Chilling_Silence's blogMy thoughts on the WDTV Live
Yes, I’ve had my WDTV Live for a while now, and have had several requests for my thoughts on them.
They’re priced very nicely, mine cost $229 + GST on my account with PBTech. Just make sure you search for “WD TV Live”, and not “WDTV” or you’ll get the regular one without a LAN port.
I wanted to get myself a media player that could stream from my PC, as well as do HD MKV files in 1080p. It needed to also support h.263, as well as h.264 in both AVI and MP4 files, not to mention some of my stuff I’ve encoded with MP3 audio CBR / VBR, some I’ve encoded with AAC. It’s quite a mashup collection. I’d looked at a few others, Seagate had one, but they generally required you to plug your HDD in to them to use them.
Anyway long story short, turns out there’s a bit of an issue with Win7 streaming to them. Works fine with any other OS but just not 7. It’s very touchy about file system permissions, share permissions, and even then it doesn’t always show up. Because of that I’ve now got myself an Alix.6b2 system I’m using with FreeNAS and I’ve attached a 1.5TB External HDD to it. It’s kind of defeating the purpose of not having to take the HDD out of my PC, but at least by having a NAS device I don’t have to unplug from the WDTV Live, plug it in to my PC, copy across any new media (Naturally it’s 100% family videos and things) to the HDD, then plug it back in to the WDTV. Now, as I get new media, I just copy it to the NAS device where it lives happily 🙂
So, aside from this issue with windows file shares and Win7, I’m incredibly happy with it. Streaming from YouTube is a nice touch, and to be honest I’ve not really used much of the Pictures / Music side of it, but in terms of playing back all my video content it’s been an absolute pleasure! Quick bootup in just a couple of seconds is nice, it scans the network so there was no configuration required for mapping shares and things.
Comparing to a Media PC running VLC, XBMC or anything else, I’d take the WDTV Live any day of the week!
Plays back some Full HD movies no sweat, however when using the Killa.sampla test file it struggles horribly. I’m yet to notice that in any real-world situation though with a movie in 1080p so I’m not concerned in the slightest.
The tiny little unit is almost too small to notice sitting in the TV Cabinet under the telly, the two USB ports are nice but I’m not using them.
There’s the option of adding in a special WiFi USB adapter (Only certain card make / models work), but that doesn’t really interest me personally, I’m happy with streaming over Cat5.
The remote that it comes with is nice and small, just the essential buttons, not too complicated. The buttons do feel a little “sticky” at times, and I wonder if all the button pressed get through, but maybe I’m just being too picky. It’s overall a very nice little remote.
Would I recommend this product? Yes!
Would I buy it again given what I know now about the Win7 sharing problem? Yes definitely, Western Digital are apparently working to fix it, and there’s quite an active community built around their WDTV and WDTV Live devices, with homebrew firmware and the likes available too.
If you’ve got yourself a small collection of videos and want a nice, easy way to play them on your TV, then the WDTV Live is both affordable, functional and looks beautiful!
If you’ve got one or are thinking of getting a media playback device, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Chill.
UPDATE – 27 / 01 / 2010:
I just realized I’ve not updated this post. Well, FreeNAS on the Alix was nice, the permissions were great so only my PC could write to the drive, but I wanted my Alix for other things. So, with the 1.5TB WD MyBook (It’s purely chance that I bought a WD drive for a WD Player, I just happen to like their drives!) now plugged in directly to the WDTV Live, it’s just the same, but I have to be careful that nobody else I give WiFi on my LAN goes and wipes the lot. It’s full R/W for anybody. Aside from that, it works brilliantly, no fuss sharing, and I’m a happy chappy! It took several days to copy 1.2TB, in hindsight I should have simply plugged it into my Desktop and transferred via USB2.0 at 480mbps instead 😉
Still, I would highly recommend this product!
WDTV is a good choice.
Agreed 😀 Though I’ve not tried the WDTV HD, I’m stoaked with the WDTV Live. I’ve currently got it setup with a 1.5TB WD MyBook (They’re the only HDD brand I trust these days), and it’s sharing it via SMB. Not quite as nice as being plugged into FreeNAS, it means that it’s shared 100% R/W with the whole network, but it’s something I can live with for now 🙂
Thanx Chill.
When my Popcornhour A100 dies the WDTV will be it’s replacement.
Does the WDTV Live play Shoutcast radio?
(I have an aging MediaGate 450HD which mainly gets used for Shoutcast. I didn’t even know it had that feature when I bought it)
No, I don’t believe it does, but it supports Live365 and Pandora radio. You may be able to have some luck getting it to work using 3rd party firmware (b-rad.cc)
Live365 sounds interesting (just tried it).
Thanks