I just got myself a WD Player (Media Player). I wanted this hard d rive to store all my Countdown's on it. I have done a TONE of 1982 episodes and I wanted it as it means I don't have to get all my discs out when I want to watch Countdown episodes.

SO basically it's a hard drive that you store whatever you want on them. I started watching a bunch on there tonight and I was SO excited to have this player but have been left rather dissapointed!

When you watch them the picture jerks and stutters very often and my actual DVD copies do not do that at ALL!

Does anyone here have one of these players and have you had the same problem???? I am very CURIOUS!!!

I've had WD TV for about 3 years. I don't have this problem.

What format is your video encoded in (MPG, AVI, MP4, VOB, etc) and how did you encode it? Are you displaying the video picture on a TV screen or a computer monitor?

Video from TV is almost always "interlaced". If you digitise analog interlaced video and display it on a monitor incapable of displaying interlaced video (most computer monitors), you see a "combing" effect.

If the video was also digitised with the wrong field dominance (non-pro equipment often gets this wrong), you get "stuttering" when you play it back on a TV. Basically the fields are played back in the wrong order every frame (backwards in time rather than forwards in time), and where there is motion in the picture, you see a jerky, stuttering effect as you go forward and backwards in time 25 times per second.

You can't tell on a computer monitor whether interlaced video has been encoded with the wrong field dominance, all you'll see is the combing.

Most pro video software will enable you to correct reversed field dominance.

Basically my friend has been copying my dvd's from the laptop to the WD straight from the dvd player...

And the WD is connected to my HD TV. So what software should I buy or should I just get rid of it as I know nothing about technology and have been on a Forum where many people have complained about the same thing...

I am getting rid of my WD, I don't understand why it plays movies and shows okay but not music video's? Why is this???

I have all my Countdown's on DVD and would NEVER rely on hard drives. I was so pleased to be able to have my COuntdown's on WD and now it's all been destroyed. How can companies like this get away with releasing these products without testing them first?????

You know, the funny thing is the VHS tape and VHS recorder was the most reliable thing to capture picture and sound and so easy to use. These days technology is so complicated and never reliable. I have still and always will keep my Countdowns on tape (even though I have copied most of them to disc) as they are the originals and I can always rely on them over the discs.

Absolutely Michael,

My Devo 1982 copy of Countdown on dvd the other day wouldn't read!... I had to get out my VHS copy and rec copy it!!! VHS is SOOOOO much more reliable, I would NEVER dream of chucking out my Countdown video's, NEVER!!!!!!! Waaaaaay more reliable that digital!

Jason, if you ever have trouble with your player reading a DVD that used to work, try copying the DVD to another disc on your computer. This has happened to me twice before, and the copied disc always plays fine, despite the original no longer working.

Okay Nathan,

But to be on the safe side I just got out the original video which plays like a DREAM!

Technology says that dvd's are better BUT I have found VHS to be SOOOOOO much more reliable int he end!!!

I reckon it must be the software that you're friend is using to rip DVDs. If not done correctly (possibly a software or preference setting in the ripper) then you could end up with this problem. Or the software used might be rubbish and simply not encode or transcode interlaced video correctly.

In other words, don't blame WD TV when it might not be the problem.

I have digitised all my music videos (mostly from VHS tapes, the rest ripped from DVDs or digital TV dumps) and have no issue whatsoever playing them on my WD TV.

I generally encode to MP4 (H.264) for playback due to the smaller file size, but I archive copies in MPEG2 format (same as native DVD encoding) as my "source" copies.

Without knowing more about the software used to digitise and encode, and your specific setup, it's hard for me to recommend a fix.

You could try updating the firmware in your WD TV by downloading the latest version from the website and following the instructions to install. It's possible it was a bug in playing back interlaced video that has since been fixed. But I have the very first version of WD TV (they no longer do software updates for it) and I have never experienced playback problems being described here.

Re digital video being unreliable - disagree totally! I would never go back to VHS tapes. VCRs break down and there will come a time when no-one can fix them. Tapes degrade. All my clips are crystal-clear digitally enhanced copies, safely stored on two 1 TB hard disks and backed up to DVD-Rs. I can access any video in seconds. I have been digitising video for 10 years and not had a hard disk or DVD-R failure.

My VHS tapes are still perfect 18 years later. I safely store them away upright and always rewind them back to the start if I use them. I still think you are more likely to encounter problems with digital technology than old school equipment. Digital TV for example is f@#ked when it pixelates and gets a loss of signal if it's a windy day and a great atenna still doesn't alleviate the problem. There's pro's and con's on both sides.