WDTV Live


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Does anyone have one of these?

 

what do you think of it

 

any bad things

 

what good thing?

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I have one and love it, I use it all the time.. If you have a NAS with movies on then you can hook it up to your network and play pretty much play any type of media. You can also put a USB drive into the front of it to play content of that.

 

But the best part about it is that it plays anything.

 

One bad thing I would agree with is that the UI is quite slow and not as responsive as say the Apple TV, but its not a problem at all, it only feels slow it doesn't crash or lag majorly.

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ok cool

 

i am using the Sumvision Cyclone 3 just now

 

its not network enabled though and also the usb bit broke, using the internal storage is a pain

 

yeah i have a NAS with NFS shares which i have been told work fine

 

so just looking for real use opinions :)

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I have one, as for what I can tell you about it...

 

- Unstable. 

- Slow takes forever to start up or switch between sections

- UI is pretty horrible, usable but nothing great.

- Netflix, sorta works, but has had issues where if I play HD content it will only play the first episode of something then it won't play anything HD anymore until you restart. Also doesn't support SuperHD.

- network content is handled terribly and takes forever to index and load up. it also keeps making these .wdtv folders with indexing data or whatever in any folder it indexes. super annoying. 

 

it works, but there are better products. 

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Mine works fine though I do have one issue, it's not playing nice with Windows 8 network shares.  And since I'm not on a home network I can't/don't want to allow "everyone" to have access to the shares.  I don't know if it's basically that or some other setting but they just don't show up at all on the WDTV.  

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I have one as I mentioned already Haggis and I think it works fine for what I use it for. Not the best UI in the world but I don't see it much, it's only there for a bit when I go watch shows. :p

 

It does play what I play from my NAS however. I don't do much Netflix or Hulu or anything these days, just NAS stuff.

 

Any particular questions you have?

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Well most of my usenwill be from nfs shares

Will sometimes use you tube

Will be wireless untill I get around to getting a cable to it

How slow are we talking

Could one of you video say turning it on and going to a share and playing it

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Mine works fine though I do have one issue, it's not playing nice with Windows 8 network shares.  And since I'm not on a home network I can't/don't want to allow "everyone" to have access to the shares.  I don't know if it's basically that or some other setting but they just don't show up at all on the WDTV.  

 

You probably have to set windows 8(goes for 7 to) to manage access based on user account, and you have to turn on password protected sharing(the name is a bit misleading). otherwise it uses the homegroup thing to manage access. 

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I have a WDTV Live Hub.

Excellent bit of kit. Plays every file i throw at it (except 10bit).

I agree the UI is a bit naff.

In terms of speed. I've never had any trouble with it. From standby it is pretty much instant turning on.

Navigation is usually pretty quick.

 

I think this will vary depending on which WDTV you get. Mine is the Live Hub (has an internal 1TB HD).

For a cheap media player there is nothing better. Especially in the UK.

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I have a WDTV Live SMP, I like it very much. I have yet to find a file format that it won't play and it works very well with DLNA servers or plays right off an external hard drive or flash drive. I don't mind the UI really, and I mostly use it for Netflix which I have set to auto start so I rarely see the UI anyway. Overall I've never had any trouble with it. Last time I checked the Roku was for streaming services only; it could not play your own files. Maybe the new ones can though, I haven't read up on them lately but it is something you may want to look into.

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I have a WDTV Live Hub and I absolutely love the thing, it plays anything I throw at it, besides its internal 1TB HDD you can attach external storage to it via its back USB ports, the Hub will also scan for any network shares and also make them streamable throughout the house, if you don't want to spend the money for the Hub they also have a high end version without the built in hard drive, my advice to you, get one from the store and try it out, you can always return it, I have had this product for three years and I would buy it again anytime, I also have a Roku and it doesn't compare, only advantage is that Roku has a lot of apps. which the WDTV Live Hub is honestly lacking, but that's about its only downside.

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I have a WDTV Live Hub and I absolutely love the thing, it plays anything I throw at it, besides its internal 1TB HDD you can attach external storage to it via its back USB ports, the Hub will also scan for any network shares and also make them streamable throughout the house, if you don't want to spend the money for the Hub they also have a high end version without the built in hard drive, my advice to you, get one from the store and try it out, you can always return it, I have had this product for three years and I would buy it again anytime, I also have a Roku and it doesn't compare, only advantage is that Roku has a lot of apps. which the WDTV Live Hub is honestly lacking, but that's about its only downside.

 

 

Apps i am not bothered about i can do without any of them being honest

 

its more the plugging in USB devices and streaming from shares

 

Its the WDTV Live i am looking at which is basically the hub without the HDD in it :)

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Apps i am not bothered about i can do without any of them being honest

 

its more the plugging in USB devices and streaming from shares

 

Its the WDTV Live i am looking at which is basically the hub without the HDD in it :)

 

Be aware there are several versions of the WDTV Live. The newest model and the one I recommend is the WDTV Live Streaming.

 

This page lists all the different models and their capabilities: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WD_TV

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That's the one. (Y)

 

Seems a bit expensive on that site though, new ones on eBay often sell around $65 (?38.82). I would shop around some. :)

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You probably have to set windows 8(goes for 7 to) to manage access based on user account, and you have to turn on password protected sharing(the name is a bit misleading). otherwise it uses the homegroup thing to manage access. 

 

I have password protected sharing on to, what/where is the manage access based on user account setting you're talking about?  The problem here is that the network shares don't show up at all on the WDTV so it's like my PC isn't showing up at all/not connected.

 

*edit*  I found it, set it to user accounts instead of the auto homegroup setting, going to see if that changed anything later tonight because it says I have to sign out and back in which I can't do right now.

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advanced sharing settings-> Private - > check the "use user accounts and passwords to connect to other computers" not the homegroup one. 

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