Suggestions on HD media player

J

jbcon

Active member
Does anyone here use any sort of media player that you can load your final HD films onto and then have it portable so you can take it and show it in all of it's HD glory?

Burning to Blu-ray is an obvious choice, but if every venue or place you want to show your piece doesn't have Blu-ray what do you do?

I am looking at the Western Digital HD Live which is basically a USB memory reader with an interface for your TV and an HDMI output for 1080p. It is cheap, under $70 online, but I would prefer something with it's own HDD like the Seagate.

It would be nice to have something that would play native AVCHD, but as long as their is a format that Sony Vegas can render too and the device will play I am good.

Ideas.
 
it's a great question for filmmakers to start thinking about as digital projection takes over from monitors for private or client screenings, to festivals and distribution at theaters worldwide. Certainly if you are selling a feature or doc you want to impress with screen and sound.
If I can keep it to 2k projection and you want something better than just plugging in your hardrive to a clients flatscreen and can set up a projection you have many option as there is no standards.
Festivals like Slamdance, Berlin even Cannes rent HD cam decks for screening and you can do the same if you want to transfer film to HD cam for best projection.
The decks are to pricey to own. Most festivals are now allowing filmmakers to screen on HD cam if they cannot afford the DI to 35mm.
Independent arthouse theaters I have dealt with screen from portable HD's like the WD, Seagate, Lacie to laptop to projector.
A few ad agencies I have been into have mini projection systems rooms now.
Most indy theaters own bluray as well and will rent HD cam if they have an in-house festival and films are submitted on HD cam. DVD is horrible and unreliable.
The Panasonic range of Bluray play direct from the Sd card to monitor so in theory if you want to get your film back to a SD card ( never done that, is it possible?) to Panny bluray ($130), just keep one of those in the trunk of your car.
Projection systems? From the top down the Christies are the so called best but out of consumer range. Vivitek has a 6500 lumen that can be found for 6 grand I think and Leica make a great portable but it's pricey maybe 8k last time I looked. There are dozens of projectors now on the market for home use and get better every model. For a theater's it's all about the "throw" distance to screen and the screen itself.
A last word to filmmakers, always visit the projectionist to introduce yourself before any screening. Go over the specs and if you have the opportunity ask him to project the opening minutes to set the system, aspect ratio etc. If a projectionist has a chance to screw your screening he will and you will be left doing a shadow puppet show as tears stream down your face your career in ruins....
 
The original Western Digital media player does a very nice job of playing back the GH1's native .mts files, either straight off the card or from a hard drive, in 60i or hacked 24p (even PAL). It's an extremely convenient little box to have and much easier than burning, just pop in a card or thumb drive and you're set. Only negative is that it is slightly picky about audio codecs, native .mts files are no problem but for some reason it won't play back the sound from the Canons (at least the T1i) or a GH1 file that's been stripped of its AVCHD wrapper. The audio has to be changed to something like AAC
 
richtrav said:
The original Western Digital media player does a very nice job of playing back the GH1's native .mts files,
Click to expand...

Any idea if the updated version with HDMI will do the same, or improved on the audio issue? I am seriously considering the WD now, but have found a couple no-name models that actually allow for the installation of a 2.5" laptop hard-drive which is appealing to me, but being Korean and Chinese made and sold I am hesitant.
 
I have the original Western Digital WDTV device and I can just re-wrap my GH1 MTS files in an AVI wrapper and it plays them fine. It doesn't see the original MTS files. I use ffmpeg to do the wrapping since I can do 50 files with one command. The WDTV won't play the audio if I put them in Quicktime, but it will perfectly if they are in AVI.
 
jbcon said:
Any idea if the updated version with HDMI will do the same, or improved on the audio issue? I am seriously considering the WD now, but have found a couple no-name models that actually allow for the installation of a 2.5" laptop hard-drive which is appealing to me, but being Korean and Chinese made and sold I am hesitant.
Click to expand...

The original WDTV has HDMI.
I know nothing about the Korean and Chinese models - I would be very wary though. However there are several known brands that sell these devices, but with most of them I suspect that you would have to re-encode files from the GH1.
 
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