WD TV-Live Media Player
-Play Full HD 1080p video, music and photos on your HD TV
-Supports widest variety of file formats and devices
-Network capable for easy access to the newest content from PCs, network drives, internet favorites
Kit Contents
-Media Player
-Compact remote with batteries
-Composite AV cable
-Component AV cable
-AC adapter
-Quick Install Guide
Compatibility
HDMI, Full HD (1080p), AAC, MP3, JPEG, USB 2.0, H.264, SimplayHD™, Energy Star®, Dolby Digital, DTS,
DLNA, Bonjour, AVCHD, Windows Vista
Media Formats
AVI (Xvid, AVC, MPEG1/2/4), MPG/MPEG, MKV (h.264, x.264, AVC, MPEG1/2/4, VC-1),
TS/TP/M2T (MPEG1/2/4, AVC, VC-1) MP4/MOV (MPEG4, h.264), M2TS, WMV9
JPEG, GIF, TIFF, BMP, PNG
MP3, WAV/PCM/LPCM, WMA, AAC, FLAC, MKA, AIF/AIFF, OGG, Dolby Digital, DTS
Playlist – PLS, M3U, WPL
Subtitle – SRT, ASS, SSA, SUB, SMI
MPEG2 MP@HL up to 1920x1080p24, 1920x1080i30, or 1280x720p60 resolution. MPEG4.2 ASP@L5 up to
1280x720p30 resolution and no support for global motion compensation. WMV9/VC-1 MP@HL up to 1280x720p60
or 1920x1080p24 resolution. VC-1 AP@L3 up to 1920x1080i30, 1920x1080p24, or 1280x720p60 resolution.
H.264 BP@L3 up to 720x480p30 or 720x576p25 resolution. H.264 MP@4.1 and HP@4.1 up to 1920x1080p24,
1920x1080i30, or 1280x720p60 resolution.
An audio receiver is required for multi-channel surround sound digital output. Compressed RGB JPEG formats only
and progressive JPEG up to 2048x2048.
Single layer TIFF files only. Uncompressed BMP only. Specific details, please refer to the user manual
Source: AVS Forum
87 comments:
I want 2.
Ah, they need to put all this and add one DVD player to it and it'd be perfect for me.
But will it be able to play 1080p MKV files . . . the last version could not and that's what pissed me off the most about it, causing me to re-think buying one.
I could've sworn I've played 1080p MKVs on my WDTV (even though the TV is 720p :-(, it's still gotta decode & display the video in real time)
Can anyone else provide a datapoint?
Still no rmvb support!
Does this mean no support for 1920x1080p25?
or I could just buy the popcorn hour box...which already does this stuff.
get the c-200 instead, bluray baby!
can this play vob's i.e. DVDs from a hard-drive
that old one better add usb to ethernet support (and not talking hacked firmware)
upgrade path for early adopters. sigh.
i think they meant they added composite output for SD tv's, i dont see rgb in there
the 1st gen WDTV does play mkv files smoothly, but it does not play the audio for some unless you have it connected using optical
nevermind it does do component i guess. i hope the improved the UI the 1st one is kinda slow. i might pick one of these up when it comes out, i liked how it used to be glossy though it looked sleek
The last version was a let-down ... sounded good on the website, but when you got it home it didn't perform as you would expect. Claimed to play .iso DVDs, yet it could not do menus or chapter forward/backward. Was VERY slow navigating the on-screen menu to play movies, browse photos, etc... and the menu was not very intuitive. I won't hold my breath on this new model, either. The eGreat and Popcorn Hour machines blow this one away anyway.
again, too bad there's no RMVB support.
MKV Was always supported, I play all my HD MKV movies through the original player. Takes the hassle out of hooking a pc or laptop to your TV. Simply awesome, and now with network support... loving it.
I wonder why those that have the original and say others (eGreat and Popcorn Hour for example) blow it away didnt buy an eGreat or Popcorn Hour.
I have the original and it's worked great for me with the exception of the time it takes to load large (4MB +) photos. The original definitely needed LAN connectivity but I am sure that was all part of a sales strategy.....
"The eGreat and Popcorn Hour machines blow this one away anyway."
LMAO! will they also do it is price? Last i checked the Great and Popcorn Hour launched at a starting price of $180 while the WDTV launched at $130. Plus you could have easily walked into many retail stores and pick one up, something you cannot easily do with with the Egreat or Popcorn Hour.
RMVB?? what is this 1999? Real media and real networks is dead, give it up and move on to MKV.
well they did not include network support so this thing would be a supplement to their hard drive sales. but they probably saw that people liked this product and figured it will still sell on its own and added network support since so many wanted it.
i never see popcorn hour or egreat in stores, this is one of those products that doesnt share the shelves with others and it does what it advertises.
The smaaaall price difference of say $50 is not enough to warrant the frustrations of a slow, badly designed gui, and missing features, and so later having to go out and spend the money again on the next box - that may, or may not be an improvement in those areas.
whatabout Divx support?
Did you think before you replied, that if it played XviD, there would be a high probability it'd play DivX?
So does it play DivX or not?
it's there
It really needs to support more reference frames than "4.1 up to 1920x1080p24".
This is the same as the old WDTV.
thank you WD! I am so happy with WDTV1 device but I'll upgrade. Adding DTS2Stereo and Ethernet makes it perfect! For those who don't know - this device plays perfect MKV with any subtitle in full hd, plays flac, ...
Popcorn Hour will always be a couple of steps ahead of WD
So if I purchase a TV show from iTunes on my computer, can I play it back on my HDTV using this unit's network capability instead of investing in the rip-off that is Apple TV?
I still have my WDHD TV1 and have managed to get the unoffical firmware to work, making it a device on my network and it streams fright from my computer which has around 150 movies on it, i utilized the firmware, a 1GB flash drive, and a USB-Ethernet adapter to make it work. Also plays WMV, AVI, and not sure, but I think MKV as well.
Can this thing render text or text overlays on top of videos?
I saw WD TV-1 at the Best Buy last week. Nothing could beat the price of $99. My only complaint was the small crappy remote that goes with it. 40 years later electronics manufactures still cannot get that a remote is the main UI of their product!
popcorn c-200 will bury this p.o.s alive
WDTV1 is awesome, specially compared with the competition. Never had a problem reading MKV (1080p), DivX, xvid, QuickTime, MPEG2 TS, etc.
Only things missing are the ethernet port and FLV support, imho. I think I'll upgrade when WDTV2 comes out.
People keep referring that Popcorns will blow WDTVs away....
I believe this quite a stupid comparison, since both are two different concepts!
- WDTV is a cheaper, mainstream, proprietary, easy to configure/use appliance.
- Popcorn is a more expensive (but not MUCH more) , enthusiasts, opened and more complex to configure/use appliance!.
I prefer the Popcorn, hell I have one!!
But would I give a Popcorn to someone that just wants to see a film and not know about video formats? No...
That's why I bought a WDTV for my parents place :)
Are the two devices based on the same hardware anyways? Popcorn/WDTV shared the same chipset I thought.
My advice is to stay away from WD - they have not fair support policy - meaning, no FW updates since the rumor of WDTV 2 came out and they left us with a bugbox named WDTV...
will it handle large libraries of mp3s without lag?
and by large i'm thinking 200GBs of mp3. it's useless if it lags 10 or 20 seconds at every screen and when highlighting a song. well not useless but not usefull.
Seriously...people are comparing the $300 PCH C-200 with this? Why not compare a Ferrari to a Civic?
Plenty of large manufacturers have very little FW updates once the product is stable, which it is. People complain about certain problems and they are in the minority or expected s-th that WD never advertised.
I'm looking forward for a device with DTS and Lan in the $100+ range where at this point in the US market cannot be beat.
popcorn is still vaporware... been promised to be released a long long time now. WD is smart about it and doesn't list this thing yet.
Oh wow... This is the best product for those who don't want to have their pc's on all day running those other media players. Upgrade the firmware and all those issues mentioned above are all gone. I play all my mkv's 1080p movies without a hiccup. Great player, I missed the DTS decoding on the first, now its here.
The original WDTV absolutely can play back 1080P including high bit rate (25-40Mbps) blu-ray H264/VC-1 media. It can even stream it via NFS form a file server/NAS with a custom firmware and USB NIC dongle. I know as I do this. It can't support more than 4-5 reference frames in 1080P though. So from the perspective of $99 for the player and $30 for the USB NIC it is generally worth it, especially when compared to the price of the Popcorn Hour.
The original WDTV will play high bit rate 1080P files. I'm talking blu-ray h264 and VC1 rips. It won't do above 4-5 reference frames on H264 though at 1080P. It will stream this type of content with custom firmware, USB Gigabit NIC dongle, and the NFS protocol from a NAS or file server. I know, I do it.
