Western Digital WD TV Live Plus HD Media Player

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Plays anything I throw at it. Simple firmware upgrading via ethernet. Smooth interface and straightforward to read graphics. two USB ports is a fantastic function. Good for viewing shared files on my network. Works flawlessly! None I've put all my home videos on this device. The ability to stream net video/tv shows is an amazing feature.

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Plays most MKV files. Nice and tiny. Doesn't play all MKV files. None

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Little, quiet, HDMI, low cost, versatile file formats, netflix Poor networking!, Firmware updates frequently break points, sluggish interface, slow boot I don't know why this device has such high evaluations. I feel it is a mediocre product at ideal. If you apply 3rd party firmware, you might be additional happy with the item. Working with the stock firmware, on the other hand, this factor is lacking in the functionality department, and offers a fairly poor user expertise. My network connectivity has been broken various occasions by various updates, and its hit or miss whether or not or not the device will discover my network media sources on any given night. I assume that you would be much better off searching at other alternatives - and don't forget about the Wii, Xbox 360, or an HTPC, based on your requirements.

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tiny, compact, easy to use when it works buggy firmware updates, manufacturer does not spend shipping for warranty returns WD posted a defective firmware for the device to their web site, causing the device to either endlessly reboot or just not function at all if applied. At this moment, WD still has not pulled the malfunctioning firmware off their internet site. DO NOT APPLY the 1.04.17 firmware update!

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Right after connecting this device to my network and configuring the I.P address. It spotted all devices on my network and was in a position to stream movies form just about every pc along with my Unraid Media server (linux based file server). It's able to play from two TB tough drive attached to it's 2 usb ports. If you have two of them they will stream movies and other files from each and every other. It will take a few seconds to come on, it will stream wireless N with no complications. Wireless G you have to use the ASUS USB powered wireless adapter. I am employing ASUS router also netflixs and other media was a bonus, I hear the newer devices are in a position to hook up a keyboard to have ease of surfing the bonus media. Netflixs stream prefect, with cable modem download in between 7MB to 35MB

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Size is tiny.Just attached to my HDTV, No hassles worked wonderful.1080 videos looks fantastic. None, Keeping the price in mind. Would have loved some internal storage.

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Device works perfectly with my WD 1Tb. I now watch movies and photographs with play music on it now.... None Nonetheless attempting to figure out how to connect it to my surround sound

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Recognizes all my video/audio/image file formats, and plays back in full HD. I have been utilizing a USB 2. flash drive and it functions beautifully for a noiseless setup. The unit and remote are tiny (which I've noticed some individuals say is a poor thing), which means I can toss it in my front backpack pocket and bring it to a friend's residence. A USB flash drive makes a great portable library for my purposes (I only ever have perhaps 10 movies on it at a time), but WD makes a number of silent USB two. drives that would probably work outstanding and match the size of this media player. A bit of a lacking framerate on most video. A scene with out too considerably action will play alright, but when there's a lot of stuff changing on-screen, items start off to lag extremely noticeably. For the price although, I wasn't expecting flawlessness, and it suits my purposes, so it only lost one egg. It would be nice to see additional video processing power and integrated wireless N with possibly an optional attachable antenna in future models. I don't doubt WD will make factors appropriate on their subsequent generations. Have yet to have tried any network shares through gigabit or wireless N. I doubt that wireless G or 100Mbit ethernet would be in a position to stream 1080p at any decent high quality. Make confident you do your research on datarates and your equipment ahead of you have your heart set on this becoming the magical resolution for you.

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Adore this little guy. Had to upgrade firmware 3 or 4 times at start off, but due to the fact that haven't had any difficulties. Uses my network share or ps3 media server. Netflix and other on the net videos work excellent so far. It has a incredibly little footprint. Does just what I need which was to bring videos from htpc in living space up to the bedroom. Video top quality is good as nicely. Not truly a con due to the fact I knew this going in, but I purchased the model with out any type internal wireless. I attempted two various usb wifi adapters and neither worked, but of course those weren't listed on the identified working adapter list either. Finally went with producing an old linksys router into a bridge with dd-wrt, and all the headaches have been from doing that, not the player. TL;DR - get a wireless version if they have it and you need to have wifi. It's less complicated that way I would imagine.

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Netflix was ok, but the roku is a lot more visually efficient. Does not work with the WD My Book Vital 3T external difficult drive. This is not at all clear in their product information or internet site. Manufacturer Response:We appreciate your feedback of our WDTV Live Plus. The Netflix interface has been supplied by Netflix to WD and is unaltered. Concerning 3TB drives, this feature has been temporarily disabled on all WDTV items. If you have further concerns or feedback please go to this link http://support.wdc.com/rs/, copy and paste the URL of this assessment exactly where indicated and present the requested details and our technical support team will be happy to assist you further.In the future, you might also want to look at posting your problems to our WD Community exactly where you can interact with other WD shoppers. www.community.wdc.com.

