Has anyone gotten the Mini to play MP4 or MKV? How are you encoding?

[TonyPh12345]

What's with the huge font size?

[dontbuywdminitv]

I bought this soon to discover its not good at all....best advice is dont open the box take it back and get the HD intead.

The function(menus work well) IT JUST DONT PLAY MP4 and AVI !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[FreddyF]

Unless you have a defective unit, it plays both MP4 and AVI very well.  It does not play every possible version of these files.  There are known isues with some with different types of encoding and certainly with more a resolution over 720.

Learn how something works before you start telling people "it doesn't work".  It does work, you just need to know what works and what doesn't.

[prcker]

I was going to buy a mini but might wate till it can read and play MKV and DIVX as all of my collection is in one or the other!!! But I keep in touch with the community on a regular basis.

[FreddyF]

If you want something to play MKV files, you don;t want the mini.  If you read the specifications MKV is not lisetd as a suported file type.  Look at other units, all the other units support MKV, but none support DiVX.  If you require Divx, parhaps you should look to another manufacturer, there are a lot out there.  Seagate has 2 players and both support DiVX and MKV.  For some reason WD choose not to.

I can't understand why people complain about tthe mini not doing what it isn't designed to do, but they do.

There are several good things about the mini, it is small, cheap and does play AVis very well, if they are encoded properly. 

[TonyPh12345]

The Live's all support DivX (in various forms, but not all options).  I'm guessing they don't list it due to licensing restrictions.

[supersimmetrico]

Sorry if my first post is to contradict someone but the SD mini

_do_ actually support MKV as clearly stated in the user manual (see APPENDIX).

The only limitation for the matroska container (because it's only a container)

are about the video and audio codecs supported (and DIVX is one of them because

is MPEG-4 ASP, while the one not supported is DIVX6 that is proprietary and is also

a container, not only a codec).

That's stated, the initial question is still valid even though I can assure that some

MKV and MP4 are correctly played but not all, even though I'm sure that the codec

I use are always the same.

It's 6 months that I'm waiting for a satisfactory answer from the WD support other than

"strange, our engineers say it's all ok".

They asked me for mp4 and mkv files infos (extracted with mediainfo) and say that everything

seems fine; yes, "seems" because some file are actually not played.

Anyway, mkv IS supported, even though not always.

Regards

[FreddyF]

Hmmm, perhaps I should have looked at the manual rather than trusting the specifications on the WD web site.  Sorry to all for the misinformation.

I did read about a problem with video files using a particular encofding option.  Unfortunately I don't remember what it was as I use DVDfab which does not have the option they discussed.  I believe it was some sort of additional compression which the WD TV was not able to deal with and the file became an "unsupported format". 

[supersimmetrico]

I always encode video with a MPEG4 Part 2 codec (XVID, DIVX5..) but the

result is always unpredictable even though the manual states that I'm right.

Someone from the support told me that for MKV and MP4 multiple audio

and subtitles should be in another file.

This is partially wrong and, from a conceptual point of view, totally wrong.

Partially, because vobsub (not SRT) are recognized by the mini even if

embedded in mkv (I made few tests with mp4) whilst for audio there is no

hope.

Totally because, IMHO, if a player support MKV, MP4 and AVI the only formats

supposed to have multiple audio and subtitles embedded are the first two,

as the AVI standard format (without extensions) is not supposed to have

multiple audio and subtitle. But, incredibly, this player has no problem at

all in reading avi with multiple audio and with subtitles (!!!).

You can't say that mkv or mp4 are supported if multiple audio is not! It's

part of the standard (MPEG4 part 14, if I'm right)

It would be nice to have some sample of working mp4 and mkv that WD engineers

uses for their tests. The excuse "we cannot provide you samples because of the copyright"

is pathetic: few seconds do not violate any copyright.

Sorry for this long post but, although I like messing with stuff, I don't like to have things

not working as stated. I paid for this decoder. If I wanted an AVI and a "more-or-less-

mkv-mp4-working-player" I'd have chosen a less expensive "only AVI" player.

If anyone can suggest a predictable way to produce mkv and mp4 readable by this

player, please..

[FreddyF]

I agree it is total BS that they cannot provide samples, as anyone can create a short video clip.  However what WD should provide and I have never seen is what settings it does not support.

I use fairly straight forward settings, without multiple audio or subtitles on AVI files and have no problem.  Now that it has been pointed out that MKV does work, I will see if I can figure that out as it sems to be a better container han AVI. 

I'll see if I can download a movie preview or somwthing to use.