Playing video files on Media Player

Stand alone media players are now becoming very popular and recently I had the opportunity to test run some HD2000 videos on two media players, one the Western Digital WDTV and the other, the Sony PS3. OK, the PS3 is not exactly a media player but many people use it as such in addition as a game machine. Below are the results and since I do not know which version of firmware both units have, this may not be the latest but just a guide. Both were connected to a HDTV with HDMI cable.

For both players, I used a test video each shot with the HD2000 in the following resolutions.

1. Full HR, 1920x1080, 60p
2. Full HD, 1920x1080, 60i and
3. Full SHQ, 1920x1080, 30p


First the PS3. Both the 30p and 60i video played without problem. When it came to the 60p, the video played smoothly but at a lower speed; roughly it was at one and a half times meaning a 2 minute clip played for 3 minutes and thus the video played as slow-motion. The audio played correctly at the normal speed and so the audio finished ahead of the video and is out of sync. The last third of the video played in silence.

What about the WDTV? As in the case of the PS3, both the 30p and 60i videos played correctly. There was also problem playing the 60p video. In this case the video played correctly most of the time but at certain intervals, the picture breaks while the audio started playing OK but soon became jerky and finally became dead.

Thus the 60p videos cannot be handled correctly by both the WDTV and the PS3 and I wonder if there are any media players out there that can play these videos properly. Any users with such a player should leave your comments here for all to share.

So if you intend to make use of the WDTV or PS3 to view your HD2000 videos, shoot at the lower resolution of 60i or 30p. For normal video for casual viewing, there is not much noticeable difference from the 60p. You will also save some file space and will have less headache using external editing software. After all, other consumer camcorders only offer 60i or 30p as their highest resolution.

Ronald Kwok
http://ronaldkwok.atomicblog.hop.clickbank.net/