Hi everyone. Awesome forum BTW.

I've been an AppleTV user for some time and I use it mainly for streaming my music collection (over 400 gb). Renting movies was ok but I prefer to buy then rip and encode but AppleTV is very limited in what it will play for video files and I do not think it wise to accomodate a single format when so many players out there can accomodate many formats. I patch-sticked the ATV to try Boxee/XBMC but the functionality was buggy imo and things quickly began to freeze up so I reverted ATV back to it's true state. No biggie.

I considered a PCH (a-110) - commonly known as the "plays everything including the stuff that has not been invented yet" but I'm reluctant to buy a hobbyist unit where support is questionable and deemed 'clunky'. The price tag is not very attractive either but I might try it out some time anyway - maybe the C-200 when it comes to fruition.

I heard of xtreamer... but have not seen actual proof of the long list of claims it makes... and I'm not sure I'm onboard with their marketing tactics but that's neither here no there.

I quickly dismissed the WD TV because it's not networked (although WD TV-2 will be but God only knows when it'll hit the street). Since I thought it wise to make a backup of my music collect to an external HD and also backups of my DVDs to another HD maybe I'll just plug them in to the WD TV and not even worry about networking. Cool. So I am ripping my DVDs to VIDEO_TS folders and tried them on the WD and they will play but menu interaction is nil. There is also a delay when during a movie it needs to move to the next VOB. Another problem occurred when audio channel went from ENglish to something else without a command from myself. Ok we can get past this. So I am encoding the movies to MKV using MPEG-4 at highest quality and things look GREAT. All you have to do to see thumbnails is update the firmware and drop an image file into the same folder as your video (yeah you need a folder for each movie but that's OK with me). So I have this working well (I think). But then on to the HD with the music... over 4000 albums mutliplied by however many songs... the WD TV becomes useless withthis much data. Navigation delay is around 20 seconds for each button click and it's just not working for me. I really think this is an issue with the number of entries in the lists. I am hoping a couple hundred videos on a HD will be no problem but for a huge music library it's useless.

I am looking forward to WD TV-2. I think my point of the post is don't assume WD TV will accomodate anything you might have on a HD. :)

Cheers!

For your time delayed VOB movie, you can simply paste the vobs together using vobmerge. Solves the issue right away.

The audio glitch you got can be solved by ripping only the audio tracks you want using DVD Shrink to rip the movie into VOB form.

You should try list mode*. I have several thousand files on one of my HD's and it runs fine using the list mode.

*with media library off.

If you still want files in .MKV, but don't want to waste time encoding try this out. It basically takes the .VOB file and puts it in a .MKV container. I have a PCH a-100 and have been using it for a while with only one or two issues when I first started out using it.

This program called MakeMKV has been out for a while and I reripped all my DVD's.

It doesn't do any compression so from DVD - .MKV it takes at the most 30 min.

Best part... its FREE.

http://www.makemkv.com/

WDTV sucks, the WDTV 1 isn't even a complete product with numerous issues left unsolved.

i recommend avoiding WDTV 2, because it is likely that history would repeat itself.

If you still want files in .MKV, but don't want to waste time encoding try this out. It basically takes the .VOB file and puts it in a .MKV container. I have a PCH a-100 and have been using it for a while with only one or two issues when I first started out using it.

This program called MakeMKV has been out for a while and I reripped all my DVD's.

It doesn't do any compression so from DVD - .MKV it takes at the most 30 min.

Best part... its FREE.

http://www.makemkv.com/

this is an unnecessary step

WDTV sucks, the WDTV 1 isn't even a complete product with numerous issues left unsolved.

i recommend avoiding WDTV 2, because it is likely that history would repeat itself.

thank you for your invaluable and construcive addition to the matter...

this is an unnecessary step

Do you want to elaborate on this?

He is is encoding in .MKV.

Do you want to elaborate on this?

He is is encoding in .MKV.

he's encoding his movies into MKV because he didn't want to have a break in between the movie using vob's (I'm assuming). If you merge the vobs you skip both processes (converting the film & putting them into the container as you suggested) and save time.

If he still wants to use .vob ya he can rip it into ONE .VOB file and not worry about this. In DVDshrink you can set it up to rip dvd into one .Vob file.

that would be even better. saves even more time and won't lose the quality. :D

All you have to do to see thumbnails is update the firmware and drop an image file into the same folder as your video (yeah you need a folder for each movie but that's OK with me).

You do not need a folder for each movie. You can place all your movie files, and all your thumbnail files into one single folder, and the WD will display them all correctly, as long as the movie file, and thumbnail file have exactly the same name. Rip them into single .vobs, or encode into mkvs with Handbrake, to save a lot of space with no quality loss.

WDTV sucks, the WDTV 1 isn't even a complete product with numerous issues left unsolved.

i recommend avoiding WDTV 2, because it is likely that history would repeat itself.

Brilliant :rolleyes: