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
Multimedia enthusiasts are often concerned about the quality of pictures output by the system. While this is a very subjective metric, we have decided to take as much of an objective approach as possible. Starting this month, we will be evaluating all our HTPCs and media streamers with the HQV 2.0 test suite. This test suite consists of 39 different streams divided into 4 different classes. The playback device is assigned scores for each, depending on how well it plays the stream. Each test was repeated multiple times to ensure that the correct score was assigned. The scoring details are available in the testing guide [PDF]. In the table below, we indicate the maximum score possible for each test, and how much the WD TV Live Plus is able to score.
| WDTV Live Plus : HQV 2.0 Benchmark | ||||
| Test Class | Chapter | Tests | Max. Score | WDTV Live Plus |
| Video Conversion | Video Resolution | Dial | 5 | 4 |
| Dial with Static Pattern | 5 | 0 | ||
| Gray Bars | 5 | 1 | ||
| Violin | 5 | 0 | ||
| Film Resolution | Stadium 2:2 | 5 | 0 | |
| Stadium 3:2 | 5 | 0 | ||
| Overlay On Film | Horizontal Text Scroll | 5 | 3 | |
| Vertical Text Scroll | 5 | 3 | ||
| Cadence Response Time | Transition to 3:2 Lock | 5 | 0 | |
| Transition to 2:2 Lock | 5 | 0 | ||
| Multi-Cadence | 2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCam Video | 5 | 0 | |
| 2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video | 5 | 0 | ||
| 3:2:3:2:2 24 FPS Vari-Speed | 5 | 0 | ||
| 5:5 12 FPS Animation | 5 | 0 | ||
| 6:4 12 FPS Animation | 5 | 0 | ||
| 8:7 8 FPS Animation | 5 | 0 | ||
| Color Upsampling Errors | Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP) | 5 | 5 | |
| Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE) | 5 | 2 | ||
| Noise and Artifact Reduction | Random Noise | SailBoat | 5 | 0 |
| Flower | 5 | 0 | ||
| Sunrise | 5 | 0 | ||
| Harbour Night | 5 | 0 | ||
| Compression Artifacts | Scrolling Text | 5 | 0 | |
| Roller Coaster | 5 | 0 | ||
| Ferris Wheel | 5 | 0 | ||
| Bridge Traffic | 5 | 0 | ||
| Upscaled Compression Artifacts | Text Pattern | 5 | 0 | |
| Roller Coaster | 5 | 0 | ||
| Ferris Wheel | 5 | 0 | ||
| Bridge Traffic | 5 | 0 | ||
| Image Scaling and Enhancements | Scaling and Filtering | Luminance Frequency Bands | 5 | 5 |
| Chrominance Frequency Bands | 5 | 5 | ||
| Vanishing Text | 5 | 0 | ||
| Resolution Enhancement | Brook, Mountain, Flower, Hair, Wood | 15 | 15 | |
| Video Conversion | Contrast Enhancement | Theme Park | 5 | 0 |
| Driftwood | 5 | 0 | ||
| Beach at Dusk | 5 | 0 | ||
| White and Black Cats | 5 | 0 | ||
| Skin Tone Correction | Skin Tones | 10 | 0 | |
| Total Score | 210 | 43 | ||
The WD TV Live scores only a 43 out of 210 on the HQV 2.0 test. The image quality tests show that the device had particular issues with deinterlacing and noise reduction. In particular the video resolution tests showed a large amount of flickering when displaying the test videos. No noise reduction appeared to be occuring, cadence was an issue, but the picture did seem to be quite vivid and not dull.
As a side note; If you are using this device to watch interlaced content on a high definition television with a quality image processor, there is a way to improve your picture quality by bypassing WD's image processor. By setting the WD TV to 1080i output rather than 1080p, you can effectively utilize the video processor of the television to provide a much cleaner picture than the WD TV Live is capable of producing on its own 1080p setting. Of course this depends on the quality of your television; but on the 52" Samsung television used in testing, great improvement was observed when viewing deinterlaced content using this method.
The picture quality on this device proves to be significantly less than the HTPC counterparts that we have seen thus far. We will be comparing these HQV benchmark results with those obtained by similar devices in the near future.
Another interesting thing to note is that the Sigma Designs processor used in the unit has hardware support for specific noise reduction and deinterlacing algorithms. Unfortunately, WD doesn't seem to have enabled these blocks in the firmware.
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Decaff - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
I definately second this.Most of the commentaries I've seen around point to the PlayON being a far better player, though some people claim the WDTV to be better, but doesn't back it up.
Also, the Popcorn boxes are often regarded as being superior (probably due to the higher pricetag), but I haven't seen any solid confirmation of it anywhere.
So keep up the good work. I'm loving these articles.
jo-82 - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
Why would i want to let my normal machine run all the time? If i use a USB-attached one i have the mess auf more Cables and an additional device.Dear WD: Put a 2,5" Drivebay (Hotswappable would be nice) inside and we have a deal. Especially as a Device for Parents und and Friends...
probedb - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
Some of us have these things called fileservers or NAS boxes. If you want an internal drive why are you even looking at this as that's not what it's for???dvinnen - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
These type devices are geared toward people who have media servers (i currently use a 7 year old machine running linux and a ton of storage and it works great). Also to get you to purchase a WD external HD.Internal storage wouldn't work unless they added NAS functionality to it. Hot swapping drives to put media on it and bring it back to the player just sounds like a bad idea.
saiga6360 - Friday, July 30, 2010 - link
Did you happen to see the price tag? You want something like, you will have to pay more for like a Popcorn Hour or a Dune.Finite Loop - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
I had been looking for the WD TV Live, but it was sold out everywhere and nobody had any backorders for it. I went with the AC Ryan Playon HD mini.It would have been nice if the article discussed playback over the LAN connection. The AC Ryan performs well over its (100Mb) LAN connection except for 1080p content where fast action scenes may exhibit block-effects. The only content the AC Ryan doesn't seem to play (whether from LAN or USB) is stereoscopic video which causes the player to freeze.
I was hoping this WD "Plus" version would have a gigabit connection. Without gigabit, the increase in price in comparison to the previous version doesn't seem to be justified. Additionally, the AC Ryan comes with an HDMI cable which I would have had to purchase separately had I gone with a WD TV Live model.
It's interesting the article mentions the chip(s) in the WD TV Live Plus however a comparison with chips used in other devices would be appreciated. Why does this device require 1Gigabyte of memory while the AC Ryan mini operates with only 128MB? What's the difference between the video decoding chip in this player and other players?
cbutters - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
You can get the WD TV Live Plus for 119 at newegg with a free 8GB thumb drive.I'm not entirely sure that gigabit is an important feature here, with bluray video streams maxing out at 40mbps and averaging less than 30, there seems to be little benefit of increasing the 100mbps connection to 1000 as the bandwidth would go unused. However this is something that we hope to examine further in future articles.
Saltbread - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
I'm assuming that the Core 100 refers to the Asrock product reviewed before and the column should actually be labled Live Plus or something like that. My apologies if I am incorrect.ganeshts - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
This has been fixed. Thanks for pointing out.ned14 - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
These low end media boxes mainly come with one of two chipsets: Sigma and Realtek with the former being more expensive. The problem isn't the hardware, it's more the manufacturer supplied firmware where the Sigma one is good, whereas the Realtek one was written by incompetent chimpanzees. Anyone who has used both types of box will know exactly what I mean.There is a brand new third option though - the Amlogic chipset. Its firmware is spartan, but due to its simplicity is seems to "just work" and it looks better than the Realtek's but not as good as the Sigma. The specs of the Amlogic I bought is detailed here at http://www.iboum.com/pr/nation2.php.
My first problem with the WDTV Live, as with anything costing more than US$70, is that for that price it really ought to have an internal drive bay so you don't have to faff around with external USB drive solutions. My second problem is with anything costing more than US$100 when for less or even not much more you can pick up a second hand P3 based quiet computer off ebay or a second hand games console both of which are far better media playing solutions. After all, Boxee and/or XBMC can be downloaded and installed on most things, so a DIY solution is often better here.
The only remaining argument is that these boxes are small and easily transportable e.g. to a friend's house in a way that PCs and game consoles are not. And here's my third problem with these boxes: top end smartphones are increasingly able to serve content either through HDMI or DNLA or both, and you can't beat a phone for portability.
Now if you can pick up a tiny light box for US$70 AND it has an internal drive bay AND it can play off of a DNLA server such as a phone - e.g. the Amlogic box I bought - then you might be on to something because it can act as a simple TV driver for media living elsewhere while still having the flexibility to act as a cheap NAS box too if desired. And what few bugs it has in its firmware have been fixed quickly as they seem to be operating a quarterly firmware release schedule. Personally I have been pleasantly surprised considering the price.
Oh, and it plays RMVB just fine. I have a huge collection of South Park in RMVB, and while they're a little blocky on my 1080p TV due to the low bitrate that is hardly the player's fault!
Cheers,
Niall