Individual Eleven – The World's Cyberbrain

I took a semi-leap of faith, compared to the DVico TViX M-6500A I wasn’t sure how this little box would stack up. The thing is, I don’t need the storage capacity in the TViX since I have a NAS box with all my media, I just need something to interface between my storage device and the TV. Secondly, what swayed my decision was the cost. As much as I want the TViX it is still around £250 to £300, compared to the Western Digital which comes in at £79.99 from Play.com. That is quite a price jump, I have to admit I still yearn for the TViX but considering the functionality/price ratio for the WD you can’t fault it.

The impressive thing that caught my eye is the format support, for video and music. I briefly wrote about this in an earlier blog post; on paper, it should play everything you care to throw at it. And it does with aplomb.

Setup and usage
Quite literally, just plug it all in and off you go. I have it setup so the video goes through the HDMI socket on the TV and with an optical out going to the amplifier. You may ask yourself why I would do that when HDMI supports audio and video, the main reason being the optical out fully utilises my surround sound setup. Otherwise, the sound would output to the TV instead of the surround sound speakers. The interface is clean and easy to navigate, once you plug in your USB hard drive it will briefly scan it for new files. When doing this for the first time, it may take awhile to go through the files but it will only take a minute or two before it is ready to go. It is a very small device, so you can have it placed anywhere within the room, cable length being the only consideration.

I have a NAS device that can be seen as mass storage, so after a bit of wiring I got it all setup how I want it. It would have been much easier if the WD had an Ethernet port or wireless, the next iteration will have Ethernet support from what I’ve read.

Video playback
The important thing for me is MKV support, I have been pining for this facility for years and here it is fully supported without breaking the bank. For testing this and other formats, I grabbed a selection of different videos encoded with different codecs. AVI, DivX, XVid all plays without a hitch and films encoded in H.264 (HD) also worked fine in the MKV format as promised. A very nice feature is that it can play ISO files of DVDs, so if you have reduced your DVD collection to ISO images then this will be a godsend.

I only found one media file it did not like, it was a fansub anime show. The video played fine but there was no sound at all, with a message saying “Japanese 1 (unsupported)”. Upon examination, the audio was in Vorbis 48000Hz stereo in Japanese. I presume Vorbis is not supported at present. All subtitles worked fine, from official movies as well as fansubbed ones which I was happy about. If you are curious, the anime show in question is called Hanasakeru Seishounen subbed by Hell Fansubs.

Music playback
Fairly straight forward here, unless you only have an iTunes collection then there’s no need to worry. MP3, OGG, FLAC, AAC etc will play perfectly well. The WD will display the album art and the next track on the playlist once the current song has finished. I probably won’t be playing much music with this, but it is nice to know that it can do it should I feel the need. OGG and FLAC support is most welcome of course.

Final thoughts
It does what it says on the tin, with the addition of also viewing your photo album it’s a bargain for £80. Updating the firmware is ridiculously easy, download it and copy it onto your USB drive. Plug it into the WD and it will automatically see the new firmware and upgrade to it. I have recently upgraded the firmware and noticed the speed of menu navigation improved slightly. New firmware is released on a regular basis, so it is nice to see that there is continued support for your purchase.

The only downside is that being a simple device, it is limited in terms of expansion and additional features. As mentioned above, networking capability is desirable and perhaps other things such as FTP access, built-in BitTorrent client and so on. But these features and more is bordering upon TViX territory, so you get what you pay for.

In all honesty, I am just happy there is a device that can play all my media files with ease. To think such a diminutive box can support so many different formats is amazing; just getting this to play HD content alone is worth the asking price as the quality is top notch. Perhaps one day I will still get the TViX, but for now this is more than adequate for my media playing needs.

There are some new toys being released and one of them isn’t new at all but I only just discovered it as I was perusing play.com. Since I am feeling lethargic, I shall bundle all these into one post.