XBMC on any ION based pc (starting at 150euro's) blows this machine away...
www . xbmc . org
The present WD HD Media Player does support VOB files (just copied DVD folder), divx, AVI, MKV, MP4/MOV, TS/M2TS (you may play your own HD video files from your HD camcorder in just one click like a slideshow) and almost every video format at resolution up to 1080p, good up-converting too. The decoding of DTS audio from MKV files would be a nice feature (it seems they finally have got a DTS license for that) - otherwise DTS audio from MKV files may be easily decoded by third party software or just using a script file and free MKV tools. The Ethernet input and DLNA streaming would be a nice feature too - still I am not sure if it would stream full HD movies (1080p) or only 720p via 100Mbps Fast Ethernet port.
How about HDMI 1.3 and passthrough of HD audio formats like DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD?
I don't care about downmixing and networking.
I have the WD TV Media Player and so far I haven't had a film HD or otherwise that it hasn't played out of a very large collection. I have ripped over 300 on my DVD's, a 100 or so Blu Ray/HD DVD's,several hundred CD and digitezed my collection of about 2000 records onto my hard drives and again no problems playing any of them.
I also have an iStar for streaming video from my PC and the video output quality from both of these is the same. I will admit the interface isn't as good and its a little slower but the player is quicker to start up than the iStar. The only real problem with it is that it will not accept a usb dvd drive which my iStar does as I have started to put certain movie files on them because my hard drives are getting rather full.
If the Live version allows usb dvd support then I will seriously look at getting one.
Street pricing for the TV Live is now confirmed as approx €115 from most online vendors.
For those unfamiliar with Euro prices, the original WD TV Media Player can currently be purchased for around €90.
Hello there !
I'm writing from France, where I was able to buy the old WDTV for only 70€, it was a special price limited in time.
The reason I'm saying this is because the old version might get even cheaper when the new one comes out.
For that kind of price, it seems to be the best thing around: reads many things, easy to use, possibility to use alternative firmwares.
I love it.
NO, we are not comparing the $100 WDTV to the $300 Popcorn Hour BECAUSE first we buy the first generation WDTV and THEN we have to buy the 2nd generation WDTV and it STILL doesnt do what the FIRST popcorn hour machine can do. So in the end, the Popcorn Hour is a much better investment.
I can't believe the new WDTV2 cannot support ISO menus. It's a big fat joke. It's the one feature people have been asking for the most, and still no support.
My advice is, go for the new Popcorn Hour C-200. Sure, it's more expensive, but you get everything you could ever ask for, and more.
I am very annoyed that DVD menu's are not supported. Al so subtitle selection does not work for a lot of DVD's. Even so the availability of firmware updates have been stopped.
Without decent DVD support the WD TV is a complete useless device.
Every other NMT device is better than the WD TV. I am going to sell my 3 months old WD TV because it is a piece of shit which never becomes full functional because support has been stopped. When I download a DVD or other Media Container I don't want to re-mux it for three days to get it working on the WD TV.
The DTS issue was a bit of an annoyance when bringing the unit to anywhere but my house. At least at home I have the unit hooked up to a receiver that decodes the signal. To get around that I would re-encode the DTS to AC3 and remux. Doesn't take long for me so I can't justify spending more money on another unit.
Where can I find that firmware for the WD HD TV that supports network access ?
And I read somewhere above that it doesn't support menu's in DVD's nor does it read from an USB attached HD.... is this true ?
Try here: http://wdtvforum.com/main/
Why are you making so much noise about Popcorn Hour?! TViX eats Popcorn Hour for breakfast!
I have a WDTV1 and have yet to find a video format it can't handle. I think an MKV I had must've had DTS in it and when there was no sound, I played it via the WDTV by changing a setting in audio playback format to 'stereo out' rather than 'digital out' for audio, and it played fine. Networking for the WDTV2. . . that's OK, I guess. I have an Apple TV (a.k.a. Doorstop, aka Brick, aka Crapple TV, aka etc) and the ONLY reason I got it was for the screensaver.
- - Why even bother with the Crapple TV? I like showing my digital photos on my large flat screen TV during parties, while it's playing music, etc. The screensaver on the Apple TV floats resized images up the screen of your photos in random order in a hypnotizing and captivating way. It's not just 'flash picture up, move to next one'. My dream would be for the next WDTV to have the Apple TV interface AND this screensaver mode, but it would involve installing a chunk o' RAM into it, no doubt. Still, one can dream. For playing movies, music, WDTV1 is unbeatable as far as my simple needs are concerned.
When will this unit become available to the general public?
Is the network port 10/100/1000??
