WD - WD TV HD Media Player

I purchased this unit about a month and a half ago, and I wanted to fully break it in before posting up a review. After extensive testing with a wide array of audio and video formats, I must say, this little black box delivers! I have the unit running via HDMI cable to a Toshiba 32c100u television and the optical audio leads to a Pioneer VSX-520 receiver. My entire collection of .mp3, .mp4 (AAC), .flac (even 24bit/96kHz),.wav, and DTS encoded .wav files play flawlessly. Apple lossless files (.mp4), sadly do not play. But they can be easily converted to .flac with dBpoweramp or similar, if desired, preserving the original lossless audio specs. As for video, I have not had a problem streaming .mkv, .avi. iso, .vob, .wmv or AVCHD files. Flash (.flv) videos are not supported, however. I have been running Netflix on the WDTV Live Plus for about a month now, and have only experienced buffering during two or three programs. Usually it takes about 20 - 30 seconds to load up, and then plays without pause. There is one problem with Netflix, however, and apparently it is widespread. Occasionally the WDTV Live Plus will drop all of your Netflix account information, and the only way you can reapply those settings is to either reset the WDTV Live Plus to its factory settings, or plug in a ridiculously complex code with your remote (think Contra for the Nintendo - Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, etc...) to access the Netflix reset menu. I'm not kidding. Check out the WDTV forum... As for Filesharing, I have a Windows Vista computer, and two Mac computers (one "Tiger" and one "Leopard" OS). The Vista computer connected with no problems whatsoever. The "Leopard" Mac connected without a hitch, either, but the "Tiger" Mac wouldn't connect using the administrator account. I had to create a separate account for it to work. Once connected, all computers streamed to the WDTV Live Plus with a signal strong enough to play High-Def movies brilliantly. Also, it should be noted, all my computers are laptops on a wireless "G" network. If you are hard-wired or use an "N" network, you should certainly be able to stream to your WD box with great results. As for the internet options on the WDTV Live Plus, they could be better (aside from Netflix). Hulu would be nice. YouTube plays wonderfully, but typing in a search with the remote is tedious. The setup was a breeze on the home network. In conclusion, the WDTV Live Plus is a great box for playing digital media from USB attached drives or networked storage and streaming Netflix (aside from the account issue, which will hopefully be resolved in a firmware update), which is why I bought it. So, I've been quite pleased overall.

So I read many of the reviews before buying the WD TV Live Plus HD Media Player and almost didn't do it becasue a lot of the reviews were not so favorable. Having said that, I saw some that gave me hope and with that I went to Best Buy and bought it. Now here is my review, What were my goals? * I wanted a box that could stream video off the internet. * I wanted a box that could access a shared drive in my home network. * I wanted a box that would free up my laptop from being used as a deivce that would allow me to watch movies or pictures on my TV set. * I wanted access to netflix so I could get rid of high priced subscription cable channels. * I wanted a box that had every codec known to man plus HD capable. With those goals in mind I bought the WD TV Live Plus HD Media Player not knowing if it would meet my expectations but it did. The WD TV Live Plus HD Media Player does everything I wanted it to do and more. It is easy to set up and use and the fact that is has a USB port for future expansion was neat too. I am not a tech guy or a computer guru and you don't need to be one for this product but it is a great little box that is worth the 99 bucks. It was on sale when I bought it. Not to mention I saved 17 bucks a month by taking HBO off of my cable bill. With that money saved I subscribed to Netflix which is 7.99 a month and I can see more movies anytime I want on Netflix than I could no HBO. It met my goals and I recommend this to anyone. last bit of info, I ran cat 5 directly to it and didn't go with the wireless option.

After researching for a media player I decided on the WD TV Live Plus. I use the player to stream Netflix as well as play videos from a USB external drive connected to a computer on my home network. The computer is running Windows Vista home edition 32 bit. The player and computer that contain my videos are hard wired to my network using a 10/100 router. I elected not to use wireless. I was concerned that my wireless would not handle HD videos. You will have to make your own choice between a wired or wireless connection. I uses a cable internet service and maintains at least a 12Mbps connection. Setup was extremely easy. It was just plug and play and follow the on screen instructions. If I have any negatives it is the boot up time for the player. When the unit is first turned on the Western Digital icon appears on the TV within 5-10 seconds. Then my TV screen gives the "searching for signal". It almost makes you think there is some time of problem. After another 5-10 seconds the Western Digital menu pops up. After that it just taking the time to learn now to navigate through the different menus which is done via the remote. I do agree with other reviews the the remote is small as compared to remotes for other items such as a TV or DVD player. Although the remote is functional. The player does not have an on / off button. The on / off is controlled by the remote. The quality of the streamed Netflix videos is very good. I have not had any freezes, skips or studders. The same goes for the videos I stream from my network. I also use the slide show feature to play back pictures stored on my computer. It is a simple little device that delivers exactly what I expected and needed.

