After much anticipation, WDTV Live is finally here! I'll get right to the point, because I know there are a lot of questions from current Western Digital WD TV HD Media Player owners and those sitting on the fence about the capabilities of the Live in comparison to other media players on the market. I also considered the ASUS O!Play ($99) while waiting for the Live's release or the Seagate FreeAgent Theater+HD ($135). The WDTV is a proven quantity and for the Live, I had high expectations.

Cosmetically, not much has changed. Not even the box. The Live is nearly identical to the WDTV except in color, being matte grey instead of shiny piano black. Ease of setup and usage carries over from its forebear, so WDTV users will be right at home with the Live's interface and settings. At the rear, the ports have been slightly rearranged to make room for a LAN port and component out. HDMI is now 1.3 instead of 1.2, capable of a color depth of 12 bits per pixel. Batteries are included in the box, as are component and composite cables, but bring your own HDMI or LAN cable.

Building on the strengths of the original (and successful) WDTV, WD has made an already excellent player even better. They listened to users and addressed two of the biggest complaints of the WDTV, namely: lack of network connectivity and lack of DTS down-mixing.

I am pleased to report that on these two counts, the Live is a winner, packaged inside the same compact form factor as its predecessor and sold at a very reasonable price. The most exciting thing is network connectivity because the Live can be made wireless!

1) Network connectivity: out of the box, the Live connects via CAT-5. I have no interest in connecting USB hard drives to the Live because it limits my mobility. I have 2 NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices (D-Link DNS321 2-Bay SATA, RAID 0/1 Gigabit Ethernet Port Network Storage Enclosure and D-Link 2-Bay Network Storage Enclosure) and have been streaming movies wirelessly to my PlayStation 3, but I don't like the PS3's lack of MKV support and wasteful energy consumption. My PS3 can now go back to being a dedicated game and Blu-ray machine.

I was surprised to discover that my AirLink 101 AWLL6070 150Mbps 802.11n Wireless LAN USB 2.0 Adapter (purchased for a failed WDTV networking hack attempt) worked. I plugged it in, changed the Live's setting to wireless and it saw my wireless network with no fuss. I really have to hand it to WD for making the device open-ended, unlike the NETGEAR Digital Entertainer Live (Black) (which I tested and returned), which requires a proprietary $40 Netgear dongle. Other dongles will work too with the Live, and WD has a forum listing them.

2) DTS down-mixing: this was another shortcoming of the original WDTV. The Live down-mixes DTS to 2.0 so you don't need to slave it to an audio receiver anymore. Many of my MKV's are encoded with DTS, so this is another huge improvement. DTS Master Audio does not seem to be supported, but I am not very concerned as DTS MA is rarely encountered in the wild (though that may change in the future). All my files are MP3, AAC, AC3, or DTS audio streams, which all work on the Live. Many of the tested MKVs have multiple audio streams for different language tracks. You can also mux additional tracks and subtitles into the MKV file with the free and awesome mkvmerge GUI program. Subtitle files can be downloaded from sites like DivxStation.

DTS downmixing means now I can take a portable drive of movies over to a friend's house and not worry about compatibility, greatly increasing the versatility and value of the Live. The inclusion of both component and composite outs removes the worry about older TV's. And like the WDTV, the Live will downsample to standard def for non-HDTV's. However, if you have an HDTV and an AVR, you'll want to use them for maximum enjoyment.

But the most biggest selling point for me is wireless. After discovering WiFi connectivity, I lost all interest in using the Live as a wired device. With just $20 (cost of AirLink), I now have a wireless player that easily out-competes more expensive ones like the Popcorn Hour A-110 HD Networked Media Tank (EU), and can enjoy the freedom and convenience of putting this player anywhere in my house. I don't have messy and dangerous wires all the floor to trip over (I killed a 1 TB hard drive full of movies this way) and I don't need an audio receiver. All the 720p/1080i/p videos I had on my NAS played perfectly with the except of one 1080p .mp4 which had intermittent hiccups every minute or so.

The Live saw each device 2x on the menu, as a media share and a network share. With media share, the files are divided into 3 categories: video, photos, music. Only some of my movies showed up (WMV, MP4, AVI, TS), no MKV's. With network share, all the files are listed. This is the listing option to use if you have a NAS.

