Customer Reviews

Western Digital WD TV Live Network-ready HD Media Player

5 star:		(134)
4 star:		(90)
3 star:		(46)
2 star:		(41)
1 star:		(50)

 

 

After much anticipation, WDTV Live is finally here! I'll get right to the point, because I know there are a lot of questions from current Western Digital WD TV HD Media Player owners and those sitting on the fence about the capabilities of the Live in comparison to other media players on the market. I also considered the ASUS O!Play ($99) while waiting for the Live's release or the Seagate FreeAgent Theater+HD ($135). The WDTV is a proven quantity and for the Live, I had high expectations.

Cosmetically, not much has changed. Not even the box. The Live is nearly identical to the WDTV except in color, being matte grey instead of shiny piano black. Ease of setup and usage carries over from its forebear, so WDTV users will be right at home with the Live's interface and settings. At the rear, the ports have been slightly rearranged to make room for a LAN port and component out. HDMI is now 1.3 instead of 1.2, capable of a color depth of 12 bits per pixel. Batteries are included in the box, as are component and composite cables, but bring your own HDMI or LAN cable.

Building on the strengths of the original (and successful) WDTV, WD has made an already excellent player even better. They listened to users and addressed two of the biggest complaints of the WDTV, namely: lack of network connectivity and lack of DTS down-mixing.

I am pleased to report that on these two counts, the Live is a winner, packaged inside the same compact form factor as its predecessor and sold at a very reasonable price. The most exciting thing is network connectivity because the Live can be made wireless!

1) Network connectivity: out of the box, the Live connects via CAT-5. I have no interest in connecting USB hard drives to the Live because it limits my mobility. I have 2 NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices (D-Link DNS321 2-Bay SATA, RAID 0/1 Gigabit Ethernet Port Network Storage Enclosure and D-Link 2-Bay Network Storage Enclosure) and have been streaming movies wirelessly to my PlayStation 3, but I don't like the PS3's lack of MKV support and wasteful energy consumption. My PS3 can now go back to being a dedicated game and Blu-ray machine.

I was surprised to discover that my AirLink 101 AWLL6070 150Mbps 802.11n Wireless LAN USB 2.0 Adapter (purchased for a failed WDTV networking hack attempt) worked. I plugged it in, changed the Live's setting to wireless and it saw my wireless network with no fuss. I really have to hand it to WD for making the device open-ended, unlike the NETGEAR Digital Entertainer Live (Black) (which I tested and returned), which requires a proprietary $40 Netgear dongle. Other dongles will work too with the Live, and WD has a forum listing them.

2) DTS down-mixing: this was another shortcoming of the original WDTV. The Live down-mixes DTS to 2.0 so you don't need to slave it to an audio receiver anymore. Many of my MKV's are encoded with DTS, so this is another huge improvement. DTS Master Audio does not seem to be supported, but I am not very concerned as DTS MA is rarely encountered in the wild (though that may change in the future). All my files are MP3, AAC, AC3, or DTS audio streams, which all work on the Live. Many of the tested MKVs have multiple audio streams for different language tracks. You can also mux additional tracks and subtitles into the MKV file with the free and awesome mkvmerge GUI program. Subtitle files can be downloaded from sites like DivxStation.

DTS downmixing means now I can take a portable drive of movies over to a friend's house and not worry about compatibility, greatly increasing the versatility and value of the Live. The inclusion of both component and composite outs removes the worry about older TV's. And like the WDTV, the Live will downsample to standard def for non-HDTV's. However, if you have an HDTV and an AVR, you'll want to use them for maximum enjoyment.

But the most biggest selling point for me is wireless. After discovering WiFi connectivity, I lost all interest in using the Live as a wired device. With just $20 (cost of AirLink), I now have a wireless player that easily out-competes more expensive ones like the Popcorn Hour A-110 HD Networked Media Tank (EU), and can enjoy the freedom and convenience of putting this player anywhere in my house. I don't have messy and dangerous wires all the floor to trip over (I killed a 1 TB hard drive full of movies this way) and I don't need an audio receiver. All the 720p/1080i/p videos I had on my NAS played perfectly with the except of one 1080p .mp4 which had intermittent hiccups every minute or so.

The Live saw each device 2x on the menu, as a media share and a network share. With media share, the files are divided into 3 categories: video, photos, music. Only some of my movies showed up (WMV, MP4, AVI, TS), no MKV's. With network share, all the files are listed. This is the listing option to use if you have a NAS.

3) Additionally, third complaint on the WDTV was lack of support for 1080p24. This format now plays. VOB is now also supported, for those of you who make DVD archives.

USABILITY:

The WDTV had the most attractive and usable interface of any of the 10+ media players I tested over the years, and WD didn't mess with a winning formula. Graphically, the Live retains the blue cool-toned look and easy-to-use navigation of the WDTV. It adds a third listing option, Preview mode. Movies will now start playing in a smaller window on the right if you pause over the title for a second or two (with audio). Every movie I tested plays in preview. The remote control is the same as the WDTV. Navigation long directories is still somewhat of a pain because of no Page Up/Page Down button, but if you hold the up or down button down, it'll scroll by a page at a time after a second or two. Commands are fast and responsive. No spinning dials that plague the Netgear Live Entertainer.

