Nov
2
Review After 30 minutes of use.
In the box.
Composite Video cable (Red, yellow, White) approx 6.5 ft
Power Cord approx. 6 ft.
2 rubber feet sticker (so it don’t slide)
CD with some kind of software on it, I’ll never use it so that’s on you to figure out.
A small cradle for a small hard drive I presume, I only use Segate Freeagent Drives and they come with their own stand.
Not in the box:
External Hard Drives – Really for $99 what do you expect : )
HDMI cable
Whatever you do never buy your cables from a big box corporation they will rip you off.
Try http://monoprice.com
Box Says the following Formats will play:
Video:
MPEG 1/2/4, WMV9, AVI(MPEG4, Xvid, AVC), H.264, MKV, MOV(MPEG4, H.264)
Photo:
JPEG, GIF, TIFF, BMP, PNG
Audio:
MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV/PCM/LPCM, AAC, FLAC, AC3 (Using Digital Decoding), AIF/AIFF, MKA
Playlist:
PLS, M3U, WPL
Subtitle:
SRT (UTF-8)
Simple Enough Interface I Suggest switching the view to “List” instead of “icons”. You can change by Going to System Settings …..
Holding the button down on the remote scrolls fast enough and you can scroll backwards but with 1.5TB drives capable of holding over 6000 titles it would be nice getting to some titles faster or, showing more titles on the screen it currently shows about 7 titles in list view, But no biggie.
Most of my files are .avi or DivX and so far it plays all of them. Plays all my .mp3s located in folders along with Audio books. Have not tried the photo options and don’t plan on it. I did have to select folder view in Music for them to come up in order otherwise when i selected all music, they kind of just had a random order to them, but I did have some audio books in folders, mixed with just mp3s out side of folders again this is just a few minutes in so I’ll give it some more time.
With 2 750GB hard drives plugged in it had problems just acted funny, it wouldn’t let me shut one of them down with the remote, and with the segates they don’t actually have a button and it wouldn’t power down then either had to unplug to get it to shut off, but that has happened a few time via PC also. When powering off I could hear the drive still running so there are some issues there.
I see some other people say it plays .iso and Video_TS along with other formats so I will take their word for it I stick with DivX. Check back later.
Remote Control:
The remote is pretty (OK very small), I’m average size, it does have a nice weight to it. It is pretty easy to use and understand. But I feel bad for the fat finger types. And it is a fingerprint magnet along with the device.
I don’t see anyway to control this if the remote gets lost or broken, I do suggest getting an extra remote and set of batteries just in case. I don’t know if It can be recognized by programmable remotes so if you do please let me know.
Other then that I took some pics and screen shots for those interested. It lacked any real instruction book, just basically a picture chart, but for the most part its not that complicated of a device.
For $99 It does what I want it to do which was plug in an external hard drive and play DivX files. it is extremly small has almost no footprin (about 2 casette tapes/deck of cards). I always thought the popcorn hour was a tad expensive for what you get, the sling catcher is way to expensive for what you get. The Xbox 360 & PS3 both require FAT32 formatting and I always use NTFS and this units recognizes NTFS. I did get some error messages saying drive could not agregate and when I plugged into the 2nd USB drive it stated no drive recognized, but I only plan on having 1 drive plugged in at a time anyway, Only had a few minutes to play with it so check back later for a more detailed review. I always disconnect and unplug my external hard drives when not in use. So after you power off unit I would power off your drive and also unplug it.
I do have some .iso, video_ts, ogg, and other formats I will play around with over the next few days and post the updates here.
Errors
It seems to show cannot aggregate data, but drive still shows up and plays everything fine. Maybe something with the drive size. Fixed Make sure you have about at least 4GB Free per drive, no more errors, when I select all video it shows alphabetical list of all video on both drives. Hooray
Equipment Used For Review.
For those that want to know. 2 – Seagate Freeagent 750GB External Hard Drives Are what I have and used for this review. Both formatted NTFS. All titles are in the root directory of drive no folders. The TV is a Samsung LCD LNT3732H which is 37″ Diagonally (Screen is 32″ horizontal, 18″ vertical). the Video Quality was fine (DVD Quality), most of the .avis were 700-1400mb and converted with AutoGK with original sound.
How I would change.
Of course I would say price. The Xbox/XBMC came out almost 8 years ago, I really just want a device like the Sansatv but with external hard drive capabilities can’t someone just integrate the sansaTV into an external harddrive? Come On segate/Sansa merge companies just for me ; ), or integrate this into a drobo. I don’t want to have to use the PC at all like most of the public and that’s where this device stands out, a young kid can use it and so can grandma and grandpa, you can throw it in the trunk and not really have to worry about it if you have to replace because its just $99. The only thing that would make it easier is if when plugged in a list of the drives contents just showed on the screen, no GUI, just scroll threw click on file or the folder then file and it plays.
I know DivX branded TVs are coming (actually here)but those will start at over $1500. I can’t see a device with just composite and usb being that expensive to produce. I mean really just integrate this into a TV add $100 to the price. I would love a $49.99 device that does that. I’m thinking the HDMI connectivity and HD playback is what bumps this up which actually is a pretty nice feature so I won’t complain about the $99 it will only come down. Lets just hope they don’t go crazy and add a whole bunch of stuff to up the price, like the folks at Asus did and messed up the eee.
Most other devices that can do this are $200 and more. I keep up with forums and discussions about these devices and they all have their shortcomings and drawbacks, either they are way to expensive for what you get, you have to be put on a waiting list, tech support is rarely available, and their GUI (Graphical User Interface / the picture you see on the screen that shows you the menu and icons you click on) are less to be desired. Nothing comes close to XBMC but this plays more formats, is smaller/more portable, does not require any geekiness to figure out, and a whole lot less expensive.
Thanks for taking the time to read. I recommend as a buy mainly because of the price, size, and portability. Might be time to start getting some of my favorite movies in HD formats.
Update
Been playing for over 24 hours and No major problems. Just minor ones still not able to see 2 hard drives when plugged in, sees most of it but gets slow/ more errors. Fixed Make sure you have about at least 4GB Free per drive, no more errors, when I select all video it shows alphabetical list of all video on both drives. HoorayI just keep one in you can’t watch both at once anyway. menu is a little slow to catch up, but I’m fast on my buttons so for most they probably won’t notice. Wouldn’t pay more then $99 for this device.
Update 2
After being on all night it still shows it recognizes all 3000+ titles but after the 37th file when you click to play it, it says not able to recognize this file after all of them (37-3000+). If I reboot and plug everything back it it plays the last file and others after the 37th, it could just be the hard drive going into sleep mode since I fell asleep on it. Shows Storage cannot aggregate but still recognizes all files.Fixed Make sure you have about at least 4GB Free per drive, no more errors, when I select all video it shows alphabetical list of all video on both drives. Hooray
Update 3 After a few days use
Keep getting This error Screen, says storage cannot aggregate screen, but usb drive still shows up, I assume this is because it has a file limit or hard drive size issue. But all the files show up and they all play. Just found out I need to clear that amount of space for the device to cache what it needs to get rid of these errors, I will clear about 4GB and see if error goes away. As you can see my drives stay full : )Fixed Make sure you have about at least 4GB Free per drive, no more errors, when I select all video it shows alphabetical list of all video on both drives. Hooray
Music plays all the files in a folder one after the other but for some reason the video does not, I dont have video files in a folder they are all in the root of the drive, I select repeat all and repeat once and they still don’t play one after the other after a .avi file plays and it ends it goes back to the screen where I can select titles. I heard if you hit the play button instead of enter they will repeat but I’ve yet to have any luck with that, just music repeats. They need to take care of that titles just need to play one after the other regardless of what button you press.
Update 4 After a few weeks use 11/21/08
Played my first Blu Ray 1080P title (.mkv) Batman Dark Knight 11GB of HD goodness no hiccups, so no need for that Blu Ray Player any more, Only file it wouldn’t play is a .wmv but I only have a few of those I’m mostly a Divx(.avi) fan and now .mkv/.h264 : ). No More Discs.
The main issues I would say is the fast forward need to have a skip ahead a few minutes function or just be a little more seamless like XBMC. 16X fast forward is no where near that and if you want to go to the middle or end point in a movie it takes forever. Like mentioned above I would also like it to skip next page or have alphabetical links in list view scrolling thru a lot of titles can also take some time. Other than that at $99 and less its a definite buy.
Don’t see any screws to take a part, on the sides it looks like it has some metal clips you push to pull unit apart, but unless someone pays me $108 I’m not going to void my warranty just yet. Someone took it apart they have watermarks all over their pix but you get the idea here are the insides, decoder chip inside is a Sigma SMP8635LF
So some minor bugs. We’ll see how long they take for a firmware update and bug fixes to really see if western digital gets behind this product.
Official Site
Don’t See A Support forum for discussion or firmware announcements yet.
if they release updates and firmware it will be Here
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=1001&lang=en
New Firmware Released
Latest Firmware Update – version 1.01.02 (12/2008)
Easy process to update, just drag and drop files on a usb thumb drive, insert goto settings it will reboot a few times took less then 5 minutes. I like the fact they added a 10 minute skip among other things, while it is fast forwarding hit the next or prev button and it will skip 10 minutes forward or back. The few files it did not play before it now plays everything. This box is a definite buy for $100 or less.