Heading should be WD and I but WD and Me sounds better 
I bought a HD TV Mini, based on reading the appendix in the manual that I downloaded online stating that it played MKV with AC3 - so I set about encoding movies I had to support the max res of 720x576 and with AC3 dolby sound, then I had some doubts because the specifications page online didn’t mention MKV and AC3 so I contacted WD support only to be told that it can play MKV and AC3 but it isn’t supported… why even mention it in the appendix if it isn’t supported? Anyway…
This was a present for my Step Dad so I thought to save myself any hassles I’ll just get the standard WD TV so off I went back to Harvey Norman and told them I’d like to swap the mini for the bigger model which thankfully they were quite happy to do for a change, probably because it wasn’t opened and I was going to give them more money.
So I drove home wrapped the WD TV up ready for Xmas day.
Xmas day comes around the WD TV gets unwrapped, Step Dad is happy because he now has a "black box’ like my Mum has to play movies and TV shows on (Mum just has some generic media player)
We set it up, I connect a USB drive I had included in his gifts and tried to play some MKV movies only to find no sound even though it was connected to a Creative Inspire 5600 Digital system which can play DTS and Dolby, I proceed into the settings choose Digital as the WD TV was connected via optical and try again still no sound, so I load up an AVI with AC3 and still no sound, I go back into the settings and change to stereo and try again this time sound plays and through the optical - ok yay I am getting somewhere. I try a few more files found a few MKV’s it would play and decide to check the files inside the MKV with media info, I found the files that would not play at all had DTS the others had AC3, but the ones with AC3 wouldn’t play through the optical unless the settings in the unit were set to stereo, I thought this strange since the manual online stated it played Dolby and DTS via pass through which I was doing.
I decide to check the CD that came with the item and found the manual on the CD mentions no DTS, so recheck the manual online again and it does, I do further searching and find WD has a gen 2, and has a generic WD TV web page which has the manual for the gen 2 not the gen 1, http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=734 I’m pretty sure you could claim this is false advertising as all the shops I visited only had the gen 1 and since we live in an electronic age most people would read about a product online and then go buy one, WD needs to have a dedicated page for only the Gen 1, that or recall the Gen 1 units in shops if they are going to have the Gen 2 manual online as the manual for a WD TV without specifying whether it is Gen 1 or Gen 2.
People would read it supports DTS online only to discover the Gen 1 they bought not knowing it was Gen 1 didn’t support DTS like I did.
I decide to encode all the DTS movies I have to AC3 with PopCorn MKV AudioConverter even though 5.1 didn’t work at least I thought he could watch things with the settings set to stereo in the options and all the TV shows were Xvid with Mp3 which were fine.
I end up deciding that I could give Mum the Gen 1 as she only connects her media player through a TV so I’ll go hunting for a Gen 2, Harvey Norman, **bleep** Smith, some generic electronics store, The Good Guys, JB’s and Domayne all only had the Gen 1… the last store I went to JB’s I decide to ask if they have any Gen 2 out the back then had to explain what I meant based on the look I got. I tell him it is similar in what it can play to the Live version but doesn’t have the Internet features which I wasn’t interested in as the folks only have dial up still… He asks me why don’t you buy the Live version anyway, I tell him I got the standard version for $169 at Harvey’s and don’t want to pay $199 for it to which he states I can do it for $169, I’m like oh oh and oh, ok sold - So tomorrow is the big test, I’ll try the Live with an MKV with DTS and with the settings set for Digital.
Fingers crossed!, I’ve seen the posts about bad firmware etc, at least this unit wont be connected to the internet for that to happen…
Movie 1 MKV - H264 AVC, AC3 5.1
Sound and Video - Stereo setting
No sound but video - Digital setting
Movie 2 MKV - H264 AVC, DTS 5.1
No Sound but Video - Stereo setting
No sound but Video - Digital setting
Movie 3 - MP4 - H264 AVC, AAC 2 channel
Sound and Video - Stereo setting
Sound and Video - Digital setting
**Update**
Tried the Live, I now can play the DTS files above but like the Gen 1 I have it still does not play sound if I choose the Digital setting for Audio in the options…