For rewinding, the preview sometimes does not match the time-code. The timer was counting down, but the screen showed video from the opposite direction. If you stop rewinding and resume again, it'll show the proper preview. This is a small nuisance that I hope WD fixes soon in a firmware update.

Subtitle support via embedded or external still works great for Western and non-Western character sets because of Unicode. Embedded subs are pre-tagged with the language code, so the device will display "Subtitle 1/3 - English". For external .srt files, I discovered that if I name them the same as the movie and include a dash, then the language (e.g. "MOVIENAME - ENG.srt"), the WD will display the part after the dash as the language name.

INTERNET STREAMING:

For YouTube, the videos looked really good. The Live will select HD streams if available. I was surprised at the video quality of some of the ones I loaded, particularly one music video. Startup was fast, if not instantaneous, and I did not notice a buffering delay. Currently, YouTube is the only site supported, and searching is only in Western characters. The onscreen keyboard is arranged in row, A-Z, with 0-9 at the bottom. (Plugging in a USB keyboard did nothing.) I'm hoping for Hulu, Vimeo, and more in the future, like a WDTV Live Channels Guide or something like that, organized by interests (sports, history, science, news, etc), or regions of the world. It would be a very useful feature for people like my dad, who doesn't know how to use the web and he'd be able to watch shows from other parts of the world. Maybe in a future firmware update.

I didn't test Pandora or Live365 (internet radio) because I'm not interested in listening to radio/music out of my TV. Noticeably missing is NetFlix support, a feature prominent on some networked media players, Blu-ray players, and gaming platforms (Xbox 360), though word is that WD is at work on an update.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Next on my wishlist is RMVB support. This is the last thing missing from the long list of supported formats, because then I can throw out the really crappy RMVB player I have. Sadly, it seems to be hardware related and cannot be added with a firmware refresh.

Lastly, if the Live came in new colors like fire engine red like the Western Digital My Passport Essential 320 GB USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive WDMER3200TN (Real Red), or banana yellow, that'd be hot. I don't particularly care for the Live's matte grey exterior and prefer the glossy finish of the WDTV. It's not solid grey. It's sparkly like glitter, a rather odd choice for a finish.

To sum up, this is the device you've been waiting for! It is a great little player for the price. It now does everything I want it to (minus RMVB playback) and is truly the versatile and unfettered player that I have been hoping for. As a gadgets guy and early adopter, I wasted several hundreds of dollars testing out disappointing players and can say definitely that WD makes one of the best players on the market.

UPDATE 1: 10/24/09:

1. I logged into Pandora and it worked with no lag and no buffering. Currently, it's listen only. You can't add new stations, so you'll still have to manage your presets from their website through a normal computer. I found out Live365 is a paid service ("my trial is about to expire in 5 days"), making the feature totally worthless to me.

2. I turned on "thick" subtitle outlines option and it makes them a lot easier to see, especially if there's a lot of white on the screen.

UPDATE 2: 1/10/10:
Streaming from Windows PC's does not work properly. After 5 minutes of playback, the Live disconnects from the shared PC. If you intend to use the Live to stream movies off a network share, this is not the product for you.

I bought this player to stream 720p and 1080p MKV files over my network from WHS SMB shares to an HD television. I did not try Youtube or the other internet features.

The unit had some trouble properly detecting my displays, even with the most recent firmware. I first tried it with a Dell 2408 WFP 1900x1200 display using a DVI to HDMI cable. The player defaulted to a low and pixelated resolution, and I was unable to force it to use anything higher. I then tried component inputs, with success setting to 1080i. While very good, there was still apparent text aliasing, and the analog nature of the input locked out a number of advanced display options. It's possible an HDMI/HDMI cable would have fared better, but I didn't have one to test at this location.

The second display was a Sony E50A10 720p projection television from 2006. No picture was visible when I connected the WDTV with an HDMI/HDMI cable. Neither composite nor component worked properly either, showing a rolling menu in gray tones. Resetting the unit didn't help. After consulting the manual, I used the extremely poor composite picture to manually select the right HDMI mode. I then switched to HDMI to confirm the choice, and the unit worked properly from there. Component also worked via manual selection at this point; image quality is identical to HDMI on my 720p screen.

Once operational, I plugged a Belkin 802.11g USB network adapter from WD's recommended list into the unit. It detected and became a choice in the network screen almost immediately. That screen is well-designed, and it was simple to input the proper password and settings for my WPA2 network. For the remainder of testing, I never lost the network connection.