Media Players
I posted awhile back about my potential purchase of the TViX HD M-6500A media player. I was very close to purchasing one a week ago, except now I am finding alternatives that include MKV playback (yes amazing I know).

OPPO BDP-83
This is a Blu-ray/DVD player so technically it does not fall under the media player type category as I see it. However, one thing to note is the plethora of media type support this machine brings to the table. I currently own an OPPO DivX DVD player OPDV971H, and I did consider upgrading. In my opinion, OPPO manufacture one of the best if not the best Blu-ray/DVD players on the market. Unfortunately, you cannot buy this very easily; mine was from a specialist supplier and there aren’t that many that stock them in the UK. However, the specifications for the BDP-83 are fully loaded and the firmware is upgradeable. For some reason, the specs on their website neglected to list the file formats it should support, on Amazon it does list them and does have my beloved MKV on there. Reading user feedback from the early adoption program, it looks like a stable release. The only downside is that I would need to burn all my media onto DVD to playback my movie files, not as convenient as streaming them directly from a media center.

Western Digital WD TV HD Media Player
Going from £350 or so to £89.99 is quite a come down. But this little gem looks very simple to use, connect it to your TV and then hook up a hard drive to it where it can stream from. Of course, it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of say the TViX but you can’t argue with the price. Connectivity is also good, with a choice of HDMI, composite and optical out, which for me is very useful if I connected this to the amp/surround sound system. Downside, I am a fussy soul and this does not have Ethernet connectivity and considering all my media is on a NAS this is going to be troublesome. Unless I wanted to copy the movie files onto a USB drive and then connect it, a bit counter-intuitive.

Touchscreen Mobile Phones
There’s two here I am interested in, and in my eyes they are direct competitors against each other all vying for your hard earned cash.

HTC Hero
An Android phone and a step up from the G1, this looks very nice indeed. Buttons wise, it uses the “nipple” trackball that is reminiscent of Blackberrys and has a 5MP camera with all the usual music playback function, microSD card slot, HSDPA connectivity etc. I have seen some YouTube videos of this in action and it looks very, very slick. The interface is what will sell this phone, and this will pit directly against the iPhone 3GS. If it is as good as they say it is, it may even tear me away from my Touch HD. However, I have a gripe! That is the bottom of the phone is curved, so the unit is not completely flat. Negligible aesthetically I know, but I can just see me getting frustrated with it when it is in my pocket. I will look forward to it’s official release so I can get my hands on it. P.S: The Hero monicker needs to be changed to something else I think.

iPhone 3GS
3rd time lucky I suppose, this is what it should have been. I still find it humourous that they list Cut, Copy & Paste as a key feature for this. At least it has this fundamental feature now, to the happiness of many iPhone users I’m sure. I am wondering if they could have put a 5MP camera on there and a microSD card slot. Also new is the digital compass but unless I am going to go rambling somewhere, I am more likely to use the Google Maps/GPS combo like I do on the Touch HD… which by the way was extremely handy when I was in Chicago and I got slightly lost along Michigan Avenue. Apple didn’t re-invent the wheel, but they shouldn’t need to. Users will be happy about the 2x increase in speed, but they have to buy another iteration. Apple must feel their user base have a lot of money to burn on their products; such is the price of progress.

In case you have not been following my Twitter feed, I have been frantically putting my life in order before I left for my holiday to Chicago. Apart from the rapid drop from 34000 to something-quite-low feet within a matter of seconds during descent, I landed safely yesterday afternoon. I am looking forward to the epic exploration into the unknown, in this wonderful city.

I had not slept since Thursday; I had too many butterflies in my stomach to get much sleep on Friday. I did just get some prime snooze time after a very long day, but still I will need to acclimatise myself to the current time zone of minus 6 hours GMT.

Being a heavy technology user, I have brought along some of my trusty gadgets that has served me well on past trips. So what exactly do I pack in my suitcase?

Footnote: You may notice a lot of Sony products, no I am not a Sony fangirl they just happen to produce products I wanted at the time.