WD TV Live Plus: Western Digital's Latest Media Player Reviewed
by Cameron Butterfield on July 29, 2010 1:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Home Theater
- Media Streamer
- WD
- WD TV Live Plus
The WD TV Live Plus is easy to setup, especially if you are utilizing the HDMI port that is capable of carrying all your audio and video signals at once over a single cable. Getting the WD TV Live Plus to lay flat after plugging in a heavy duty cable can be a bit of a challenge, as the weight and tension of the cable seems to make it flip to the side until you play with it for a while, but you can hardly blame WD for making such a slim and light device. However If you do purchase this device, you may want to invest in a roll of velcro or double sided tape to keep it in place.
Once seated and connected, the WD TV boots up quickly and you are provided with dark and light blue color scheme menu system that is very easily controled by using the arrow keys and a back, forward (OK) control scheme that is very reminiscent to the PSP, or PS3 menu system or Windows 7 Media Center. Western Digital did a good job of making the UI on this device familiar and easy to use for end users, they also have provided a screensaver mode that automatically blanks the screen and displays a WD logo in random areas.
When a USB device containing compatible media files is first inserted, the media library compilation process begins (if it is enabled), and media is sorted out into their respective media categories, namely Music, Video, or Photo. This feature allows you to use the search functionality rather than simply browsing around inside folders to find your media. In addition, the WD TV Live’s menu system provides file organization features as well, allowing you to move and copy your media and folders around on your connected storage devices. These are welcome features and gives the WD TV somewhat of a unique advantage over other media players that do not have these types of organizational features.
You can browse each of the sections (Video, Pictures and Music) using different viewing modes; thumbnails or list. The thumbnail view will show images for folders that have a FOLDER.JPG file within the folder, MP3 files with embedded artwork, photo files themselves, and mp4 files with user generated thumbnail images. This viewing mode works well for Music and Photos, but can be a troublesome viewing mode for videos. Since most videos do not have embedded images, the end result of viewing a folder full of videos is that you are unable to distinguish the videos from each other very easily, and when scrolling through the list of videos, the default thumbnail image is the same which creates a static visual effect where you can’t tell if you are actually scrolling through the video files or not. Sticking to the list or preview view on the video menu is recommended unless you are only viewing mp4 files that you have already generated the thumbnails for.
Western Digital also deserves some recognition for their efforts in providing a comprehensive manual for the WD TV Live Plus product. I was impressed with the level of detail and instruction on how to perform tasks on the device. Each step was outlined clearly with not only instructions but also many screenshots outlining each step and showing the action taking place on screen. This attention to detail makes a big difference in the user’s learning curve as it is much easier to translate screenshots into actual device usage rather than just text on a blank white page.
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gigahertz20 - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
I own a WD TV Live and a Popcorn Hour A-110, both are pretty good but the Popcorn Hour has played back everything fine whereas the WD TV Live has refused to play back certain media, mostly movies with dual audio tracks. I have to use MP4Muxer to delete one of the the audio tracks, after that it will play back fine.If I do upgrade/buy another media player in the future, it will probably be another Popcorn Hour, but I want to wait since I don't like their current line of players. I've read reviews on the newer Popcorn Hour A-200 and people complain of fan noise and the casing is just a piece of plastic, not metal like the older A-110 that I have, which is nice since the metal casing acts like a heat sink.
I was looking forward to the Boxee Box despite its ugly form factor, but then I've read that it will only be capable of 10 Mbits/sec 1080p HD decodes. So forget the usual 20 – 30 Mbps H264 rips on the Boxee Box.
It seems like the Boxee box is just a fancy Xbmc box that may play most SD and 720p material, internet streaming channels etc, and a very limited portion of 1080p re-encodes if max bitrates are limited to 10Mbps.
To bad Microsoft and Sony can't make their game consoles true media players that can handle any format, then we wouldn't need to mess around with buying a media player.
sucram03 - Saturday, July 31, 2010 - link
The information you provide is very informative, thanks for that.However, I would remind people not to start comparing the WD TV Live to the WD TV Live Plus. My understanding is that the underlying hardware components that decode are the same, except for the added chip that allows for Netflix viewing. However, this appears to not be the case.
I've had multiple anime shows with dual (and triple)-audio (in MKV containers) play perfectly fine with this WDTV Live Plus. Also, I'm waiting for a hopeful release of B.rad's firmware which is only good for the WD TV & WD TV Live at the moment. This would allow for moviesheet display with a nice looking interface and library over a network share, which is something the WD TV's cannot do (currently they only build a library if the connection is local).
Interesting info on the Boxee box. I had/returned the popbox due to the horrendous firmware and slow GUI response. It was absolutely the worst purchase I've made in years.
I might suggest you look into putting B.rad's firmware on your WDTV Live, and see if that helps any of the issues you had experienced. Of course, YMMV, but most people do seem to like the firmware.
gigahertz20 - Monday, August 2, 2010 - link
Thanks for the info, the problems regarding dual audio tracks has happened in mp4 files. For example the latest one was a movie with the specs below, my WD TV Live just refused to play it.Video Information:
Format: H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
Video Bitrate: 3011
Framerate: 23.97fps
Display aspect ratio: 1.86
Encoder: x264
Resolution: 1280x688
Audio Information:
Format: mp4a: MPEG-4 AAC LC
Audio #1: 384kb/s 48000 Hz 6-channel
Audio #2: 128kb/s 48000 Hz 2-channel
Subs: None
ganeshts - Tuesday, August 3, 2010 - link
gigahertz20,Does this happen with all MP4 files having multiple audio tracks? We have quite a few test files with multiple audio, but unfortunately, none in the MP4 container.
Can you upload a sample for us to check out / add to the test suite?
Thanks
Ganesh
skinsman - Friday, September 3, 2010 - link
I ran across this comment while googling for WDTV Live mp4a problems. I've found there is a definite issue with mp4a multi-channel AAC audio - lots of people report no audio output. Dual audio tracks usually works fine from what I've seen, I don't think that's the issue you're hitting. On the other hand maybe you're seeing a different issue to the usual mp4a one - does your WDTV Live refuse to play the file at all, or are you seeing video but no audio?temporalillusion - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
Great article, and look forward to more like this. There's a ton of these things out there and it's hard to know which one is good beyond just looking at the codec list.Do the Popbox next! :D
gigahertz20 - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
The Popbox is crap, just look at the reviews on Amazon....ouch, it wasn't ready at all to be put out there for customers. Maybe months from now after a bunch of updated firmwares are issued, it will be decent.http://www.amazon.com/popbox-Syabas-PopBox-Media-P...
temporalillusion - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
Ah bummer, that's too bad. Thanks for the info, appreciated.jigglywiggly - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
These things are ALL stupid. You can get a new 360 for 150-200$ (arcade obv) AND, just run a tversity media server for all the content your 360 cannot play. Then just sit back, and let the 360 run... it has way way way stronger hardware than any of these things.beginner99 - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
yeah lol what formats cann the xbox 360play? xvid, avi? that's about. Any content worth watching on a large tv in most cases aint gonna be any of these. Unoffical standard is mkv (h.264, dts or AC3). transcoding will always lower quality. Can the xbox360 play 1080p? I doubt it.