I tried AVI and MKV files in the following sizes:

700 MB AVI - perfect and immediate play
1.4 GB AVI - perfect and immediate play
4.7 GB MKV - perfect play until high-motion scenes, then stuttering
8.3 GB MKV - same result in less time
11.0 GB MKV - same result in less time
14.0 GB MKV - almost immediate stuttering

The problem was the 802.11g adapter. Even connected at 54 Mbps with maximum signal strength, it isn't capable of playing a file larger than perhaps 3.5 GB without stuttering. I was confused by this at first because the 4.7 GB files had an average bitrate of only 7 Mbps or so; it turns out variable encoding makes for spikes of up to 20 Mbps. That's apparently too much for 802.11g, because my laptop with an Intel adapter connecting to the same WRT54GL router fared even worse.

The WDTV buffers very little, so you're at the mercy of any device sharing the 2.4 GHz band that 802.11g and most 802.11n networks use. Microwaves, baby monitors, cordless phones, nearby networks, and activity on your own network can all cause temporary dropouts. I'd look hard at 5 GHz 802.11n hardware, ethernet-over-coax, or powerline networking if a direct cable run isn't possible.

The natural followup was to try a wired network. Since I had no interest in the internet features and my router wasn't nearby, I ran a cable directly from my file server to the WDTV. A crossover cable was not required; ordinary CAT-5/e/6 will do. I then set the server network adapter's TCP/IP settings to:

IP: 10.0.0.1
Subnet: 255.0.0.0

All other settings blank. And the WDTV, I set to:

IP: 10.0.0.2
Subnet: 255.0.0.0

All other settings blank.

Though the internet check failed (no DNS server; of course it would), I could immediately access the server's shares just as before. While the WDTV has only a 10/100 Mb adapter, it was more than sufficient to perfectly stream all of the files above. I saw a maximum of 45 Mbps on my network monitor with the 14 GB file. A more aggressively-compressed 7GB animated feature peaked at 55 Mbps. Because a wired network can operate at full line speed, the probability of hitching is minimal with almost any 1080p content, Blu-ray or otherwise.

Wireless is drastically more variable. Even if there isn't a surly neighbor on your channel or three floors and two hundred feet separating the client and access point, most 802.11g hardware won't manage more than 20 Mbps. 802.11n will sustain 15-25 Mbps with cheap hardware, the 2.4 GHz band, and no channel bonding. Good hardware and channel bonding will get you to 50 Mbps with 2.4 GHz. 5 GHz and a close client can push that to 70 Mbps, but rarely more and occasionally less than 2.4 GHz (2.4 penetrates walls better than 5). In all circumstances, regardless of the connected speed reported by adapter driver (e.g., "300.0 Mbps"), a 100 Mbps wired connection will be superior. Boiled down: an 802.11g connection will get you through many DVD-sized films. 802.11n configured properly will work for almost all recompressed films, but not Blu-ray. And a 100 Mbps wire will handle anything.

Picture quality on the WDTV is excellent, perhaps even better than my BD player. Playback is aided by basic zoom controls, but the zoom function apparently occurs later in the processing chain than the downsampling of the source to fit the screen. So, if you're playing wide 1080p content on a 720p screen, zooming in to fill the black bars will upsample the 720p image instead of adding back resolution from the 1080p source. Fast-forward and rewind are very responsive over a wired connection and only slightly less so with wireless.

I've encountered two persistent negatives. The first is an inability to set favorite places; I have to drill down to my movie folder from the top menu every time I boot the unit. The second negative is share discovery. While my WDTV has no trouble sustaining a connection or playing a film, it's a crapshoot whether it'll find my network drive. Detection works for perhaps 4 in 5 tries. The release notes for firmware version 1.02.21 (3/30/10) suggest this latter issue may have been fixed, though I haven't had a chance to find out. Since the "just works" vibe is a major draw of the WDTV, I'm reluctant to recommend it to the non-tech-savvy crowd until I'm certain it will work consistently. WD's commitment to improving the product is nonetheless admirable.

=== Technical notes ===

File sizes are described in bytes, big B. Transfer rates, in bits per second, small b. There are 8 bits to each byte. To transfer a 5 GB file from point to point at 100 Mbps, for example, it would take 400 seconds.

5 GB = 5000 MB
100 Mbps = (100 / 8) MBps = 12.5 MBps
5000 MB / 12.5 MBps = 400 seconds

To derive my file size estimates in the earlier text, I calculated as follows:

Maximum sustained real-world bandwidth:

802.11g: 20 Mbps
802.11n: 20 - 85 Mbps
100 BASE-T: 95 Mbps

Peak bitrate: 3X the average bitrate for a given file
Average bitrate: file size / file length
Average file length: 90 minutes (5400 seconds)

e.g.

20 Mbps * 5400 seconds = 108,000 Mb
108,000 Mb / 8 = 13,500 MB
13,500 MB / 3 = 4500 MB = 4.5 GB

We would expect 802.11g to just barely handle 4.5 GB files, though as I discovered, that turned out to be optimistic. There's a fudge factor here because the peak bitrate multiplier depends on the aggressiveness of the H.264 encoder. I've seen a range of 2X to 6X, so it's possible that a smaller movie could stutter while a larger one plays without issue. 3X remains a fair approximation for most files. Some routers support channel-bonding and frame-burst algorithms that may improve bandwidth and playback results.

You can also calculate the bandwidth required to play a particular file.

e.g.

