WD EP Gen1

[TJ_Slade]

Hi guys,

I recently made the mistake of buying a WD Elements Play Gen 1 device (figured it was Gen 1 after reading through this forum). Almost all the movies I have with me are in DTS and AC3. Coupled with one or two other unsupported video codecs, 90% of my movies are now useless on the device. Converting them all is gonna take like forever. Is there any way I can hook it up to my Samsung LED Tv via USB or something(even if it requires dismantling) ? My TV supports almost all the formats.

Thanks for your help.

[Wizer]

The word recently purchased means you can return and exchange for the newer model 

[TJ_Slade]

Hi Wizer, Thank you for your response. But the solution you suggested has been tried before. The store has a no replacement policy and its been 2-3 weeks now.

So I'd appreciate it if you could advice on whether I can use the device as just an HDD that can be connected to the TV.

[johnaduk]

1. The WDEP supports AC3 - I have hundreds of MKVs with AC3 that sound fine.

2. Sadly the WDEP has never been licensed for DTS playback via HDMI. However if you use the optical digital output into a DTS receiver that works very well.

3. Of course you can use it as a hard disk.  Is this not how it appears when you plug it in to your PC via USB?

[TonyPh12345]

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TJ_Slade wrote:

Hi guys,

I recently made the mistake of buying a WD Elements Play Gen 1 device (figured it was Gen 1 after reading through this forum). Almost all the movies I have with me are in DTS and AC3. Coupled with one or two other unsupported video codecs, 90% of my movies are now useless on the device. Converting them all is gonna take like forever. Is there any way I can hook it up to my Samsung LED Tv via USB or something(even if it requires dismantling) ? My TV supports almost all the formats.

Thanks for your help.

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Yes, you can hook it up to your TV via USB...

But every time you turn it on, you'll need to go into the EP's menu and tell it to start USB-Mode...

[TJ_Slade]

Thank you for your valuable inputs guys. Just one more n00bish question though. I tried hooking it up via USB, but the TV doesn't recognize the unit as a USB device. SO I hooked it up via HDMI to see if there's an option to switch it to USB Mode. Couldn't find any either. Would you please be kind enough to direct me to as where I can find this option?

Thank you.

[TonyPh12345]

It does it as soon as it is hooked up to a host. Does your TV support NTFS format disks?

[broeni]

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TJ_Slade wrote:

Hi guys,

I recently made the mistake of buying a WD Elements Play Gen 1 device (figured it was Gen 1 after reading through this forum). Almost all the movies I have with me are in DTS and AC3. Coupled with one or two other unsupported video codecs, 90% of my movies are now useless on the device. Converting them all is gonna take like forever. Is there any way I can hook it up to my Samsung LED Tv via USB or something(even if it requires dismantling) ? My TV supports almost all the formats.

Thanks for your help.

---

Welcome to the club! 3 remarks:

1) Recoding of the audio streams is not so costly: use foobar2000 together the NERO AAC encoder. This should solve all issues with DTS and other unsupported audio codec (which ones).

2) Use MKVToolNix to repackage your movies, at the same time you can add subtitles and get rid of unwanted tracks.

3) Note however that most media players (possibly including your Samsung TV) can not handle compressed Matroska headers. See this post for the settings in MKVToolNix.

[TJ_Slade]

@Tonyph: Yes it does. I'm currently playing the movies through another NTFS formatted external disk/

@broeni:  Thank you but converting all these movies ( currently at around 1.8Tb) didn't sound like an easy task. It might take forever to convert em all.

[broeni]

If your Samsung LED can play all the movies (and music) that you want, then you're much better off then with a WEP.