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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bah12 - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
But does it work? Or did you not try at all?ganeshts - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
Cameron will try them out and update by today evening :)bah12 - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
Good deal thanks! Ripped my collection a few years back (old Media Center HTPC + MyMovies). MyMovies DB got corrupted so it basically just sits there. Waiting for an inexpensive streamer and some sort of software to catalog the movies. Easier to just grab the DVD off the shelf. Pity really, because it was a lot of work.Hoping something like this would do the trick, it would be nice to see the cataloging options. My project was a few years back, and getting the meta data (album art, genre ..) was a pain. Has it progressed enough today so that it can do it off of folder name? Or better yet even track sampling like .mp3's do when they auto get the album info.
cbutters - Friday, July 30, 2010 - link
This test that was suggested is now updated in the article.AgeOfPanic - Sunday, August 1, 2010 - link
Does Blu-Ray folder playback also mean that you can hookup an external Blu-Ray player (e.g. the ones that you can buy for a laptop) and browse through the folders of a Blu-ray disk?ganeshts - Sunday, August 1, 2010 - link
This is usually not possible on most devices because AACS is unsupported in these type of devices (sub-$200). You need Blu Ray players such as C-200 or the Dune Prime for folder playback on attached Blu Ray drives.pjladyfox - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
You guys get major kudos from this girly geek and prove why Anantech is the first place I usually come to for reviews followed by everyone else. This has got to be, by far, the most detailed and comprehensive testing suite I've EVER seen regarding NMT's and media streamers. Now I'm dying to see a roundup from you guys, using this testing suite, to see how the other boxes stack up. ^_^To other review sites: THIS is how you not only build a testing suite but review a NMT and media streamer.
JNo - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
Hi great review - love the detail on the compatibility and also video quality - that's rare.I would urge you guys to google then get and review the Xtreamer. It's made and sold directly by a Korean company but is really great value and powerful. It has a very active user community, some of whom who work directly with the manufacturers on the new firmware updates.
As for streaming - I'm all for it... in theory. Apart from being rubbish at understanding and setting up networks, I won't even consider wireless streaming of hd content with all the problems I keep reading about. And whilst wired network streaming is a lot better, it can still have issues and relies on your computer being on for this to occur (noise, power etc) - and not all of us are dedicated enough to have a home NAS system.
I simply put a 500Gb 2.5" HDD in my xtreamer which, while costly initially, allows me just to transfer films and tv shows to it knowing that I, or my wife, will be able to watch them stutter free whenever, whether or not the computer is on. Once you've got a bit of a collection on it, the streaming thing becomes irrelevant.
ganeshts - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
JNo, Thanks for your suggestion.Xtreamer has been on our sights for quite some time now. We are taking steps to see whether we can test it out, but no guarantees :)
docent - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link
my one year old ASUS HDP-R1 can play DVD menus from ISO files, what's interesting it can even play menus from BD - functionality that is still not supported on WD media players. WD TV Live Plus is an inferior products - Asus HDP-R1 or newer model HDP-R3 ( with embedded WI-FI ) are much better