10 GB file
5400 seconds in length

10000 MB / 5400s = 1.85 MBps
1.85 MBps * 8 = 14.8 Mbps
14.8 MBps * 3 = 45 Mbps

For this 10 GB, 90 minute film, we can expect it to stutter over 802.11g, but play smoothly over a decent 802.11n network.

There are already some very well-written informative reviews on this player, so I'll try to focus on the "out of the box experience" since mine is literally just out of the box today. Because my order on Amazon for this product was backordered for a month or more, I called all the local Best Buys until I found a WD TV Live that was not showing up on their "store availability" page and purchased it for $119 plus tax (oh how I missed Amazon when the tax was added on at my local store!). The price on Amazon has gone all over the place the last few days, from $119 to $149. I'm assuming we'll see it at $99 after the initial release period is over since several media players are now priced at that point.

I went home, unpacked the box and in my haste I didn't even see the installation CD that came with the unit. (I just ran it now so I could tell you about it - it includes a utility which allows your computer to "see" the WD TV, as well as the manual and some other fluff).

I plugged the WDTV into an ethernet jack on my router, used the supplied cables to attach to my TV, plugged in the power cable and literally minutes later I was watching videos stored on my computer! The WD TV immediately logged onto our computer network and saw both of our computers (Windows XP), and I was able to watch media stored on both. Wow. Very easy. Then I navigated to Pandora, punched in my account information, and 30 seconds later was listening to my Pandora music stations. Next stop was YouTube (another menu option), I plugged in my YouTube name and password, and was able to see my YouTube subscriptions.

I then went into the settings menu and clicked on "update firmware" just to make sure I had the latest firmware installed. After about 5 seconds of the unit checking with Western Digital, it confirmed my firmware is up to date. Again, very easy. I was also able to register the unit from the onscreen display, and received a confirmation email. I found the onscreen menus very logically laid out and easy to use.

Watching movies stored on my computer and accessing YouTube/Pandora was great - but I wanted to see if I could access Hulu. So, I navigated to the "media server" menu and it saw my Tversity software program running on one computer. I clicked on that and minutes later I was watching "Glee" (a program on ABC). The only issue I ran into was that fast forward would sometimes cause the program to freeze and I would need to re-start. Given that this media player is brand new and basically in what feels like a beta release, sold out just about everywhere, I'm assuming that a firmware upgrade in the coming weeks will fix that bug as well as any others I come across. I tried a few other programs and was only able to replicate the issue intermittently. However, pause caused no problems. And, I don't expect Western Digital to support Tversity, which may be the root of the problem (vs the WD player) so I'm not taking off marks for that one issue. I'm just happy I can watch a variety of shows streamed from Tversity on the WD TV. (A google search on Tversity will take you to the download site for that wonderful free to try program).

My previous media server, the D-Link DSM-320 D-Link DSM-320 Wireless Media Player, Audio/Photo/Video, 802.11g, is not nearly as nice... I spent hours and hours and hours (days) configuring it and getting it to "see" my home network. I also found the user menus to be very cumbersome with navigation almost an afterthought. In contrast, the WD TV is a dream come true and definitely feels like the "next generation" of media servers.

I've tried a number of video and music formats, and they've all played with no problem (except for the fast forward issue above). I watched a slide show of pictures stored on one of my computers. All of this without reading a single manual or going to a single internet help forum. Literally, plug and play.

So, overall, I'd say this is a strong unit, and I'm very happy with it. Since I am reviewing the unit much sooner than I normally would, I do commit to the Amazon community that if I experience issues with the WD TV I'll return to update this review. But based on my experience with other media servers and other hardware setups, I think this is a winner. Highly recommended.

Hope this helps!


UPDATE 11/12/2009: Almost a month later and I'm 1000% happy with this player... no issues. Works great... fast..great interface... I'm going to give one or two of these as holiday presents this year. I've replaced my DVR on my second TV and no longer pay the cable company $14 per month for a DVR... this little gizmo is going to pay for itself!

LAST UPDATE 12/5/2009: I was experiencing video freezing with Hulu using the Tversity software on my computer... I switched to Playon and am really glad I did! Flawless performance on Hulu streaming and TONS of content (i.e. you can watch tons of old TV shows like Dynasty and Mary Tyler Moore). Still very happy with this unit. I do agree with other reviewers - it would be nice if remote had a volume control, and some of the navigation screens are a bit "clunky" but overall very happy.

In the past I have dismissed various media players such as the Apple TV with 160GB Hard Drive - MB189LL/A because they either cost as much as a Xbox 360 Arcade or weren't anywhere near as versatile as the PlayStation 3 120 GB. Now there is a viable option that is more versatile than the PS3 (minus the Blu Ray) and costs less than the Xbox 360!

