I’m considering buying the WD TV Live unit, to replace a Philips DVP5900 player, and have a few questions. If I were to have several video files in a folder would they play consecutively (or after playing the first file would I be taken back to the main menu). Secondly if I were to pause a video file and turn off the player, would a bookmark be created? In other words would the player automatically start the file from where I left off?
Also is there a built in fan that after an hour or so of playback could cause a significant amount of noise? Is there any video codec this unit would not play (or cause stuttering during playback). Specifically I’m wondering about mp4 playback. And finally is fast forwarding quick. My philips player doesn’t handle fast forwarding very well. Thanks a lot
PS: All my video files are on a western digital elements 500 gb external hard drive.
1> If you press PLAY on the FOLDER, it will play all files consecutively for most file types. DVDs won’t, because there’s no “Exit Point” on a DVD.
2> Yes, but you need to STOP the video and wait a few seconds so the Resume Point can be saved. When you restart, it will ask you if you want to RESUME or RESTART. But, if you do #1, that does NOT work when resuming; it’s only meant for a single file, not a stream of files. When you power it back on, it won’t automatically restart, you have to navigate back to the video and press play.
3> No fan. Cooling is all passive convection / radiation.
4> Yes, there are bunches. MP4 is hit or miss. MP4 is a container, not a codec so-to-speak, so it depends on the contents of the file.
5> That’s subjective. It’s plenty fast for me, and there’s also a ten-minute skip function.
H264 tends to be the codec for my mp4 files. Will the WD TV Live be able to read it properly with no stuttering? Is FLV another codec that can be handled properly? Also while I’m sure its a yes, I might as well ask this anyways. While playing a file off the USB drive can I press a menu button to get back to the USB folder menu? On the Philips player I can’t do this. Also is there a time shift function to remedy video files with out of sync audio?
h.264 shouldn’t pose any issues. But also pay attention to the audio format.
FLV is hit or miss; I don’t have any experience with it.
If you’re playing a video, regardless of where it’s stored, pressing STOP or BACK will return you to the folder listing. You can then RESUME the playback where you left off, or select another video.
No, there’s no time-shift function to sync poorly synced audio and video.
Styleclash, I frequently encode videos to mp4s using H264 with AVC and I have never had any problem playing them. However, I have never been able to get an flv file to play (I usually convert them to mp4s to get them to work). One person here said that he tried about a dozen flv files and only 1 of them played. Someone else said that all of his flvs play OK.
I started a thread about flv files a few week ago:
