Customer Ratings & Reviews

This item is in short AWESOME!. I owned it for about 6 months and i've never been more satisfied. It can play MKV's (which I use the most), along with iso, music files and others. You can connect an external HDD to the device (ntfs or fat32) and read all the files from it. There is a built-in database that you can link the info and a thumbnail to it for movies. Basically you have decent-size cover art/info of all your files and can easily scroll across them in an interface. You can also manually attach thumbnails to files/folders which is nice if you have a set of videos and wanted to have the cover art for it. It's has a lot of apps as well and as of sept 2012 It is still updating its firmware and fixing minor issues. One downside is that the streaming wirelessly of files from my computer for me seems to have hiccups at a few points when watching a movie file, video apps stream fine. Your best bet is to buy a large hard drive and connect to the device. You can however wirelessly transfer from the computer to the device and any hdd connected and vice versa w/ no problems. a large hdd (at least 1tb) to complement this is a necessary addition for the device.

I am using my Playstation3 to stream my ripped music. movies, pictures to my TV. My wife wanted to see my movies and family pics to her TV and I didn't want to pay $300 for another PS3 to do so. Surprisingly I came across this little jewel by accident and bought it. The set up is incredibly easy and the interface is very friendly!

I bought this after the previous generation unit finally died after 5 or 6 years.. The WD TV Live Player is everything a techie needs to be happy streaming their own files to a TV. This plays almost every type of media file out there.. (there are some Apple files that won't work but who cares). The device upconverts to HD, so even mediocre video files look great! I hope this lasts at least as long as the previous version and with Wifi, it is an even better choice. Highly recommended!

The Header says it all! I've tried Roku2XS, Roku3, Pivos Aios, Boxee, Vizio's Co-Star (sexy but clunky) Netgear's Neo-Tv, and another android based device (forgot the name). All of which do exactly what I want them to...........When combined!!! I had the original WD Live player and was and am still pleased with it. 3 plus years and still eating up every video file I feed it. With that being said I went out and bought the The WD TV Live. I got what I expected and was extremely satisfied, but figured I would return it and try the ones listed above. After 3 weeks of going back and forth to Best Buy I realized WTH am I doing?! I went right back to my Favorite player and will not look back. I got it home once again and realized why I love it so much! It streams HULU, NetFlix, personal media via network and 2 USB ports. The UI is simple and easy to navigate. I used to rely on my external HD's for downloaded video/audio content, but now that I have my external HD feeding my Belkin N750 wireless router through one of its 2 USB ports I can now stream all of my online and personal media without having to leave my pc running. Talk about convenience. I believe it might support PLEX (I'll update this review once its determined). And one more thing.....the Smartphone Remote Control App is pimp. Android and Apple avail. Uses your wifi and works great :) Hope this helps. -Stickles

I am handy but not high tech at all. I have two of these although they are extremely portable I could get by with one, but my wife and I both use them sometimes on different TV's at the same time. What I like best about the WD TV Live Media Player is that it has a USB port along with a HDMI port. With the USB port I can attach portable drives even thumb drives and all the content of the drive and watch it on my TV's. If the video on the disc is HD, you can watch it in HD. I use it to archive movies on my hard drive and then I have a huge choice of videos all in one space. The WD TV Live Media Player also has Netflix, etc. just as ROKU does. Therefore, you can surf the internet for all your video providers as well (Flicker, YouTube, etc)

