WD TV Live Plus: Western Digital's Latest Media Player Reviewed
by Cameron Butterfield on July 29, 2010 1:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Home Theater
- Media Streamer
- WD
- WD TV Live Plus
Connectivity options with the WD TV Live Plus are fairly robust, and should be able to connect to any television new or even older sets. However some prospective buyers with certain models of receivers might be disappointed by the lack of coaxial S/PDIF.
| Western Digital TV Live Plus | ||||
| Feature | WD Config | |||
| HDMI | Yes (v1.3) | |||
| Component | Yes | |||
| Composite | Yes | |||
| VGA | No | |||
| SPDIF | Yes (Optical) | |||
| Stereo | Yes | |||
| Optical Disk Drive | No | |||
| USB | Yes (2 x 2.0) | |||
| eSATA | No | |||
| LAN | Yes (100Mbps) | |||
| Internal HDD | No | |||
| WiFi | Supported (Not Included) | |||
| Card Reader | No | |||
One of the greatest benefits of a media player like this over a HTPC (besides the initial cost) is the power consumption of the device. The WD TV Live Plus consumed 4 watts idle at the home screen, with no storage media plugged into the USB port. The maximum wattage pulled from the wall during HD video playback from a USB powered HDD was 13 watts. Even a well designed power conscious HTPC is going to pull at least 20 watts at idle, and most likely well above 50 at load. And those numbers go up significantly depending on the processor, chipset and graphics you decide on. For those who value low power consumption this device certainly fits the bill, consuming almost 8 times less power than an HTPC at idle and 5 times less power at load.
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Anubis - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
The 360 or PS3 combined with Tversity or PS3 Media Server can transcode ANYTHING, even real mediabeginner99 - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
Your PC is transcoding so that the ps3/xbox can read it. With wd tv live you do not need to transcode at all. Transcoding isn't exactly ideal especial for HD content. will probably use quite a bit of cpu juice.Alexstarfire - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
I think anyone looking into these is probably going to have a computer that's up to par for that purpose though. I might actually look into getting a used 360 for that purpose.BigDH01 - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
Can the 360 playback full bit rate blu-ray rips? What about audio? DTS support at all? I haven't tried TVersity or WMC lately from my 360, but last time I did I was extremely disappointed.http://support.xbox.com/support/en/us/nxe/gamesand...
The 360 is great as long as your needs fit into that little world. As far as I know, TVersity simply converts your videos on-the-fly into the confines of the above limitations. Because of this reason, I use the WD TV Live to stream my media and am much happier as a result.
It'd be nice if MS tried to optimize the 360 at all for media playback, but dreaming for that is like dreaming for Softsled.
saiga6360 - Friday, July 30, 2010 - link
OR they have NAS devices that do not have the CPU power to do transcoding. Not that they should. What's the point of a streaming device if you have to transcode?nonmiraj - Monday, August 2, 2010 - link
Even using TVersity with the 360 you're storing and playing movies through your computer and then streaming them. Streaming HD movies, that's a "Stupid" / awful idea, anyone that suggests that isn't streaming HD movies. And forget it if you're ever planning on fast forwarding, rewinding or pausing doing that.Get a media player like this WD and do it right.
gigahertz20 - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
Wirelessly streaming HD movies (4-15GB mkvs h.264 codec) using TVersity to your Xbox 360 sucks, just does not work. I messed around with TVersity at a friends house using my laptop to stream a few movies to his Xbox 360 and it just did not work that well. Maybe if you have a built in wired network it would work fine, but not wireless.Anubis - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
pretty sure streaming 1080p over wireless doesn't work for anything, even if everything is N based it still has issues, PS3 has the same issue as 360 does with it. Wired works fine for both.beginner99 - Friday, July 30, 2010 - link
for normal mkv's it woprks on n. I do it. but on a 5 ghz seperate network for streaming only.anachreon - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
The idea that an xbox 360 is a replacement for any of these devices is absolutely laughable.