TV, Video Item ID: #566Western Digital WD TV Live Network-ready HD Media Player WDBAAN0000NBK-NESNProduct Information:
Item DescriptionThe WD TV Live HD Media Player from Western Digital has everything you need to play your HD media collection and the fun stuff you find on the web in brilliant HD 1080p on your big screen HDTV. Because it supports a wide variety of file types, you can instantly enjoy all your home digital media, regardless of the file format. Plus you get direct access to a huge selection of video, photos, and music from popular internet sites like YouTube, Flickr, Live 365, and Pandora (U.S. only) right from the beautifully easy WDTV navigation screen. The WD TV Live HD media player is exceptionally easy to use so anyone in the family can do it and, because it’s networked, you can easily access media from any PC in the home. Compatibility; HDMI, Full HD (1080p), AAC, MP3, JPEG, USB 2.0, H.264, SimplayHD, Energy Star, Dolby Digital, DTS, DLNA, Bonjour, AVCHD, Windows Vista. Box contains; Media Player, Compact remote with batteries, Composite AV cable, Component AV cable, AC adapter, CD with sample media, Quick Install Guide. Related posts: Item Reviews5 Responses to “Western Digital WD TV Live Network-ready HD Media Player WDBAAN0000NBK-NESN”Leave a Reply |
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This is a new version of the great WD TV, adding DTS support and networking. The WD TV can play any media file, photos, audio and video like: DIVX, XVID, AVI, MKV, MP3, FLAC, etc and etc,..just plug the pen drive or any usb HD with the files, the WD TV creates the library for you. Also with internet access you can watch Youtube movies, or files in your network shared drives, like if you have a Pc with a lot of files, just share the folder and the WD TV will read it. I also managed to read files from my Apple Time Capsule, just had to check the Guest access readonly in the Time Capsule configuration.
Is very easy to install, the new WD TV Live updates its firwmare when you connect it to the internet.
WD TV Size is very small, so I can take it anywhere, like when I go out for a trip and whant to see my movies or shows. Its perfect and a must buy, only 100 usd.
I am constantly frustrated at techy products that do a bunch of things well, but then leave out one really handy feature. It usually takes 3 major versions of something before I’m willing to trade my hard-earned cash for it, and the WDTV Live is a perfect example. I now own two of these, which is in itself a rarity. The first one impressed me so much, I bought another one for upstairs. The categorical highlights and caveats from my perspective using a wired network, pointing at a CIFS share on a WinXP box (or at Windows Media Player) and playing everything from MP3s to MKV files with subtitles to multi-track (5.1/DTS) DVD-Audio ISOs and VOBs:
Networking: works great wired. Easy enough to configure or let DHCP auto-assign an address off your network. Would be nice if it had a Gigabit Ethernet port — but even with a full 1080p stream, GigE isn’t necessary (100Mbps is enough).
Setup/Configuration: There are a lot of options here for cataloging your connected USB drives, how you want the UI to behave, etc. As well, there’s a feature to save a userid/password (if you have your network shares permissioned such) for quick connection. You’ll want to do this, as “typing” on the on-screen keyboard with the small remote is something you only want to do once. A good number of people have complained about the WDTV Live’s ability to connect to Windows 7 (or even Vista/XP) shares, but I and others who have similar setups, both with and without actual Active Directory domains, do not have problems. Thus, I’m chalking that up to user error and misunderstanding of share-level and file-level permissions. I just have a share that’s wide open for the WDTV and it’s a non-issue (everything else stays locked down).
Music/Audio features: Pandora works perfectly, as does pointing it at a slew of MP3s or M3U playlists. I haven’t tried Live365 — I hear it requires a subscription, and with >150GB of music already sitting on my network, Live365 has no appeal for me. The one thing that impressed me and actually triggered the second WDTV Live purchase, is that it will natively play 6-channel (DTS 5.1 Surround) WAV files, DVD-Audio ISOs and even VOB files containing 5.1-encoded audio (SACD or DVD-Audio). This is a very cool feature, as I don’t need a second sucking down power to spin a disc.