I have owned two of these for over a year now and overall they are fantastic devices. If you're tech savy and want to be able to stream your dvds and videos from your computer to your television this is what you need. My favorite thing about this little wonder is that I can sit in front of my television and review all of my videos and choose what I want to watch without getting up from the couch. In the old days you'd have to get up, look through all your dvds and try to find what you want. Since I've purchased this I've added more and more dvds to my collection because the WD makes it so easy to watch them. Sure you can use VUDU or one of the other streaming services to watch movies and tv, - and I do, - but if you're into cult or old movies and tv shows or things that aren't easily available you probably have a collection that doesn't get watched much. The WD makes it easy. I'm not going to go into the few issues I've had because to be honest if you know your way around networking the issues aren't that significant and there's a great user's forum you can use to get all of your issues resolved. The few posts I had were taken care of no problem. Everyone with a video collection should have one or more of these units. You can also display photos which is great because you can create a folder on your computer with the photos you want and then have them streamed to the tv. Yeah I know you can use an sd card, but this is better. The unit also has several streaming services you can use, but the main reason I bought mine was to stream videos from my computer so I don't use the WD much for Netflix etc.. I like VUDU CinemaNow and Amazon for renting new movis and I can get to those right from my Panasonic Plasma rather than use the WD.

Difficult to get it to recognize Shared folders on other machines on my network. If I share a top-level folder, it says there's no media in the folder instead of going down a level and showing the folders below it (which do have media). Often will hang and I have to unplug the box to reset it. Doesn't recognize some .avi files and most .flv files.

Easy setup and play, streams way better then the PS3, and you dont have to use the Playstation network to get to Netflix.Played all my movies from my computer with no issues at all.

The WDTV Live Streaming Media Player plays every type media format I have tried to play so far. My only gripe (and for me it's kind of a big one) is it will not shuffle an entire music library. It will only shuffle one album at a time; you can create a playlist and it will shuffle different tracks from different albums, but the size of the playlist is limited, so you cannot create a playlist that consists of your music library. To me this is a huge failure on Western Digital's part and should be (and easily could be) addressed by a firmware update. I do have other components that will shuffle all my music, so I guess I shouldn't be too hard on WD about it. However, if you are looking for a media solution that will do it all, this isn't it. I'm not sure if one is out there, short of building an HTPC.

I previously had a seagate freeagent player that worked good. Sent it to the exwife for the kids. The Western Digital Live 2nd generation could be considered a surprising upgrade. I am currently using the WDLive with hdmi video and fiberoptic audio output with two thermaltake two slot usb 3.0 docks and four 2tb 3.5" 7200rpm drives routed thru a 4 port usb 3.0 powered hub. The first drive has over 1400 movies in mp4 format on it. This makes for a great setup with never having to touch a DVD disk. Also the WDLive can use the Win7 playto feature for live streaming from a computer to tv.

This product was easy to setup. It has the ability to connect wirelessly, Although I wouldn't recommend it. I ended up having to by a powerline adapter due to freezing and crashes while using wireless. Also the remote tends to be slow and laggy, but you can download a better remote to your apple or android device of choice and that works much better. Has the ability to connect to all the major streaming services. The device also allows you to pause or stop and come back to programs exactly were you left off. I would like to see a way to incorporate smaller streaming services in to the device. It does support all the major file format and encoding algorithm, but more file format and encoding algorithms compatibility would make it more useful. But all and all it is a good device

I will say this, if you are not technical, or have issues with setting up network devices or file sharing, then this device is not for you. If you are capable of reading directions, and you want to stream media from your PC, then there is not a better device on the market. First and foremost, the device plays ALL files. I have yet to find a file format that is does not recognize, and this includes MKV and ISO files. I like to backup my bluRay library to my PC, and it can stream the video and audio flawlessly. The wireless in the device is top notch, it is extremely reliable. Netflix, and all of the other streaming services are great too. The price is right too.

So far I have had a lot of fun with the WD TV Live. The setup of the box itself was very easy, though getting it to recognize my computer as a media server took a little extra work. Even with 2 bars of wireless (small router across the length of the house) it streams with very little need for buffering. Watching internet videos from youtube and "services" take a little time to buffer with 2 bars. I hooked it up with an ethernet cable to a different tv and it streamed like a charm. I just wish I had a cable near to my TV to hook up to it. Great product! Works on both widescreen and standard screens well, though text seems kind of small on the standard setting.