No WIFI? So now I have to run cables fro mmy NAS all the way to my TV? This sucks big time.
Currently I am using an older laptop with WIFI to watch movies on my HDTV. The NAS is in another room far away.
WIFI is a MUST.
can i connect to youtube.com/xl
Anyone know if it`s possible Spotify through this unit?
how about just getting a PS3?
does it have a browser/flash ?
hulu support?
The PS3 only support FAT32.. that would say files below 4 gb.. and only 500gb disk space...
så this is a big step up from a PS3.. but crap about the dvd menu.
what about BD menu???
When is it coming out?!
DTS decoding and Ethernet are the two features I have been wishing I had on my version 1. This will drive up the price of version 2, but if less than the price of a new A/V receiver I will get one.
Does it pass through Dolby True-HD and DTS-MA through HDMI? if not then not buying it.
Yea, I read that it will come with that feature the DTS downmix codec.
just ordered mine from Amazon.co.uk!!
Just set mine up. This unit is very easy to set up and it recongnized my ReadyNAS Pro immediately. Using the ethernet connection via my ReadyNAS Pro I was able to pass through HD Blu-Ray content with True-HD and/or DTS-MA audio to my Denon Reciever for decoding flawlessly. This unit is awesome. It seems a bit peppier than the original WD-TV. With over 8 terabytes of space on my ReadyNAS Pro, I am good to go! I will cancel my Popcorn TV c200 order now since I really only wanted it to stream HD content on my NAS over the network, and for the price of the Popcorn model, I can almost buy 3 of these.
i was considering the popcorn hour - can the WDTV live play large mkv files off the NAS ???
i have three NAS - two 4 bay Dlink and one crappy two bay Linksys ?? can anyone confirm this ??
The WDTV plays MKV smoothly, most of the film are codec in 1080 24P, try this and enjoy the movie without stuttering frames. good luck, i Like the WDTV but the WDTV Live is also interesting. Only the MOV from a canon photo camera, gives no audio....bad luck for me...
Yes, the WDTV live will stream MKV on your home network with very little CPU usage from the server. My main server is a P4 3ghz machine and I get no stutter or dropped frames even on large high bitrate mkv files. I bought one yesterday and it plays everything I have thrown at it. I'm a happy camper!
I had wdtv 1, works great as prev mentioned, 1080p mkv's all day long. Saw the new one today and picked up and set up now. It can do wireless with dongle. streams hd 1080p with dts from my two Pc's
and yes subtitles on HD movies now works. so they did fix that prev major complaint. Its much faster and responsive then 1st one. even comes with component and composite rca out cables they have mini plugs- thats not easy to see from pics. its works better than I expected. I streamed the hi def 5.1 movie from my laptop which is wireless to my network. No lag, and I was also browsing web at the same time managing my fantasy football, I looked up at tv to see if it caused any noticable delays or artifacts, none....I may get one for the bedroom.
hansm,
I find the WDTV Live to be a great box, however I have the same problem with .mov files from my iPhone. The audio track displays as AAC when I stream the files from my server, however I hear no audio. I can stream the same files to my WDTV Live through PlayOn! and it'll transcode the audio fine.
i hope the upcoming new model of the WD shoild have a FM tuner built in.
Does the component output support 720p HD or just SD? If so will it downgrade 1080p files to 720p through the component output. My TV only supports 720p and I am using a receiver with component switching, but I would sill like to view HD content. The WD website is somewhat unclear.
I don't get it - everyone seems satisfied with the HD playback of their ripped Blu-Ray content.
I rip my Blu-Rays & HD DVDs to .iso files so as to preserve subtitles and optional audio commentary tracks.
And every one of them stutters and lags occassionally on the WDTV1.
Until I hear confirmation that this will NOT happen with the WDTVLive and Blu-Ray .isos, I will not buy this.
Can anyone speak to this?
Just got a WDTV Live. It works perfectly out-of-the-box. After adjusting the settings, I just plugged my storage device to it and that's it. The first thing I tested was a Bluray 1080 mkv file with DTS audio (14gig size)and I was amazed with the quality. (Note: WDTV1 could not decode DTS audio). Not only this box delivered, it voids the need of a Bluray player and the price is 1/3 of a Popcorn.
Played with WDTVLive for the last 2 days. Found it no better or even comparable to performance of Sony PS3 except for capability of playing mkv and new h.264 and x.264 files, still sporadically though with frequent dropoffs and inability to read srt sub files linked to the 264 or mkv files.
Photo presentation is also poor and slow compared to PS3.
Post a Comment