In terms of versatility, this unit excels. It plays media on attached USB drives like the consoles, and like the consoles, it can connect to a DLNA server (such as Tversity). What is unique is the network share support, both in terms of media playback (making media servers someone unneeded if this is your only media player) and in terms of adding any attached USB drives to your network. In terms of codec support, this unit plays just about anything. Where my PS3 could play m2ts files with ac3 (Dolby Digital), this unit can do that as well as play mkv files with either ac3 or DTS (or both since mkv and m2ts files can have multiple audio streams). WMV, mp4, mp3, etc all supported, as are many other formats I don't use (but you may).

The WD TV Live also sports many outputs (though you seem to be able to use just one at a time), including HDMI, component, composite, toslink, and RCA. It's also got 2 USB inputs (supporting optional wireless and drives) and ethernet in. The small unit is about the size of a paperback book and sports enough heft to stay in place (a sometimes overlooked feature). Rounding out the hardware is a mediocre, but functional and responsive remote control. WD says you can use the device with a Harmony.

The software is simple, easy to use, and a bit deliberate in that you must choose your media type (audio, video, or picture, then your source, then browse within. I imagine this would rock if I had many sources, but with one media server, fewer clicks would be a plus. The default thumbnail view may work well with local drives, but using media servers and shares, switching to the list view helped tremendously. While generally responsive, the UI generates some flicker at the bottom of the screen when browsing (using HDMI at 1080p, not sure if all scenarios generate this). Video playback is fine, though some files take a few moments to start up (maybe a tad quicker than Netflix on the 360). The PS3 totally blows the device away in that regard, but otherwise video playback is outstanding. AV is synched, and I've not noticed any hickups even playing 13gb+ 1080p h.264 (profile 4.1) DTS files (over 100mbps ethernet).

All in all, this device is my favorite media player, allowing me to move my PS3 to our other HD TV and retire our 360 from media playback duty (saving it for games). I haven't had a chance to check out the ASUS O!Play - TV HD Media Player (Black), but that may be worth a look (slightly different input and output options, but seemingly as flexible.

I was looking for a convenient way, to organize my videos (DVDs, Home Videos, Tivo Recordings etc.). My final two choices were the Apple TV (ATV) device or the Western Digital WD TV Live.

I finally decided, to go with the Western Digital WD TV Live. Where the Apple TV has a beautiful interface, and integrats nicely into a Mac environment (iTunes, Airport Extreme etc.), it does not allow you to stream the variety of media types that the Western Digital WD TV Live does. Also, the WD solution is quite a bit cheaper.

The first thing that was surprising to me, when I opened the box was, how small and portable the WD device is. This is definitely another plus in comparison to the ATV. Hooking up the device was easy, using the HDMI cable. However, I was never able to get the Component output to work. Be warned: I initially set up my WD device using Composite, and then changed the output settings to Component. The Component output did not work and I had to navigate through the flickering picture, until I finally was able to change the settings to Composite again.
But if you use HDMI, you will not run into any issues.

The next issue was, that as soon as I connected the device to my Home Network, the Western Digital WD TV Live asked me to download a firmware update. I did so, and after about 20% of the download, the TV screen turned black. I waited for about 30 minutes, but nothing seemed to happen anymore. I had to unplug the WD device, and then restart it again. The firmware update then completed without any further issues.

Network connections worked easy. The Western Digital WD TV Live found all my shared folders on my PC and on my two Mac computers right away, and was able to stream the media. One drawback is, that the WD does not recognize my iTunes. It only recognizes the mp3 and aac files. It does not play the file protected aac files, purchased from the iTunes store.

The YouTube and Pandora integration also worked without a problem. However, entering text, using the remote control
is very cumbersome (but that is also true for a PS3, Tivo unit etc.).
Speaking of Tivo : Since I am using a mac, files transferred from a Tivo unit to my Mac use a .tivo file format, which is not recognized by the Western Digital WD TV Live. These files need to be converted to mp4 or m4v format.

Which brings me to my last section of my review : Copying your movies to a Hard Disk. For Apple, using the free software Handbrake is almost essential. I recommend, to use the preset 'Apple Universal' which will either create a mp4 or a m4v file of your DVDs. Both formats work flawless with the Western Digital WD TV Live.
When you export your home movies from the old iMovie HD, the application will create a .dv file, which is not recognized by the Western Digital WD TV Live. Again, these files need to be converted.
However, the new iMovie 9 creates a .m4v file which works perfect.

The WD device recognizes all types of HD formatting, in my case, I use the Apple Journaled format.

The Western Digital WD TV Live connects to your home network through a network cable, or you can purchase an additional USB device (~ $ 20.00) which will let you connect through your WiFi router.

The HD Picture is beautiful. However, this of course always depends on the compression that you use, when converting your movies. I compress all my DVDs to about 2 GB, and the picture quality is still very good. However, for my home movies, I use uncompressed, true HD, which looks perfect on my Sony LCD TV.

Conclusion : The price/value ratio for this product is outstanding. There are still a couple of issues that will probably be resolved in the future, with new Firmware updates.
A couple of nice to haves would be the integration of Netflix streaming, or access to Hulu (which is possible, streaming the media through your PC using a media server).
The user interface is nice, but ATV is miles ahead of everyone else (i.e. PS3, Tivo etc.). But I am very happy with the Western Digital WD TV Live - it does exactly what I want, and then some more.

