![]() ![]() Disappointing since our our primary media center includes mostly SONY components. Another advantage of using a computer media center is that you can take advantage of a wireless network to avoid cable clutter and be able to run applications and games.Ĭonclusion - I'm moving this player to the bedroom flat screen and using the WD TV HD on our main media center. The other option is getting a network player like WD TV HD Live, Asus O'Play, or Roku. ***(5.) Netflix/Pandora streaming content - obviously this unit is not network-ready, but I thought it would be worth mentioning that using either a small-form Mac or PC with proper specs and HDMI output that you can run free apps like Boxee of just use the Windows Media Center (Windows 7 version is very stable and quite nice) to get internet HD streaming content in a nice packaged interface which is far better than all of the specialized media players. The SONY player is unable to read H.264 formatted video files while the WD TV HD has no problem. I'm not a video tech expert, but suffice to say that > 95% of my video files were recognized and played perfectly on the WD TV HD player, while only ~ 50% of these files would play on the SONY media player and you frequently get an error or unrecognized file message. I used a 1 TB WD Prestige external drive and loaded a library of various formats including DVD iso's, DIVX, avi, mov, mp4, H.264, etc. Video formats - this is where the unit really falls short. My Mac Mini setup with Boxee is the nicest by far using wireless streaming from a HP Home MediaSmart server, but it's more complicated to setup and obviously much more expensive.Ĥ. Truthfully, the SONY menu system reminds me of an old VCR or digital camera menu. Again, the WD TV HD stands out with a superior menu system that also includes generating thumbnail pictures. It would have been nicer if they had designed a faster scrolling intuitive menu like on the PSP rather than the current large font menus that aren't even in HD resolution and have no ability to sort your files. The menus are all in a bland VCR-menu font and if you have a folder with a lot of files, it only shows a few at a time and the scrolling is very slow. ![]() Ugly menu interface - I was really disappointed that the software team for this unit did not make a more user-friendly and visually appealing menu. You can attach any USB device up to both ports and access both at the same time.ģ. This is where the WD TV HD wins out since it has 2 USB ports (one in the back and one on the side which hides your connections). USB design - lousy, there's only one USB port and it's located on the front which looks terrible on my media center by having a cord or thumbdrive sticking straight out. Looks - not bad (typical SONY styling), small footprint, muted blue LED which isn't too bright which is a common problem with a lot of new gadgets, a bit flimsy and light such that when you hook up either an HDMI or component cable the unit will lift off the surface because of cord bend (I had to make sure the cables were not twisted and even had to add a weight on top of the media player to keep it stable)Ģ. For comparison, I have the WD TV HD Media on one HDTV, Mac Mini (OS X 10.6) setup on another running Boxee, and a quad-core PC running Windows 7 Windows Media Center and Boxee (PC) for comparison. I received my unit last night (paid $59) and hooked it up to our main media center and attached an external 1 TB drive containing a large library of movies and video clips to test it out. Too bad, since I've always been a SONY fan. ( More customer reviews)This falls short of expectations for several reasons. ![]()
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