Video features: This tiny little box will play nearly everything you should care about, including WMV9s, AVIs with DivX and XviD inside, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 streams, MKVs with h.264 and others inside, and even M2TS files straight from a Blu-Ray disc or a HD camcorder! It does have iffy support for Quicktime (MOV) files, and there’s a well-known no-go with Windows Media Audio Pro embedded in a WMV9 — but that’s not a dealbreaker for me at all, since MKV has already trumped all those formats and more. One caveat in full disclosure: there’s no RMVB support at all, so if you need that, I’d still suggest buying this box and converting them to something better. It does have Youtube support, though it’s a pain to do any useful searching via the remote — and the latest (v14) firmware update killed off some of the Youtube stuff after Youtube changed their policy. Stick with the .11 firmware and you’ll be fine.
Photo viewing: you can easily put digital pictures up on your TV either through your home network, from Flickr, or off a USB drive/stick. This is pretty handy after a family event or photo shoot so everyone can see. I’m by no means a Flickr fan at all, but I have to say the Flickr features on the WDTV Live are pretty useless — you can’t scale the images being viewed to a useful size.
User interface: out of the box with the older firmware, the UI is a bit slow. You won’t know that (i.e. it’s very tolerable) until you upgrade to the v.11 or later firmware, which makes it even faster. The menuing is clean and easy to navigate. If you stop a video and restart it later, it will ask if you want to restart from beginning, or resume from where you left off. Fast forwarding or rewinding video/audio is easy to do, but I wish it had a faster jump than 16x sometimes. That it doesn’t is likely more a constraint of the network speed than anything else — trying to do a 24x rewind, for example, on a wireless 802.11b or 10Mbps wired network would probably cause the space-time continuum to implode.
DLNA/Media Player support — works fine with Windows Media Player 13 or 14 (or whatever’s bundled in Windows 7). You can right click a media file on your Windows box and select “Play to …” to send it to the WDTV Live without having even touch the WDTV remote. Just don’t try doing it while something else is already playing on the WDTV Live (like an MP3), as it will try to play both at the same time and fail [well, fail in the sense that it doesn’t seem to know that you probably shouldn’t listen to MP3s and watch an unrelated MKV at the same time — it will play both anyway, and you’ll have to figure out how to shut one of them off).
The remote control: It’s small (smaller than your palm). This is both a blessing and a curse: on one hand, it’s not bulky and does everything you need. On the other hand, it’s small, easily lost, and is not back-lit which makes it a bit difficult to use in the dark until you memorize where the buttons are. Unfortunately none of the buttons have a ‘nub’ on them to give you a reference point, and many a time I’ve hit Stop when I meant to hit Play/Pause.
The box itself: Very small, silent, and fairly power-reasonable (though it does constantly eat 2-4W when turned “off”). Power brick is fairly small, but clearly not a high-quality brand… I fully expect I’ll be replacing one of them within a few years as they die off from actual normal use.
Despite a few grievances:
– needs a better remote with backlight
– UI should allow for faster rewind/FF
– FTP transport support would be nice for some…
– …and so would NFS support for the *nix geeks
– add Netflix and this little box would RULE THE UNIVERSE
…I love both of my WDTV Live’s, and you will, too.
I got this because it seemed to have the best reviews for media players. When I got it home, I noticed that it took FOREVER for it to load anything from my external hard drive. I would sit and wait for in upwards of 20-30 minutes for it to ’scan through’ my hard drive. A couple times I’ve turned it on and it doesn’t even connect to my television. If you want a ‘media server’ get a PS3. You get a blue ray AND a video game player along with the media player functions. This is a rip off, spend the extra $200 for the PS3. I am now, you can buy my WD media player from me, it’s going in the next garage sale for $10 bucks.