3) Additionally, third complaint on the WDTV was lack of support for 1080p24. This format now plays. VOB is now also supported, for those of you who make DVD archives.

USABILITY:

The WDTV had the most attractive and usable interface of any of the 10+ media players I tested over the years, and WD didn't mess with a winning formula. Graphically, the Live retains the blue cool-toned look and easy-to-use navigation of the WDTV. It adds a third listing option, Preview mode. Movies will now start playing in a smaller window on the right if you pause over the title for a second or two (with audio). Every movie I tested plays in preview. The remote control is the same as the WDTV. Navigation long directories is still somewhat of a pain because of no Page Up/Page Down button, but if you hold the up or down button down, it'll scroll by a page at a time after a second or two. Commands are fast and responsive. No spinning dials that plague the Netgear Live Entertainer.

For rewinding, the preview sometimes does not match the time-code. The timer was counting down, but the screen showed video from the opposite direction. If you stop rewinding and resume again, it'll show the proper preview. This is a small nuisance that I hope WD fixes soon in a firmware update.

Subtitle support via embedded or external still works great for Western and non-Western character sets because of Unicode. Embedded subs are pre-tagged with the language code, so the device will display "Subtitle 1/3 - English". For external .srt files, I discovered that if I name them the same as the movie and include a dash, then the language (e.g. "MOVIENAME - ENG.srt"), the WD will display the part after the dash as the language name.

INTERNET STREAMING:

For YouTube, the videos looked really good. The Live will select HD streams if available. I was surprised at the video quality of some of the ones I loaded, particularly one music video. Startup was fast, if not instantaneous, and I did not notice a buffering delay. Currently, YouTube is the only site supported, and searching is only in Western characters. The onscreen keyboard is arranged in row, A-Z, with 0-9 at the bottom. (Plugging in a USB keyboard did nothing.) I'm hoping for Hulu, Vimeo, and more in the future, like a WDTV Live Channels Guide or something like that, organized by interests (sports, history, science, news, etc), or regions of the world. It would be a very useful feature for people like my dad, who doesn't know how to use the web and he'd be able to watch shows from other parts of the world. Maybe in a future firmware update.

I didn't test Pandora or Live365 (internet radio) because I'm not interested in listening to radio/music out of my TV. Noticeably missing is NetFlix support, a feature prominent on some networked media players, Blu-ray players, and gaming platforms (Xbox 360), though word is that WD is at work on an update.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Next on my wishlist is RMVB support. This is the last thing missing from the long list of supported formats, because then I can throw out the really crappy RMVB player I have. Sadly, it seems to be hardware related and cannot be added with a firmware refresh.

Lastly, if the Live came in new colors like fire engine red like the Western Digital My Passport Essential 320 GB USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive WDMER3200TN (Real Red), or banana yellow, that'd be hot. I don't particularly care for the Live's matte grey exterior and prefer the glossy finish of the WDTV. It's not solid grey. It's sparkly like glitter, a rather odd choice for a finish.

To sum up, this is the device you've been waiting for! It is a great little player for the price. It now does everything I want it to (minus RMVB playback) and is truly the versatile and unfettered player that I have been hoping for. As a gadgets guy and early adopter, I wasted several hundreds of dollars testing out disappointing players and can say definitely that WD makes one of the best players on the market.

UPDATE 1: 10/24/09:

1. I logged into Pandora and it worked with no lag and no buffering. Currently, it's listen only. You can't add new stations, so you'll still have to manage your presets from their website through a normal computer. I found out Live365 is a paid service ("my trial is about to expire in 5 days"), making the feature totally worthless to me.

2. I turned on "thick" subtitle outlines option and it makes them a lot easier to see, especially if there's a lot of white on the screen.

UPDATE 2: 1/10/10:
Streaming from Windows PC's does not work properly. After 5 minutes of playback, the Live disconnects from the shared PC. If you intend to use the Live to stream movies off a network share, this is not the product for you.

There are already some very well-written informative reviews on this player, so I'll try to focus on the "out of the box experience" since mine is literally just out of the box today. Because my order on Amazon for this product was backordered for a month or more, I called all the local Best Buys until I found a WD TV Live that was not showing up on their "store availability" page and purchased it for $119 plus tax (oh how I missed Amazon when the tax was added on at my local store!). The price on Amazon has gone all over the place the last few days, from $119 to $149. I'm assuming we'll see it at $99 after the initial release period is over since several media players are now priced at that point.

I went home, unpacked the box and in my haste I didn't even see the installation CD that came with the unit. (I just ran it now so I could tell you about it - it includes a utility which allows your computer to "see" the WD TV, as well as the manual and some other fluff).

I plugged the WDTV into an ethernet jack on my router, used the supplied cables to attach to my TV, plugged in the power cable and literally minutes later I was watching videos stored on my computer! The WD TV immediately logged onto our computer network and saw both of our computers (Windows XP), and I was able to watch media stored on both. Wow. Very easy. Then I navigated to Pandora, punched in my account information, and 30 seconds later was listening to my Pandora music stations. Next stop was YouTube (another menu option), I plugged in my YouTube name and password, and was able to see my YouTube subscriptions.

I then went into the settings menu and clicked on "update firmware" just to make sure I had the latest firmware installed. After about 5 seconds of the unit checking with Western Digital, it confirmed my firmware is up to date. Again, very easy. I was also able to register the unit from the onscreen display, and received a confirmation email. I found the onscreen menus very logically laid out and easy to use.

Watching movies stored on my computer and accessing YouTube/Pandora was great - but I wanted to see if I could access Hulu. So, I navigated to the "media server" menu and it saw my Tversity software program running on one computer. I clicked on that and minutes later I was watching "Glee" (a program on ABC). The only issue I ran into was that fast forward would sometimes cause the program to freeze and I would need to re-start. Given that this media player is brand new and basically in what feels like a beta release, sold out just about everywhere, I'm assuming that a firmware upgrade in the coming weeks will fix that bug as well as any others I come across. I tried a few other programs and was only able to replicate the issue intermittently. However, pause caused no problems. And, I don't expect Western Digital to support Tversity, which may be the root of the problem (vs the WD player) so I'm not taking off marks for that one issue. I'm just happy I can watch a variety of shows streamed from Tversity on the WD TV. (A google search on Tversity will take you to the download site for that wonderful free to try program).

My previous media server, the D-Link DSM-320 D-Link DSM-320 Wireless Media Player, Audio/Photo/Video, 802.11g, is not nearly as nice... I spent hours and hours and hours (days) configuring it and getting it to "see" my home network. I also found the user menus to be very cumbersome with navigation almost an afterthought. In contrast, the WD TV is a dream come true and definitely feels like the "next generation" of media servers.

I've tried a number of video and music formats, and they've all played with no problem (except for the fast forward issue above). I watched a slide show of pictures stored on one of my computers. All of this without reading a single manual or going to a single internet help forum. Literally, plug and play.

So, overall, I'd say this is a strong unit, and I'm very happy with it. Since I am reviewing the unit much sooner than I normally would, I do commit to the Amazon community that if I experience issues with the WD TV I'll return to update this review. But based on my experience with other media servers and other hardware setups, I think this is a winner. Highly recommended.

Hope this helps!


UPDATE 11/12/2009: Almost a month later and I'm 1000% happy with this player... no issues. Works great... fast..great interface... I'm going to give one or two of these as holiday presents this year. I've replaced my DVR on my second TV and no longer pay the cable company $14 per month for a DVR... this little gizmo is going to pay for itself!

LAST UPDATE 12/5/2009: I was experiencing video freezing with Hulu using the Tversity software on my computer... I switched to Playon and am really glad I did! Flawless performance on Hulu streaming and TONS of content (i.e. you can watch tons of old TV shows like Dynasty and Mary Tyler Moore). Still very happy with this unit. I do agree with other reviewers - it would be nice if remote had a volume control, and some of the navigation screens are a bit "clunky" but overall very happy.

I just got this today and was able to set it up on a wired network with a Mac and a Vista PC. I hooked it up to a 47 Vizio LCD using HDMI. So far I know it plays my JPEGs, VOBs (DVD), MP4s, and MP3s. I was also able to view my photos on Flickr, and also a YouTube video. So far it has done everything I was expecting. I don't notice any delay or quality degradation of the video. I don't know how much I like the way it handles displaying folders because I have to click through folders to sub folders to get the Vob's to play, but I can live with it. I think it is well worth the money. I wouldn't hesitate to buy this again.