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Priced properlyCan stream media and deal with USB Externals Like it's WD media play predecessors, the plus functions like a beta and needs updates to fix issues. However the firm ware updates tend to solve 1 dilemma then trigger another. Difficulties are minor but many and frustrating. By this time WD must have marketed a play that is some what intuitive with advertised capabilities that function out of the box. I was a WD fan. I've discovered their challenging drives to be fantastic. Even so this is my second try with a WD media players. I would not waist my cash on yet another. There are quite a few other players on the marketplace such as ROKU and Popcorn time to name just two. I can only expect that the new WD Hub will have all the same difficulties.

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I have owned the 1st generation wd media player for over a year now and this 1 is a lot nicer! Quicker interface, network capablility, on-line attributes, instant preview, and updated movie sorts! This factor is sweet! None! Right after working with the old wd media player, this factor is a great step up!

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ISO, AVI and MP3's play perfectly.Reads files from the WD Globe Edition network drive without having hesitation, and any pc in your network for that matter.HDMI video and audio is best.Feeding analog audio out to my surround technique sounds amazing.My son also owns 1 of these units. He makes use of the optical audio out to a Polk sound method, it kicks!Why waste time and $$ developing a media laptop when this works far superior for Much much less? None. It has been my expertise that this unit is pretty considerably plug and play and does not require significantly far more than standard expertise to install and operate.The negatives I have read here don't make significantly sense to me so all I can say is to try this unit, you really won't be sorry...!

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I really like this product. It lets me browse my video library on my house file server effortlessly and does a fantastic job of it and it lets me access net-based video services like Netflix just as simply. It's little and simple to hide. Wonderful product. I wish I could configure it so that it doesn't show particular choices in the menus and so that it ignores network resources on my nearby network that I don't want to (ever) use for this box. Much more programmability would be nice--but even as it is, it's extremely usable and I'm very content with it. I'll in all probability acquire one or two additional of these for other TVs in our home. They are so simple to use and setup--they function suitable out of the box. Almost too effortless-

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NONE When I initial got this I posted a fantastic evaluation. Now after having it much less than 6 monthsɅ. It typically refuses to play audio when playing Netflix. I have talked to Netflix and to WD, immediately after several e-mail exchanges with WD, they lastly acknowledged that they can duplicate it. No amount of resets corrects this issue. I purchased one for my brother at Christmas and it does the exact same thing. You are forced to quit the movie and start out it again or reboot the box to correct the issue. It constantly comes back although.2. Now it has began this nonsense of giving an error on a paused movie playing from a hard drive...when I go to resume it, it tells me the format is not supported and to check the manual for a list of supported formats! And refuses to play till I fully reboot the box. This has turned out to be as large a piece of garbage as WD's "green" drives are. I am sending it to WD and they can do what they want with it. There are just way too quite a few troubles with this box, and there firmware updates when a month do absolutely nothing to solve them.Don't waste your funds on this. It may possibly appear excellent when you very first buy it, but you will be as disappointed as I am within a few months.

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bought my dad this for his birthday has he had the original WDTV but that was replaced by this home theater which did everything the WDTV could as well as being DLNA Certifiedanyways i wanted to get him something so he could watch all his movies and tv shows on 2 different tv without being confused about not being able to find a show he knows he has or me having to update  media on more than one hard drivenetflix was an added bonus which i believe hes addicted to

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I have been utilizing these Media Players for a long time now and it nonetheless is the greatest value for its $. I have it connected to all the PCs in the Network and on all the Challenging Drives. the 1st one was DOA and it was rattling inside but I blame UPS. for throwin it around I was also considering XBMC on a small PC but it comes out to too much dollars with out any guarantees on efficiency. most of those PCs come with 2GB DDR2 for about 趚 + an additional ๠ for a SSD becuase, like the WDTV I dont want to hear something.-The pros of a XBMC PC would be network speeds and far better interface. but thats not worth an additional 趚+ Setup and figuring all that stuff out.

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Uncomplicated setup. took 5 minutesFlexible. Able to watch all movie formats that I have. Had to update firmware twice

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-Streams all my video codecs and container files...even ISO's from NAS, or Network Shares on other neighborhood computers.-Streams flac, 96ቴ DTS Multi-Channel Audio, and other lossless audio formats without a hitch.Superb device as interface in between laptop or computer and your A/V Method. -Can attach other external drives directly to player.-Several connection options (component vid. Toslink, and HDMI) ...additional so than current AppleTV.-Bottom line is it does what I wanted it to do for my requirements... and then some. -Does not incorporate USB Wireless dongle. Ought to it for this price? NO. Just beware of datarate limitations of wireless if a wired connection or direct connect of media difficult drive is not an choice. Don't alter your media encoding or medium to fit a component of your A/V Program. Just get this product hook it up to your Local Network and GO.Does not contain a USB wireless dongle. I used a Wireless-N USB from a Samsung Blu-Ray player and worked fine. Go wired if you can, but superior wireless-n speed will work for most every little thing but some hanging in greater top quality/res. movies.