I first bought a Sony Media Player. It's OK. The thing I didn't like about the Sony was that when you fast forwarded, it goes really fast, too fast. So I decided to try this WD product to see how I would llke it. Let me say right off that this WD wins hands down, and is worth the extra money. One of the greatest things that the WD does that Sony doesn't is that it shows a thumbnail of the video in the library, and even plays it in a preview pane. The only reason I give this four stars rather than 5 is because it does not have the capability of slow motion, which seems very odd, given all the other things it can do. So the Sony goes too fast in fast forward, but will do slow mo. The WD allows easy fast forward, but no slow mo. But the WD is by far superior.

My Seagate home Media Player wouldn't read USB drives any more and I couldn't find any Seagate products at the time so I gave the WD Media Player a try. I was happy with the menus, the listings and how it handled the USB drives and network drives. I was very impressed that WD gave opptions for moving and removing Files on USB and networkdrive right from the box. The only two cons are the startup time and random lockups(mostly in netfilxs). One item I really like but isn't listed is the USB network share. Hook a USB drive to the unit and it will share the drive on your network to all your other devices.

This unit has potential but with the current flaws is not for general use, imo. My wife was not able to use it reliably primarily due to random loss of netflix and server configurations. Netflix setup using the remote is tedious - the fact that you can plug in a keyboard is great, but needing to do that every few days is a real pain. The loss of local server streaming configuration is a minor inconvenience - it displays an error message every time it happens. If the error was not displayed, you'd probably never notice the problem - which would be better. The unit never really turns off and is always warm - probably not very green. The unit has a noticeable delay in responding to the remote control which inhibits menu navigation. The delay also tricks you into pressing the remote button too many times and forcing you to backtrack once the unit catches up with the remote commands. The lights from the wired ethernet jack are too bright for a bedroom unless you want a blinking nightlight!.

I used to use my ps3 and the software ps3 media server to stream my movies in avi and mkv format and it always gave me errors all the time, and so I went and bout a 4tb external hd and plug it to my router to access my movies through the router that was pointless. So I returned the HD and walked around bestbuy in Eatontown, NJ and I noticed this product and started to read the package detail and they stated that it supports the mkv format so that was a deal closer... and for the price not bad, took it home set it up in 2 minutes and when to the pc and I was lost. I dug out the instructions and well that was pointless too. all you get as far as the instructions explain it how to hook it up you know Ethernet, hdmi, power cable. so I went on google and a short search pointed me to the WD forums site and there it explained how to added the main pc where the movies are stored on the computer so that the wd tv live can access them, but when you do the intial install on the desktop to access the hub it asks for a password and so I once again go to the instruction manuals and still no clue or even the password stated, so I stated to try different passwords that manufactures use: password(don't work#, admin#this works) so I was able to set it up and then I had my movies streamings in 1080p format which avg around 9gb files and it streamed seamlessly and I was able to enjoy, altogether the setup process took around 20minutes but I was worth it...

After spending the last 48 hours trying to get Roku 3 and Vizio CoStar to play AVI & MP4 files from my portable external hard drive, I was ready to give up. Thank goodness for Geeks! He recommended I try the WD TV Live and his confidence that it would play my files, gave me hope. I was skeptical because all reviews seemed to praise the Roku 3 but I thought what the hell, I'll give it one last try. So I bought this little sucker and it's been smooth sailing ever since! Although you do have to shove the HDMI cord in there pretty good, setup was a snap. Network connected with no problem, remote worked, all though not as impressive as the Roku's Wii style remote or the Vizio's mouse pad and full keyboard remote, it got the job done. However, the boring, unimpressive remote should warrant a cheaper price tag. For me, it was the right choice because I'm not trying to play games or type on it. I have plenty of other devices for that.......smart phone, kindle, laptop...you get the picture. So if you just want to stream some Live TV and play almost any format of video, this gets the job done!

As a cinifile I have a large collection of movies and with most backed up to hard drives I used to use my Mac Mini as a media center until I bought this. Pretty much just plug it in and go!!!

Installed in my SUV for the kids, works like a champ with a USB drive attached. No more DVDs in the car, no more worries about scatches. Can tether to phone and stream content online also. Plays every format under the sun. Great buy for $100.