For my HDTV in the Living Room, I built a $1500 Home Theater PC that allows me to watch high definition programming I download from the internet. This little $100 box replaces that whole thing. I bought one of these so we could watch the programming stored on that computer in the back bedroom. The WDLive is small and incredibly easy to hook up...one HDMI line into the TV, one network connection. You can also attach USB hard drives or flash drives if you dont want to hook it up to a network, but the networking is the really cool part...and the biggest downfall. The WDLive has a terrible problem finding your network shares on a consistent basis. One day they are there, the next day you turn it on and it cant see any of the computers on the network. It has to do with whether the Master Browser on your network is advertising the availability of blah blah blah techno mumbo jumbo. Just fix it Western Digital. Once they fix this problem my review will be five stars.

I have two of these boxes now to view our personal media throughout the house. I specifically purchased this box as the older one did not have NetFlix and we wanted to try that service out because we are tired of DirectTV increasing their prices year over year. We are hoping our Over the Air antenna, combined with the NetFlix solution will give us a more competitive TV viewing solution. The only reason I did not mark this a 5 is that, even with an 8MB dowload internet, we still can't get HD streaming to work without constant rebuffering. It seems either netflix servers can't handle the load, and/or the Media box doesn't provide enough cache/buffer to make up for poorer bandwidth situations (Just haven't had time yet to look into this further). The Wii streams Netflix just fine, but then I believe that is not HD.. By the Way, this little box also makes a nice little NAS device... just attach your USB drive(s) and share...

I have had the WD HD Plus for a week now and i like it. The few things i did not like is the slow boot up, it takes almost half a min to wake up to the menu screen. It froze up on me a few times while finding a file to play and in my frustration i start pressing every button on the small remote control to cause it to respond. Pressing your button while its in a frozen state does nothing to help so you are just better of waiting for it to regain its playing state. I have not yet tried Youtube or any of the other programs/apps on the device but i can see myself having a hard time typing on the search bar with such a tiny remote with only a few buttons. I don't like the boring audio player, while your music is playing you can just stare at a sad display that shows whats playing or wait for the screen saver to pop up and be a lot more sad. They should really up that area and add a visualizer like what itunes has. You do not want a sad display or screen saver on your 55 inch HDTV. What i really like about it: plays every music file i have, even my protected music from itunes. Thank you Steve Jobs for giving us a hard time with the music we purchase online. The audio is great, the device even has an optical audio output. The scrolling of the artist or song can be a bit tedious if you have a lot of music. The video is really great, plays 1080p video smoothly and i love the fact it can play almost every video file. If your video file comes with subtitles you can play it and edit the display mode of the subs. Overall this is a great device, I love my PS3 and XBOX but those big consoles dont play every video or music file. This is the pirates dream come true.

I bought the WD live with the idea I wanted to reduce all of the different types of media I had in my house. For the price this device is well worth it. My goal is to move all of my DVDs and music to a harddrive which will plug into this device and stream to my media center. I have had the WD Live for a month and overall it works pretty well. The menu is easy to use, the remote works fine, and the quality of picture/sound is not reduced. The device does have some glitches. Notably, it is unable to recogznie harddrives > 2 TB. This was surprising because both my 3TB harddrive and this device are Western Digital and came out in 2010. This is true regardless if the harddrive is plugged in locally or through a router. Hopefully they will correct this in an firmware update. I also notice when first turning on the device and attempting to load videos, you need to give it a couple minutes. It sometimes will not load a picture if you rush it. I've had to turn off the device and turn it back on when this happens I suspect it is still receiving the information from the hardrive. I consider these streaming devices to still be in their infancy. There are definitely ways to improve the device, but for those looking to get ahead of the curve this device is well worth it. I know I am enjoying going through my movie and music library without having to put in a DVD, CD, MP3 player, etc. Just load it and go!

Found the Western Digital after researching streaming players online. Was going to buy Roku or Sony Media Player but found the WD supported far more video formats. Setup was simple, only 3 connections to the back of the device. Ethernet, HDMI and power. This device supports HDMI or AV component connections, must use supplied cables for component connections, HDMI cable is not included. Device is very small, will not take much space on TV stand. I slid mine under the edge of the TV. Advanced warning, the remote is only about the size of a compact cell phone and there are no controls on the device. You have to use the remote. Our kids have lost the remote more than once and can be hard to find. Once connected, device configuration is quick and simple. After firmware update, it supports Hulu Plus, NetFlix, Blockbuster, Pandora, Tune In Radio and some others but these are the main ones. Does not support Crackle or Amazon. Streaming video from a home computer works great. As does external drive connection. Supports just about any file format perfectly. For people who create DVD backups, this device will play exact copies in file form or in ISO. It will mount the ISO as a full DVD. There are many advanced options to this device, some can greatly degrade performance. Stick to default settings if you don't know what you are doing. The only problem we have experienced is after hours of use, it locked up and had to be unplugged to fix. Has happened twice but as I said, it was after about 7 hours and does not happen every time it is used like that.