[Macworld]

Post your comments for First Look: Western Digital WD TV here

[rumplestiltskin]

Be cautious; not because I don't trust WD (I do) but because the framerate mentioned in the story is quite specific as opposed to the AppleTV's quite broad range of permissible framerates. The AppleTV will handle training videos at 5fps all the way up to NTSC 30fps. I'll suggest any potential buyers of the WD unit confirm that the unit will play any frame rates other than what is specifically mentioned in the story.

[jamus]

Did I just miss it or will this not play DIVX? It seems any old DVD/BlueRay player these days will play DIVX so could that be why they left it out?

[rumplestiltskin]

The AppleTV, when patched using the aTV Flash patchstick (http://www.atvflash.com), will play anything that plays on your Mac (DivX/XviD included).

[Flavum]

If only it would play VIDEO_TS folders. Sigh...maybe someday someone will get it right.

[Jon Seff]

aTV Flash is an unsanctioned hack and a $50 product to boot.

[ScottWD]

WD TV does support folder_ts along with .iso and .vob.

Scott Rader
Sr. Product Manager
Western Digital

[ScottWD]

WD TV does cover all the mainstream video codecs.

[bbbobbb]

Hi ScottWD,
Will it play a .m2t? If so I will be buying several for my whole family for Christmas...
Thanks,
BB

[ScottWD]

Hi Bob,

Yes, it does support .m2t and .m2ts files. AVCHD is very popular with HD Camcorders so we had to include it :D

-Scott

[bbbobbb]

Thanks ScottWD, going shopping now!
BB

[Matic]

Hi Scott,
Stumbled across this device at Best Buy this weekend. Watched an MKV file this weekend and it played flawlessly. The one question I have is in regards to the video output. I of course had it hooked up via HDMI, but the colors on my Samsung Plasma HPT-4264 looked very red/pink. Like all of the people's faces looked really pink. Reading some comments on Engadget, this might be the issue:
"I bought one and apparently it uses Y Pb/Cb Pr/Cr for it's HDMI output and my Pioneer Plasma turns the picture pink. My PS3 does the same thing until I tell the HDMI to output RGB. As far as I can tell, there is no setting on this WD TV box to change from Y Pb/Cb Pr/Cr to RGB."
Have you experienced this? Can it be corrected? If so, how? By the TV or this nifty little box?
Thanks!

[ScottWD]

Hi Matic,

We did not experience this in our testing labs. I will have to follow up with you on this one.

-Scott

[rumplestiltskin]

While the aTV hack isn't sanctioned by Apple, it makes the AppleTV much more useful...just like third-party software makes Windows and OSX much more useful that what computers that ship with those OS's already come with.