early 70's and gave them a brief tour of the remote, and how to find a film and how to play, pause and stop. They were away within an hour or two, of painless experimenting, with remarkable ease.
Now, this media centre is great for older TV's as it is only 1080i on a high def set and there is NO HDMI port, but it is so very cheap and easy to use, which is great.
If like me you want to change the way your parents or grandparents watch TV then this is a great introduction. Be aware though, there is only 1 USB port for your media library and you will need a POWERED USB HUB to connect another drive when it gets full. As far as file support goes it will play anything unless it is an MKV or the audio is DTS, (it will only do AC3 at the moment). Picture quality was as good quaity as the rip, but a good rip on a low def crt TV was good DVD quality. The remote is very responsive and very small, so if you are a bit quick with it you can hit buttons too many times, just slow down a bit and you are fine. The media centre itself is tiny, smaller than 2 cd cases on top of each other, small!
So, in my opinion, this media centre is a great entry point, it is cheap, easy to use, small and versatile. This is not for people who are already clued into media centres and the benefits of divx/xvid/mkv - but then you already knew that. Oh! one last thing, there is support for subtitle files and for audio stream switching too. Thanks for reading.
Western Digital TV HD 1080i Mini Media Player January 6, 2010
Luzju Cardona (UK)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
Absolutely Brilliant. I did not see the point of spending an extra £20 to get the 1080P since all the AVI's I download , the majority are rips and will be at a lower compression than the 1080I let alone the 1080P. This is more than enough to cover your current AVI downloading addiction.
WD TV HD 1080i mini media player February 2, 2010
D. J. Weston (UK)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Really good device. Awesome as portable and easy to use. Good for holidays or for travelling. Not quite as good as quality as other products on the market or the larger WD media players, but this relates to the great price and portability.
If you are using it in just one location you may want to pay a bit extra for the higher quality, but for travel, go with this one. I will always carry this with me for photos, movies and music, as I travel alot. Nice to be able to choose which portable hard drive to plug into.
It's better than you think. January 8, 2010
PhilAI (Berkshire, UK)
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
The key with this device is knowing its limitations. I required a device to play from a USB device AVI files - it does just this!
If you want HD or surround sound, this is not for you.
If you want to stream files, this is not for you.
If you want to simply plug in a USB device and play any number of AVIs, MP3s or JPGs on your TV, this is ideal. It's compact, fast and makes watching downloaded TV series so easy to do!
I make my life easier by using a free backup application to synchronise the files from my PC onto a 120GB USB hard drive. I also wrote an application that allows to mark files are watched so that the backup application does NOT copy previously seen files across (useful for TV series).
Super simple video and photo player April 24, 2010
Mr. Paschal Wilson
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Plug the little WD into your TV. Plug in a usb drive/stick etc., on which your movies/photos are saved. Browse the folders and view. I've used with a 500gb usb hard drive and 16gb usb stick to view mpeg videos and jpeg photos with no problems. It couldn't be simpler, and it's cheap.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 30
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