************ Additional comments 12/18/2009 ***********************
I have been using this device for several weeks now and I still love it. In fact, I went ahead and bought a second one for our downstairs TV.
I connect the Hard Disk, which contains the media, to my Airport Extreme USB output and both WD devices recognize the shared hard disk. Again, even the user manual says otherwise, I have no problem with the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) formatted Hard Disk. However, sometimes, it takes up to 10 minutes until the Hard Disk shows up on the WD HD TV Live, after I turn it on. Not sure, what the issue is there, but I can live with this.

The other issue I ran into is, that movies, which have the Apple .m4v extension, play fine, but functions like 'fast forward' are not supported. However, if I simply change the file extension from .m4v to .mp4, everything works
fine.

************ Additional comments 01/08/2010 ***********************
Two more things : The Component output works fine. This was my mistake. Initially, I chose the wrong settings (50 Hz instead of 60 Hz).
The second point I wanted to make is : Be very careful with the External HDs you choose. At first, I used an old 500 GB Seagate HD which worked without any issues. I then upgraded to a newer 1.5 TB "Seagate FreeAgent Desk" (Brown Box) External USB Drive. This was a big mistake. The internal 'power management' of this drive puts the Hard Disk to sleep halfway through a movie, which causes the video playback to freeze. I have tried to fix this, by utilizing the Seagate Disk Diagnostics Tool for OS X, but without any success. It is probably best, to use a WD MyBook for Mac instead.

I was so excited to get this thing. When it works, it is amazing. But, it doesn't work. The latest firmware (.12) started "bricking" devices. Thankfully, I stayed on .11. This is one update after the debut firmware of .10. The .11 firmware is not mature enough for a product being sold on Amazon or other stores. If you buy this, you will be a beta tester for a product for which the company already has your money and does not owe you a thing in regards to better firmware. I raised critical issues about this product (see below) to Western Digital support, both on the phone and in their own support forums. 12 days have passed and there has been absolutely no response... no acknowledgment, no ETA for a fix, nothing!

I really want to own this product. The feature set and codec support are a good value at the price (comparable products might add better codec support and a limited web browser but at a much higher price). And, I am still following the forums to see if the critical issues will be fixed, even though I returned it to the store. I'd buy it again and re-review it if WD would fix the critical bugs.

Here are the critical issues with this unit:
1. Asynchronous audio - One of the cool things about the WD TV Live is that it offers an optical audio output in addition to the HDMI. For those of us using older A/V receivers that do not have HDMI switching, this is a selling point. However, it does not work. On certain mixes of codecs (primarily the popular H.264 with AC3 5.1) the lip synch is off. Upgrading my A/V receiver is not an option right now. Phone support from WD told me that the lip synch was off b/c I was "looking too closely at it". He tried to tell me that even in movie theaters I will notice the lip synch being off if I really look for it. Stupid! I told him that my old upconverting DVD player and Xbox360 are both hooked up the same way and there are no lip synch issues. He had no response. The issue is raised as a critical bug in the WD support forums and is being completely ignored by WD there.

2. Network drops - From what I understand, the older WD TV product is fantastic (and does not have the asynchronous audio problem). That older product is missing a key feature - network jack (there is a way to get on the network with a USB network adapter hack with some custom firmware). So being able to hook up the WD TV Live to your network and stream your media from your main server is a huge selling point for this product over the older one. Guess what? Doesn't work. At least not out of the box. Oh sure, you'll be excited because it does work for 4 or 5 minutes. The WD TV Live drops itself from the network (in the middle of watching a movie even) every 4 or 5 minutes. It also does so when another device appears or drops from the network (if my wife turns on her laptop while I'm streaming media from my main server the WD TV Live drops). There are some workarounds, but they are inconvenient or they require you to disable features (for me, I turned off the option to have the WD TV Live appear on my network as a device - which cripples the feature that I could use it as a cheap NAS with USB hard drives attached to it). Another workaround is to turn on the WD TV Live, navigate to your network share folder and then let it sit for 5 minutes before starting your movie. What?!? (and I believe you'll still get dropped in that scenario when your wife turns on her laptop.)

3. Thumbnails - I stream media to my Xbox360 using TVersity on the PC. But, one of the reasons I got the WD TV Live was so that my wife and kids could access media without turning on the Xbox360 (and I was looking forward to watching movies without a system fan roaring in the background). How cool would it be if my wife and kids could browse our media over the network (this issue only applies to networked media, not media you have on a locally attached USB drive) using pretty pictures instead of a text list? That'd be very cool. Doesn't work. If your media type doesn't support embedding a thumbnail picture, there is a way to get a thumbnail - you drop the .JPG thumbnail for your movie into the same folder and you name it the same. So OurMovie.MKV would have the OurMovie.JPG thumbnail. Good idea, except that when you actually access that folder with the device to watch the movie, all of the .JPGs for all of your movies are shown separately and shown first. Clicking on them loads them up in the Live's picture viewer (does not start the movie). You have to scroll all the way down past your .JPGs to see the movie files (which ARE showing the thumbnail).... but now you've got two of the same image and depending on which you click, you'll either get a movie or a picture. This means that you actually have to look for the file extension text below the thumbnail to see what you'll be clicking on. Totally defeats the purpose of having the thumbnail in the first place. Stupid!