Comment:
This unit plays common media formats with ease, including mkv video which is growing popularity. Read the support forums before you update  any of the firmware versions as WD has a spotty track record here and some of the update s have been bad. Streaming video over a windows network using file shares or windows media fileserving is a beast to set up and more trouble than it is worth. Use the free Tversity media server instead, it works like a charm. The unit also reads media from external drives and flash media with a 2 USB ports. If you browse youtube or other web media a lot you may want to hook up a USB keyboard. Networking setup is nowhere near as simple as it should be but the unit performs well when setup.

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this box is amazing. pulled it out. plugged it in and wham bam plays every thing in my library. plugged in my usb drive, recognized everything. plays it all. download anything and this beast will play it. will play video on youtube, good. excellent, a device like this is the answer to all the bull that is going on. it has netsux, what a waste of dollars.

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Incredibly compact and quiet, plays every little thing I've attempted flawlessly over WiFi, where an XBox with XMBC would typically stutter. The official firmware (up to extremely latest stable) is GARBAGE. It would not play an SD XviD without having stuttering. I was about to call this a waste of 贄 and kick my new doorstop to the curb, when I read yet another evaluation in here and located a WDLXTV download for it (hint: google "wdlxtv plus .4.3.1"). Netflix is not advertised to work in Canada and I was foolish to believe it might, despite the fact that there's definitely no reason for it not to since Netflix has been offered in Canada for a although. WDLXTV Firmware installed from a USB MicroSD adapter flawlessly, despite the fact that the first boot after install took lengthy enough I thought I had bricked it. I left it and tried pinging the unit which it responded to, set my ssh password via telnet, and when I came back in the room the house screen was visible. If you're not willing to risk bricking this unit to flash a custom firmware, you DO NOT want it.

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Plays every file I've thrown at it -- avi, mkv, mp4, iso, FLAC. Netflix, Pandora, YouTube streaming, as properly a number of other on the web services. Quite little and discreet. Straightforward setup. Sees my network simply. Firmware is buggy. Sometimes has trouble connecting to network drives, which needs a reboot. Will not wake network drives on connections, I from time to time have to log into the network drive on my laptop, then reconnect on the WD box. Seems to take an unusually long time to connect to Netflix. At times Netflix content will play without sound, which requires a reboot of the box. Interface leaves a small to be desired. I previously had a network-enabled LG BD player in my living room, which worked fine, but was a bit picky about file formats.I was excited to set this box up, as I knew it was good with most preferred file formats and had Pandora, which the BD player did not. It seemed like a good, compact, all-in-1 resolution at a excellent cost (๪). As noted above, it is great with file formats, but the bugginess of the network connections and Netflix issues can be a bit annoying. I'm hoping these will be fixed with firmware updates further down the line.

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I've been wanting one of these for some time now. I recently did a lot of research looking at all brands and models of media players. For my budget, the WDTV Live Plus looked like the best option at a good price. I did a price match and got it from NCIX for $89.99 (Thanks, guys!).I opened the box after it arrived to find it was well packed and well padded. Everything was safe and sound.After setting it up, I plugged in a Kingston 4GB Flash Drive loaded with a varied assortment of video and music files. It played most of them without a problem. There were two MKV files that did not play, but then they will not play on my computer either no matter what codecs I install.After that I decided to check the settings menu to see what changes I needed to make. I made some obvious changes and some more obscure ones. Then it happened...The unit froze up.I tried disconnecting the power and the flash drive and letting it sit for 10 minutes before plugging it back in. Didn't work. I tried leaving it powered. Didn't work. I left it un powered for an hour while I read the manual that was included on disk.I tried hitting the little reset button with a toothpick. Tired that multiple times with no result. WD logo comes up for a few seconds then the screen goes blank.I sent an email to WD to see if they had a solution. However, before I got an answer back, I somehow managed to reset the box. Yeah!It now seems to work fine. I have plugged in a 2.5" Maxtor 150GN external HD that is powered through the USB port - It works great and contains a whole bunch of video and music files. I can copy files from a Flash Drive to the HD with ease. Though I really need to get a bigger HD to contain all my files.I no longer have to burn DVD's just to watch a show. I can copy them to the USB Flash Drive, and watch until a TV season completes, and then burn all the files to one or two DVD's instead of having to burn each one to a DVD as I get them. I love it!This unit fits my needs, and once you get used to it, is very easy to operate. I have not yet tried to network it to my computer, but that will come as soon as I can find a Cat5e cable that is long enough to get from the living room to the back bedroom where the computer is, about 100').Bottom line: This is a great unit. I would buy it again, and may even look at the model with the internal 1 TB HD.Could it be better? Sure, what couldn't? I would like to see a printed on paper manual included with the unit - the digital version on disk is fine, but my computer is at the opposite end of the house from the TV and running back and forth while troubleshooting is not fun.I would also make the remote control bigger so it better fits in your hand.The WDTV Live Plus will change the way you watch TV - you really need to get one.

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sounded excellent on the website This device was advertised as Netflix compatible, but when I bought three of them and set 1 up, I discovered that it is set up to go to the Netflix American website. Canadian ciustomers can\'t acquire a Netflix account on the American internet site, so the device will not work for Netflix in Canada. I purchased this only to stream Netflix to my Tv . . .it failed completely