Review: WD TV Live!
I bought one of these while on vacation recently. The Western Digital TV Live box is very impressive and can connect to your home network to effortlessly stream videos from your shared hard drives, nas devices, and connected USB drives of all types. I had a few setup issues but after getting through them I figured out how easy it is to use. A bit of a background: I download alot of TV shows off torrents. It's much easier for me to download and store them to watch later. I also have a digital PVR that I rent through eastlink (although it's limited to a wimpy 40 hours of HD video). Whatever I can't grab off the PVR I usually torrent and store for later watching. Lately I've been viewing Breaking Bad, an interesting series from Fox that takes you through the life of a high school teacher who became a methamphetamine cook after being diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. But back to the device. Memory Express had these for sale for about $109. plus tax - not bad considering they usually sell for $129 or more.
Here's a look at the product specifications, current to the latest firmware update:
Media File Formats Supported (Based on Firmware Version 1.02.21)
- Movie -- AVI (Xvid, AVC, MPEG1/2/4), MPG/MPEG, MKV (h.264, x.264, AVC, MPEG1/2/4, VC-1), TS/TP/M2T (MPEG1/2/4, AVC, VC-1) MP4/MOV (MPEG4, h.264), M2TS, WMV9
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- MPEG2 MP@HL up to 1920x1080p24, 1920x1080i30, or 1280x720p60 resolution. MPEG4.2 ASP@L5 up to 1280x720p30 resolution and no support for global motion compensation. WMV9/VC-1 MP@HL up to 1280x720p60 or 1920x1080p24 resolution. VC-1 AP@L3 up to 1920x1080i30, 1920x1080p24, or 1280x720p60 resolution. H.264 BP@L3 up to 720x480p30 or 720x576p25 resolution. H.264 MP@4.1 and HP@4.1 up to 1920x1080p24, 1920x1080i30, or 1280x720p60 resolution.
- Picture -- JPEG, GIF, TIFF, BMP, PNG
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- Compressed RGB JPEG formats only and progressive JPEG up to 2048x2048. Single layer TIFF files only. Uncompressed BMP only.
- Audio -- MP3, WAV/PCM/LPCM, WMA, AAC, FLAC, MKA, AIF/AIFF, OGG, Dolby Digital, DTS
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- An audio receiver is required for multi-channel surround sound digital output. For specific details, please refer to the user manual.
- Playlists -- PLS, M3U, WPL
- Subtitle -- SRT, ASS, SSA, SUB, SMI
- Does not support protected premium content such as movies or music from the iTunes® Store, Cinema Now, Movielink®, Amazon Unbox™, and Vongo®
One nice handy feature is when you stop viewing a movie or series, you can always go back to it at the exact spot where you stopped the viewing. A few of the useless features found on the device are Youtube, Flickr, Pandora, and live365.com. Youtube and Flickr work fine, but the streaming audio doesn't work if you live in Canada like I do.
I only noticed once that audio dropped when viewing a tv show. I'm not sure if it's a bug with the AAC audio decoding - other people in the WDTV live community have complained about it too. (Western Digital has not acknowledged this yet either).
The player doesn't have as much features as Roku or Popcorn Hour. (However, Popcorn hour is about two hundred dollars more than WDTV live).
This simple questionnaire will help you answer if the WDTV Live! is a good fit for you:
* Do you enjoy hacking with hardware or software?
* Want a simple movie/tv player that connects to any USB device?
* Download tons of content (either illegally or legally) and want to play it from your couch?
* Want to watch videos in HD (1920x1080p @ 60hz) with surround sound?
* Want to only spend about $120 CDN (taxes in) ?
I love the device though. It does get hot when you stream 1080p. The load on the source computer is very low indeed (1% cpu). The bandwidth used by viewing SD from a network share is only about 300kb/s. Viewing HD you can expect at least double or triple that.
If you're going to use a wireless connection, I strongly suggest using Wireless N, via either Netgear or LinkSys. Don't get a cheap Belkin wireless as it won't be able to keep up.
Unbelievably, my DLINK DI-524 was able to stream even high definition videos without any problems via 10/100 ethernet. (Though, it did get very hot).
I rate this product 90% out of 100%.
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