4. YouTube - WD is using YouTube access as a selling point for this product. This has upset Google. Probably the most popular product in this category of device is the Popcorn Hour machines. Starting Dec. 2, they have been forced by Google to remove YouTube functionality from their devices. There has been no word from WD about their current position with Google. But, the forums are abuzz currently that YouTube functionality has broken... and it actually appears to be something YouTube (Google) did... not b/c of a WD firmware change. Think about that. YouTube service can be disrupted at any moment by simple changes to the API by Google. Without a good contract in place between WD and Google, WD will either need to remove YouTube or dedicate some developers to updating the WD firmware to stay in synch with Google's API (at least until Google threatens a suit). WD is not "some Chinese company" - they are not going to take this risk. And, judging by their complete absence in their own support forums and complete ignorance of their Level 1 and Level 2 phone techs, there MAY NEVER be any future firmware upgrades for this crippled, hobbled device.

A note about power consumption - I was also excited at the prospect of the WD TV Live using a lot less electricity than my Xbox360. And it does, while in use. It uses 6 watts while streaming full 1080p video with surround sound from the network. When sitting idle in one of its menus (or when the screensaver kicks in) it uses 5 watts. This is fantastic! However, when you power down the unit, it does not turn off. The front power LED turns off and it does not send signals to the outputs, but it's still on and using 4 watts. Considering how much time I'll use the device vs. how much time it will sit idle in standby mode, I'm not excited about that constant 4 watt drain. (This is coming from a guy who is burning only 4.5 watts total across three ceiling can lights in his basement stairwell instead of 180 watts thanks to LED bulbs.)

The device has promise, but the company that makes it does not have a good track record for continued support and fixes via firmware updates. I returned it b/c I'd rather have my own money than give it to WD with the wishful thinking that they'll fix the problems.

First off, I LOVE this device. Love, as in it has become my favorite new toy. The last time I liked a device this much was my very first iPod back in the day. The reason is pretty simple: it does everything it says it will and does it well. Many of the negative reviews of this product are dinging it because either the firmware killed the device (an understandable reason to be upset--I would be to if that happened to me) or because it doesn't have features the purchaser would like it to have (unreasonable in my opinion). This is NOT an internet browser for your TV--if you want something that does that, buy a media center PC. It also doesn't have built in WIFI. If you want WIFI, be prepared to buy a wifi adapter to connect to the USB port. If not having WIFI built in is a problem for you, then DON'T buy one! Is the WD Live perfect? No. Does it do a lot of things really, really well? Yes.

Ok, now on to what makes the WD TV Live so awesome:

1) Codec support for virtually any media file. I've thrown Xvid, divX, MKV, .AVI, FLAC, mp3, etc. files of various sizes at it and all work perfectly. I've played Blue Ray rips at full 1080p streaming from my NAS and the picture is truly fantastic. Dolby Surround decoding is flawless. This thing just works and I've yet to find a CODEC that I use which it doesn't support.

2) Ease of netwrok set-up. I don't understand people having issues with network connectivity. I plugged this into my network switch, turned it on, ran the auto network configuration, and was all ready to go. If you are not able to stream files from your Windows PC, the issue is almost certainly with permissions on the files (assuming you have them shared). Even if you share them you sometimes need to set the permissions to 'everyone' for them to be accessible (right click on the shared directory, go to 'permissions' and select everyone). You also need to make sure you either turn off 'password protected sharing' OR configure the WD Live with the correct password for each PC you want to stream files from. I am currently streaming from two different windows 7 PCs (a notebook over wireless and my personal PC over LAN) as well as my NAS and all work seamlessly. If you don't know how to properly set up a home network and are having issues with connectivity, don't blame it on this device. Do some reading first before assuming that the WD Live is to blame.

3) HDMI out with full audio pass through. No need to attach all sorts of audio cables. 1 HDMI cable to your receiver and you're done.

4) Easy to navigate connectivity to your network shares. The WD Live sorts by directory NOT meta tags, so if you want to be able to search your media files easily use iTunes or Windows Media Player to auto-organize them into files. A good naming structure is something like Music\Artist\Album. Another tip would be to download mp3tag (freeware) and use it to not just tag your files correctly, but rename the files themselves with a good naming architecture so that the file name INCLUDES the meta data. This is advice for media file management in general, but if you do it, it will make using the WD Live even more enjoyable. Since my music library and video collection is already organized and named correctly, my experience using the GUI to find and play files has been great. If you put all your files in one massive directory, you will have to sort through a long list of files to find what you want to play.

5) Support for USB hard drive/flash drive. It's not essential to have a network connection. You can use a hard drive or USB drive full of you media files. This is a great option for those who just want access to their music/video library and don't care about web streaming capability.