I read a great deal about the WD TV Live prior to taking a chance with it. Despite great promise and many good attributes, including an attractive and intuitive user menu/GUI, it was ultimately unable to fulfill the fundamental purpose I’d purchased it for. I had hoped this device was the solution to streaming my 2 terabytes of digital movie files, photo files, photo albums and slideshows stored in iPhoto – all on the resident or external hard drives USB connected to my Mac Book Pro laptop and accessible via my home wifi network. Since wireless access of my media files was one of the primary reasons for the device, I had to purchase a required USB wifi adapter for another $35, this one by Nfinity which, after some puzzling delays, finally came on line and functioned as intended. Note that this eliminates one of the two available USB slots in the WD TV Live. If you’re contemplating connecting an external hard drive directly to the WD TV Live, you will be limited to the drive size connected since unlike Hard drives with Firewire interfaces, you cannot daisy chain USB devices to get more capacity. Also, accessory hubs are typically either not recommended or non-functional in this type of application.
WD TV Live’s most satisfactory performance was with MP3 music files where it was successful in streaming and listing artist, tracks and in displaying album cover art (if downloaded into iTunes). Unfortunately, Playlists are apparently not supported.
Although the WD TV Live had no trouble wirelessly accessing what was on my laptop’s internal drive, its inability to even “see” much less access files of any type, stored on external hard drives USB connected to my Laptop, was the biggest disappointment and ultimately a primary reason for its return. Despite the proper permissions file settings, and the review of dozens if not hundreds of posts on various WD TV Live user group sites, I was unable to locate any enlightenment on this issue. Only when I direct-connect a 1 TB WD hard drive to the WD TV Live am I then able to access lists of movie-titled file folders. But another problem arises. Clicking the folder presents a list of Video_TS files but no other distinguishing attributes. I can guess and cycle through the first few Video_TS files until the opening credits appear after which the movie plays. This might be acceptable for the geek in the house but It would be hard to explain to another, say, one’s wife, how this all works even after one manages to get it all straight.
WD has equipped this sophisticated little device with the ability to deal with many different formats, an impressive capability that my more humble needs has not allowed the opportunity to experiment with. Although the WD-TV Live’s remote works fine, and others have reported that it’s functions can be integrated within a universal remote such as the Logitech Harmony 1, which I have, and consider the best designed and most user-friendly universal programmable remote ever created, my experience was not at all transparent in trying to program the WD TV Live’s functions in a way that sync’d with my other devices and media watching alternatives. And I don’t even have a cable box or TiVo!
In short, as intriguing, sophisticated and reasonably priced as this device is, I don’t believe it is quite ready for prime time, nor a good choice for someone who isn’t reasonably savvy with technology and computers and also willing to devote trouble-shooting time to getting everything up and running. The extensive comments and problems detailed on the support sites attest to the challenges of getting this thing to work properly – and many if not most of the bloggers appear to be fairly well informed.
Lastly I must point out that many new devices including the new LG BD 570 Blu Ray Disk player I recently acquired through Amazon, not to mention My new Samsung 850 Plasma TV have WiFi capabilities that allow wireless access and streaming of digital media from external sources such as computers in adjacent rooms or Network Attached Storage (NAS) drives. If you haven’t yet but are thinking about finally upgrading to a Blu-Ray player, most of the most recent machines incorporate WIFI with access to Netflix ,Vudu, Pandora and several other movie-on-demand websites. Try a new Blu Ray player first and if it doesn’t quite cover the wireless streaming bases for you, and you remain ambitious, get the WD TV Live and have at it. For me, until Western Digital gets to version 2.0 of this device, I’ll be waiting and working with the wifi capabilities of my new Blu Ray player whose interface/GUI while distinctly less evolved and much less visually elegant than the WD TV Live GUI, is close to being as functional for my needs.
I own to of these and I love them. No fumbling around with a mouse and keyboard and tons of cables. Plug it in and it works with virtually every file format. Reads network shares just perfectly. They are also hackable if you are into customizing them a bit more to your liking.