Wd Tv Live Streaming Media Player Firmware

Wd Tv Live Streaming Media Player Firmware

Performance




Features




Ergonomics




Value



Cost: $99
At A Glance: Cracking flick and audio quality • Wi-Fi-enabled • Clean, like shooting fish in a barrel-to-use menus • Variety of streaming content services • Quirky difficulties with file indexing

The WD TV Live streaming media role player has much in mutual with its predecessor, the WD TV Live Hub. When the WD Telly Live Hub came out, I thought it was the best network media player and streamer on the market. It has a clean menu organisation; can play movies, music, and photos on my home network, and but works.

The WD Idiot box Alive is the Hub stripped of its memory, with built-in Wi-Fi and a price tag slashed by $100. Still, the newer WD TV Live is a chip more than quirky and non as reliable as the Alive Hub.

Performance

The WD TV Live tin play 1080p video and 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound. The picture looks as good as the source content. As with whatever media player, if yous are streaming Netflix or Hulu Plus and your Net connection slows down, the picture quality can slip to standard definition. YouTube videos rarely look proficient using any media player when blown up to make full a twoscore-inch-or-larger screen; the WD TV Alive makes no exception here. The quality of your downloaded video depends on the amount of file compression, so an MKV file looks much improve than an AVI file. The WD Goggle box Live cannot play 3D video.

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Vudu’southward HDX format streams movies in Dolby Digital environment sound. If y’all have a fast Internet connexion, the sound is clear and well separated. When I watched the taxi chase scene in Engagement Nighttime, the cars zoomed around the room. Y’all’ll demand to go into the WD TV Alive’s Setup menu to turn on HDMI audio passthrough or Southward/PDIF passthrough if you are using an optical sound cablevision.

New Features

The WD TV Live is Wi-Fi-enabled. That is a huge benefit over the WD TV Live Hub because you don’t take to run Ethernet cables to your router or buy accessories similar powerline adapters or a Wi-Fi dongle that can cost equally much as the media player. While information technology has been usually thought that the only mode to stream video is over a wired connection, contempo A/5 routers are providing speeds that are fast plenty to get adept quality over Wi-Fi.

There are two USB connections—i on the forepart and i on the dorsum of the box. You can utilise either or both to attach an external hard drive. When a bulldoze is fastened, the WD Television Live volition aggregate your personal files on the drive and then all photos are accessible from the unit’s Photo menu, video from the Video menu, and music from the Music menu. Yous can extend this Media Library characteristic to include files from all sources—computers, difficult drives, network-attached-storage (NAS) drives, and media servers—connected to the same home network. (Read on before yous decide to turn on the Media Library.)

The front USB port is nifty for connecting a USB keyboard during setup. The WD TV Alive also has a Facebook app. If you’ve e’er tried to type a meaningful status using an onscreen keyboard, you’ll capeesh having a continued keyboard choice, ideally a wireless one.

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If yous don’t accept a USB keyboard, yous tin can use your smartphone’southward keyboard in Western Digital’southward WD TV Remote app for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Android devices. The free app gives you directly access to the different services. Information technology has a keyboard and a touchpad-gesture-command option. The app not but worked flawlessly for me; it automatically found the WD Boob tube Live. There are a few remote apps available for WD TV; this is the newest version. Check to make certain that the developer is Western Digital.

Still, if you lot can stand the included remote control, its buttons tin exist programmed in the WD Tv Alive’s Setup menu. As a default, the No. 1 and ii keys can be used for book upwards and down, respectively, if you take turned on the HDMI CEC office and are connected to a abode theater receiver or Television with the HDMI CEC feature.

HDMI CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) began showing up in HDMI version one.2a. Its name varies depending on the manufacturer. This feature will plough off a Tv and home theater receiver that is connected to the WD Tv set Live using HDMI cables. I dearest the convenience of being able to turn off the actor and my whole domicile theater past pushing a single button. It will also plow on my TV and receiver, changing to the correct inputs. Unfortunately, while compiling the Media Library, it randomly changed the inputs while I was watching something else. I disconnected the HDMI cable until the Media Library compilation was complete. Call up that the Sync/Control feature must be turned on in each component.

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Streaming Content

When shopping for a media-streaming device, you must starting time consider which online services are available. Kickoff by looking for the big iv video streaming services—Netflix, Hulu Plus, Vudu, and Amazon Instant Video. The WD TV Live includes three of the iv, minus Amazon Instant Video. Cinema Now is included as a close alternative to Blockbuster On Need, which withal appears onscreen although is no longer available, the result of Blockbuster recently pulling its service out of many devices.

Wd Tv Live Streaming Media Player Firmware

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