6) Responsiveness is great. Playing and pausing media files is instant, even a massive 12GB Blue Ray rip. Menu navigation is smooth and glitch free. It's nice when things work well, and the WD TV Live just works.

A few complaints:

1) It would be nice if the GUI supported a search function. It would also be nice if it supported meta tags. It would be even nicer if supported a keypad so that typing things in wasn't the tedious process that it currently is.

*****CORRECTION*****12-13-2009*****

The WD TV Live DOES support Meta Tags if you upgrade the firmware AND you are streaming from a NAS or PC that supports media extension. Currently I am using a D-Link DNS-321 upgraded to the most recent firmware and I am now able to sort media files by artist, genre, etc. Unfortunately the way the WD Live displays files inside these categories is by the ACTUAL file names, so for example everything in my Alternative Rock Genre is lumped together and sorts by file name. It's not broken down by artist or album, so it's really not that useful. If you rename all your files so that the first word of the file is the track number, you can at least sort by album and have songs play in the correct order instead of alphabetically. The real weakness of the WD TV Live is it's poorly designed sort features when using META tags. However, as I stated earlier in this review, I sort my media by file location, so for me it is virtually a non issue.

2) I wish the WD Live supported HULU and other web pages. The problem is that there is no built in web browser (Firefox, IE, etc.). That would require a lot more code--what is supported (Flickr and Youtube) are API applications that don't require a full browser. My guess is that WD pursued specific licensing with both Flickr and Youtube to allow their applications--that's why there isn't more diverse support for online content. My recommendation is that if this is a deal killer for you, you probably really need a HTPC not a media streamer. It would be awesome if some intrepid coder would make an alternative firmware with an API plug for HULU and other media streaming pages. Not sure if the firmware WD puts out is open source or not. My gut tells me not.

3) No external power buttons. This isn't a big deal, but I really like to be able to turn things on and off when the remote is absent.

Conclusions:

This is not a perfect device. It won't bring about world peace or solve the US budget deficit. It doesn't come with every conceivable feature that anyone can imagine. It won't troubleshoot your network or let you browse the net from your recliner. Metatag sorting is not great, and if you rely solely on metatags to sort your media, you will likely be unhappy unless you take the time to properly name/sort your media files. On the other hand, it will allow you to play just about any media file known to man with breathtaking video and sound quality. It will make streaming your media collection from a PC or a NAS easy. It will provide you with wonderful versatility in your AV set up. For the price, I personally believe it is well worth buying, and while not perfect, it's very, very good.

4.5/5 Stars.

As a die-hard fan of Apple products, it broke my heart to buy the WD TV Live instead of an AppleTV. But the lack of flexibility with the latter left me no choice. After using the WD for several days now, I couldn't be more pleased with my decision. Set-up was surprisingly easy, shockingly so, in fact. The devise instantly recognized my Mac and integrated its files without a problem. The interface isn't perfect - very PlayStation-esque - but works very well after you get used to it. Movie playback was seamless, audio playback excellent, and the youtube/pandora integration is a huge plus. I have high hopes that future firmware updates will expand that capability to hulu and netflix.

The WD TV lacks the polish of an Apple product, but the added functionality more than makes up for it. I highly recommend the WD to anyone who wants to tie their the computer to their home theater.

This is very tiny hardware media player.

I'll just put the cons here since the pros are fairly easy to read in other reviews.

1) Will not recognize any folder on the network that is named MOVIES, MUSIC, PICTURES.

2) Only passes dts into stereo. Licensing costs too much WD says.

3) Does not play my Quicktime (MOV) files (which are four years old).

4) Cannot hot swap USB drive. You have to power off/on the player or it will not be recognized.

5) No E-sata port like the ASUS

Those are just minor quibbles. It's a fantastic device and easily replaces your HTPC. Uses 5% of the space and 5% of the energy of a HTPC!

Final Update: Returned my "bricked" unit, then bought a replacement. The ability to stream SD video to all the netbooks in the house is a killer feature. In fact, I use the WDTV as a low volume network storage device (with hard drive attached, of course). Unit also streams 720p video from my iMac without a hiccup. Very happy with the unit now; though I will Always wait a few days, and review customer feedback before installing any updates.


UPDATE: "Bricking" has been tied to internet updating of firmware 1.011.12. Simply avoid this update, and monitor the online forums for a while before accepting any future update requests. I'll up my rating to 3 stars, then to 4 when this issue is more permanently resolved.

Do Not Buy This Unit Until Firmware Issue Fixed!

Since it connects to the internet, new firmware is automatically detected. I said "yes" to firmware 1.01.12, and it "bricked" the unit. As far as I can tell, EVERYONE who accepts this update ends up with an unrecoverable unit. Absolutely Nothing will bring it back.

Repeat: Do Not Buy This Unit Until Firmware Issue Is Resolved. Even then, this debacle should give you pause.

That said, until now I have really enjoyed the WDTV Live, and the WDTV I had before it. Heads are going to roll at WD, I'm sure.

So sad. Guess I'm going to have to hardwire the computer to the TV again, until a reliable solution is released.