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WDTV Media Player (Hacking) for Signage & Installation
  • alcomposeralcomposer
    Just thought that P-V users should be aware of a (quite old project) WDLXTV.
    http://wdlxtv.com/

    WDTV's are quite inexpensive now- don't get the new ones (Gen3) as they are not hacked yet.

    Great for Art Installations (using one now) and Digital Signage, there are hacks for playback of 66mb/s material over HDMI!
    (and the best thing is you switch it on and it 'simply works' for less than $100 USD!

    My main motivation for posting this is that I almost swore not to buy one... thinking a MacMini or custom mini PC would be much better- but now I think completely opposite! If this works - and is cheap - just DO it... (anyway- I would rather use a PC for more productive stuff than looping video the whole day!)
    lr_43-WDTV_1.jpg
    510 x 370 - 84K
  • 10 Replies sorted by
  • fatpigfatpig
    I have it for over a year now, and use it everyday- great little worker! :) does everything from playing movies over streaming to and from lan and internet to downloading files onto attached storage. you can also attach a card reader and play gh2 files directly. no problems at all. :)
  • alcomposeralcomposer
    +1 re: GH2 playback! Very inexpensive media player- so you can connect it to a Ruige monitor or big screen TV without hogging your laptop! Wonder how it goes with 170mb/s material??? (was choking a bit a 30mb/s... depends on the WDTV hack I suppose.
  • chauncychauncy
    been using mine for 3 years on a daily basis. It plays everything I throw at it. It does choke on 176mb files but what doesn't? It will play up to bluray quality.

    I will try hack.
  • chauncychauncy
    I have a wd hd gen. 1. I've spent some time browsing the site.

    Is there anything useful that the hacked firmware can do for this player, other than limited connectivity to some, what appear to be not very useful, ftps and telnet and the like? The links to app.bins and opnet don't give much info on what they do at all.

    What are the primary features for just this player? Is there a compelling reason to do this? Quality increases or file format playback updates?

    Thanks for help and pointers.
  • fatpigfatpig
    hack enables: new web interface! control from everywhere, server, downloading large files from ftp/usenet/torrent network is agood feature, also new skins, sleep timer, added media info, no file format changes. also umsp , which enables streaming from a variety of websites.

    just did a test on newest 170m driftwood intra: it does drop frames in playback. im guessing it shows like 10 frames per sec.

    Also im fairly sure you could run the wdtv on a 20$ 12v battery in the field. it has 12v input at about 1A. thats ~3,5 hours on a cheap chinese battery pack. not bad for in the field work.
  • alcomposeralcomposer
    I am wanting to also use the WDTV for multi screen installation work- and would like to keep playback costs to minimum and reliability high- the hack has a lovely app for sync-locking so will totally be trying that out!

    (This is why I have been interested in using multi GH2's!)

    Glad to hear that this helped a bit!
  • PixCanFlyPixCanFly
    possible to view vimeo channel from WDTV?
  • GerondoGerondo

    @alcomposer Very interesting indeed! I want to make a multi screen video installation with synced video files. Is this possible with these (hacked) players? And were can I find the app?

    Thanks in advance!

  • eatstoomuchjameatstoomuchjam

    I got a few WDTV's from a dumpster a number of years ago. My biggest problem with them is how slow the menus are. Do the hacks speed them up at all? Navigating a medium-large music/movie library is downright painful with the stock firmware.

  • DrDaveDrDave

    Unlike the later WDTV, the original boxes do not have the horrible audio sync issues of the WDTV live. Picture quality is decent, though not as good as the Sony N200. It will choke and crash on certain types of hi bit material, including MP4s and MKV files, and if it does crash you have to be able to wipe the WDTV folder off your drive. Other than that, a decent player.

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