Media Player and MKV queries

[VSG12777]

thanks... We know it will not play hd audio, if dd/dts is supported, its fine. You mentioned that it does only stereo, so we were shocked.

Santy

The WD Gen1, Gen2, Live and Live Plus all pass through the DD 5.1 and DTS 5.1 signals through HDMI as well as optical out to your receiver. I have a friend with the WDTV Gen 1 who is getting nice surround sound through the HDMI from the WDTV connected to his Denon 1610 receiver.

So the user NetFreak was wrong. WDTV media player of course supports 5.1 sound through HDMI and optical out. As for me, since I don't have an AV receiver with HDMI, I have connected the WDTV's HDMI out to my LG 50 inch plasma and the optical out from the media player to the Yamaha receiver's optical in port. No problems with sound whatsoever. Superb DD and DTS 5.1 sound.

My query is unrelated to sound on WDs ...

On my WD player, I noticed that some MKV files play fine, while some of them does not play when selected .. i.e the time bar shows as 00:00:00/00:00:00.
After the WD fails to play a file, it does not play any other file unless I do a factory reset. :sad:

Anybody has a similar experience? If so, is there a way out?

Akb:

I face this kind of a problem sometimes with my WDTV Gen 1 when I try to play a WMV file. Most of my MKVs play without any problem. I have some HD WMV files with MP3 audio and these it will not play sometimes. I will get a blank screen and when I go back to the home menu and try to play any other file, it does the same thing. This is probably a firmware issue. Could be sorted out in the next firmware upgrade. Let us see. Otherwise so far it has been a trouble free device supporting most formats.

---Venkat

 

[Akbglr]

Can I post a link from the WDC community? Asking since it is external.. Got a reply for the problem...

 

[Santy]

Akbglr.. pls share the info...


Meanwhile a serious Q about playing those ripped videos:
What will be the video bit rate or the size of the mkv file below which we can start to see the quality loss (assuming audio is HD)? Those rips of file size 10-12 gb are less than 25% of actual size of BD, so I was wondering if media player can really match up with a blu ray player in terms of PQ?

 

[VSG12777]

Santy

I have small sized 720p DTS rips with a video bitrate of around 2000-2500 Kbps and still, the quality on my 50 inch plasma is superb. Maybe video bitrates below 2000 Kbps may show up badly on screen. Not sure about the same though, as I do not have blu ray rips with such low video bitrates. But by and large, I can tell you that the H.264/x264 codec is very tolerant in terms of compression, unlike the MPEG-2 used for DVDs. This means in effect, that even with very high compression (ie low video bitrates), x264/H.264 MKVs will still look very very good. In DVDs, even if there is 20-30% compression, we can see compression artefacts (pixelation) on screen, especially in fast motion scenes.

The above is solely based on my personal experience with MKV blu ray rips and DVDs and DVD rips in Xvid/Divx formats.

---Venkat

 

[gadgetcrazy]

I would agree with the above assessment. I have rips varying in Size from 2-6gb. Most of them are 720p and the bit rates around 3000. The quality is amazing to say the least. I too do not have a standard like blu ray to compare to.

 

[WHATSINANAME]

Apart from video bitrates and size, it depends on who the ripper is. Some of the really good rippers give the kind of video quality in 1.5GB that others cannot provide even in 5GB rips of the same movie.

If you are doing the ripping yourself (from purchased BD's) it'll take quite a bit of trail and error before you get a good size to quality ratio.

 

[gadgetcrazy]

that is true as well. I learnt that while ripping DVDs

 

[Santy]

Thanks for the input guys. I finally placed an order for WD TV live from ebay. Click here for an interesting story about the purchase.

Rs. 12525 is the total cost spent on HD player, 500GB HDD, Optical and HDMI cable. I think its a good deal...

All combined, its quite expensive than a Blu ray player, but I think BDp is just not for me, not now.

Cant wait to experience HD. :yahoo:

 

[Akbglr]

Link to the question I posted on WDC community..

'Some' MKV files not playing on WD HD player - Western Digital Community

 

[Santy]

1. I had downloaded a few 1080p video samples (WMV HD) from microsoft website.
When I try to play it in WD TV, no audio is heard. Codec is WMA PRO audio. Googling helped me to find a software to convert them into MKV format with AC3 audio (SIPPER.NL). This time, there is either no video or the playback is stuck after few seconds.

2. When I change the color mode to 12 bit, the video starts to flicker, going off for a couple of seconds. The frequency increases with time. When I switch back to 8 Bit everything is ok.

3. When I play FLAC files, the audio is not clear. Some cracking noise is heard even in low volume. It sounds like the speakers are torn off. What happens when very low frequency bass is played on a speaker which cannot handle it - same disturbance is heard.

Has anybody experienced same problems- any solutions?

 

[WHATSINANAME]

First of all, have you updated to the latest firmware?

Secondly, use mkvmerge to convert your files. That way, if you have to convert either audio or video to a compatible format, you don't need to convert both.

 

[Santy]

The last update seen in WD site is dated 30th March 2010. So I guess, since the product is newly purchased, it should be having updated firmware? Anyway I will try it today.

Meanwhile, the software sipper also does not convert video just changes the audio stream. Will try mkvmerge too for this task.

 

[Anil Sehrawat]

I m not able to play Flac files(downloaded from You tube) in my WDTV Gen-2
anybody got any idea why..

 

[hemantwaghe]

I m not able to play Flac files(downloaded from You tube) in my WDTV Gen-2
anybody got any idea why..

Flac from you tube?
are you sure
IT MUST BE FLV...

 

[Anil Sehrawat]

Flac from you tube?
are you sure
IT MUST BE FLV...

oppsssssssss sorry mate you are right its FLV not Flac

 

[hemantwaghe]

Yes FLV and maybe RMVB is not playble. Use any converter software

 

[Anil Sehrawat]

Ok thanks mate

 

[Santy]

The problem #2 got worse now. Its probably not about color depth setting.... The video/audio blacks out briefly once in 1 to 5 min (but not always). Its very annoying. Sometimes the pause is long enough to see "Searching for HDMI signal" message on my Samsung LCD. Cannot understand the pattern.

This problem was noticed earlier with my Onida DVD player (connected to component in). When the player gets hot, the video output will be disturbed. The hotter is gets, more frequent the blackout was observed. I had to open its covers to keep it cool. I thought this is the same issue with WD TV but sadly the TV flickers even when WDTV is cool. I have updated the latest firmware and it does not solve the problem. The connections are tight. :sad:

 

[Santy]

oppsssssssss sorry mate you are right its FLV not Flac

Anil.. there's a useful post in WDTV forum.


The guy over there confidently says that you can play Youtube videos downloaded after clicking "HQ". It seems FLV with mp4 codec works but not with other formats.

 

[Santy]

Problem #2.. screen blackout.. the culprit is my Samsung LCD TV. Looks like there are many people out there with similar problem. There was a solution suggested in a forum, to enter the TV in service menu and turn off hotplug (may be plug and play). I did that and it appears to be sorted out though but did not check it for long duration. I was otherwise going to become mad with this problem!