Customer Reviews:
 User interface could be more friendly August 28, 2010
Mambero
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This unit does well on the essential, i.e. it plays movie files well (AVIs, etc.), but has a few annoying quirks or just downright bad design.
The on-screen interface (in a "cross" formation) is a bit gimmicky, and could be simpler and more user-friendly. For example, after watching a movie file there's no easy simple way to immediately delete it. You have to go though a tedious series of steps to navigate to the File Management part of the system, and delete it there, which is annoying.
I find that on startup there's only maybe a 50/50 chance it recognises a USB drive is attached, and I end up having to shutdown, unplug the drive, plug it in again and restart (and cross my fingers).
When a movie is paused, you can't fast forward or rewind! You first have to un-pause it, then fast forward/rewind.
The unit is a lot smaller than you might imagine from the photos, and the remote control is similarly tiny. Also, the on-screen text is on the small side. Those with poor eyesight, or a small TV, may struggle to read it.
 Good, but don't buy for Youtube music vids August 28, 2010
I. J. Shaw (Sudbury, Suffolk United Kingdom)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I won't add to what others have written on the general setup and function of this device. As others have already said I found it easy to set up and use.
HOWEVER: I specifically bought this as an MTV-Replacement. I was really looking forward to being able to stream my favourite music vids from Youtube onto my tv. I set it up, went straight to Youtube, typed in "Lady Gaga" as the first search and was really pleased to see all her recent hits at the top of the search list.
But it won't play any of them. Not the fault of the device: Every official video that I selected returned an error message saying something like "Can't play because the owner of this material has restricted it from being streamed to TVs" (or something similar).
So I'm going to keep it but I probably won't use it much because all the content that I really want to watch on Youtube has been specifically withheld from devices like this.
Again, I should stress, not the fault of this little device, Western Digital or anyone else. Just the way Youtube works.
Quiet, discrete, powerful, easy to setup. August 25, 2010
Mark Aitken
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I purchased this media player to allow me to watch movies which were stored on my PC in my living room television.
Opening the player from the box, it is well packaged and contains just enough detail to get you started.
I setup the player using the wired network connection. As the router I used was already on the Internet, accessing media on YouTube was immediate and very simple.
My aim was to have the media player access my PC across my home network and stream movies from there.
I spent a good few hours trying to get my PC media to be visible to the media player, not the fault of the player but entirely down to how my home network is setup (two routers, and uses the home electrical cables to bridge two networks).
Once past this, accessing the home PC media is very convenient.
I find pictures quality to be easily good enough for viewing. My media is mostly made up of 700Mb size AVI or DivX files. These take a few seconds to start playing, but once started playback is smooth and very watchable.
I find the music player and picture viewing both very handy, less of a feature that I needed but a nice benefit.
The player interface is very simple to use, works sort of similar to the PlayStation 3 or PSP's menu system (the crossbar system).
There are only a handful of options to play with, but in my case this is the no-fuss approach I wanted.
For the future, I may purchase an external hard drive and put movies on that and plug it into one of the media players two usb ports. But at the moment, streaming across the network works fine for me.
It's a small box, very discrete and easy to hide away. The remote works fine, basic but does the job it needs to. The device has no fan so runs silent.
I am pleased to note that the player supports other media types I don't yet use. Good to have options for the future.
I do suggest that if you purchase it and have problems access your PC across the network, spend time on their support forums reading about solutions. Networks can be complex and if not properly setup may make you doubt the ability of this fine little player.
Lastly, the cheaper WD media players alternatives were considered before I purchased this. I was swayed by not needing to buy a hard drive or USB key for the player, and having the convenience of playing anything I stored on my PC.
I can also see myself using this little box as a NAS to allow other machines on the home network to access centralised files. I will use this feature to have a central backup of my machines on my home network without needing to purchase another PC to become a central server.
Well worth the money spent.
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