WD TV Live Media Player with Wi-Fi
$39.99
$89.99
56% off
Reference Price
Condition: Factory Reconditioned
Top positive review
5 people found this helpful
Thoughts after owning 4 WDTVs for ~11 months and no more cable
By Grimloktt on Reviewed in the United States on November 24, 2013
For my '13 New Year's resolution, I decided to look at my spending habits and find ways to save money. After doing some math factoring in hardware purchase, we decided to cut our cable. We purchased FOUR wdtv lives and placed them at our 4 TVs. Two of them are wired to internet while the other 2 are wirelessly connected. It has been ~11 months since purchase. So, I feel quite qualified to provide feedback. We use the boxes for two main purposes: watching Hulu/Netflix and watching movies we burned to our external HD. We did discover, however, some niceties along the way. So, firstly, onto streaming Hulu and Netflix. The box flawlessly streams Netflix. And, of course, with Netflix you can stop whatever you're watching, move to another room, and begin watching right where you left off. Hulu playback, however, has been questionable but doable. We have watched numerous Hulu shows with minimal issues: The Tudors Series, Grey's Anatomy, Modern Family, etc. As a matter of fact, we are currently watching a Modern Family episode without issues. I must admit that to obtain the best streaming quality without continual pauses I had to change the Hulu setting to 1 mbps; this is 2d worst or ~3 best quality? It still appears to be good quality. Netflix, on the other hand, NEVER has any issues. Perhaps the reason this is so because the quality automatically adjusts? The second reason we purchased the WDTV live is to watch movies from our HDs. The WD does this flawlessly and we've been very happy with the performance. It plays back all the formats it has come across with no issue. Furthermore, WD will automatically download art for your videos which is AWESOME! This allows the user to flip through the covers to select movies instead of a list of names. We like this feature. Now onto some of the unexpected benefits. Firstly, you can plug 2 external HDs into each WDTV. I also have the WD's connected to a Mybook live. Playback from these devices is flawless. Furthermore, once the WDs are properly mapped, you can watch the movies on one HD from any WDTV in the house. Secondly, you can use WD's program to map to the HDs connected to the WDs. This allows the ability to connect to the HDs that are connected to the WDs from your computer through wifi. This functionality allows you to wirelessly transfer movies to your HDs but also provides the option to just access the HDs for files or whatever through computer. Some tips: - I was having problems with mapping other WDTVs to my living room WDTV. Specifically, they would periodically drop the connection and I would have to reset stuff to make it work. WDTV's customer service informed me to change the workgroup name of my router which fixed the problem. I have no more drops! - After moving a movie to one of the HDs or to the my book live, it wouldn't immediately show up in the mapped folders. Through conversation with WDTV's customer service, they informed me to select "option" on the folder (before entering the folder to select movie) and choose rescan. After that, all movies are now visible. Cons: - It is not uncommon to have to reset this box. If box hasn't hard frozen, then we can long press the wdtv power button to reset. Otherwise, we have to pull the power cord. Sometimes we also have to pull power because volume is not there. Sometimes we have to pull power because the handshake between this unit and TV is not recognized and there is no picture. The freezing happens enough that my 7-year old knows how to physically pull the power cable. So, long story short, we've now saved $100 ea. month from no cable and we're happy. It's not all smooth sailing and we would gladly pay a bit more for more processing power--or whatever is needed--to avoid the aforementioned problems. My spouse was adamantly in disagreement with dropping the cable but has come around and has decided this has been a good decision. Happy shopping!
Top critical review
9 people found this helpful
Feature-Packed But Flawed Product
By D. B. Leach on Reviewed in the United States on November 17, 2012
UPDATED DEC. 4, 2013 Background: I'm an experienced computer process control systems engineer (retired) and I've purchased and extensively tested and evaluated 3 media players from Amazon.com over the past 3 years: WD TV Live Streaming Media Player (purchased in Sep. 2012); Sony SMP-N200 Streaming Media Player (purchased in Nov. 2012); and PrimeDTV PHD-HM5 Advanced Network 1080p HD Media Player (purchased in Jan 2011). Also I own a Roku 2 XS Media Player that I purchased in early 2012 from a local Walmart store. Without any further comments I can proclaim that the Roku 2 XS Media Player is the clear "winner" as far as reliably accessing and playing streaming media content from the sources of interest to me without compromising the user interface such as some other media players (like the WD TV Live Streaming Media Player) have done. If only Roku 2 XS could access and play media from a DLNA server then it would be my prime media player of choice and I would not have purchased the other above-mentioned media players. Roku 3 XS is now available however it still has the same limitations, i.e. it cannot access and play media from a DLNA server. Primary Objective: reliably play all media file types from the WD MyBookLiveDuo media DLNA server that I also purchased from Amazon in Sep. 2012. I specifically needed the capability to play music and photo files simultaneously from this server. Also connect to "Services" such as Netflix, HuluPlus, Pandora, Vudu HD, Amazon Instant Video and others without incurring glitches, problems, and unacceptable UI compromises. Reality: I was naive enough to think that if I purchased the WD TV Live Streaming Media Player that it would be well designed and capable of streaming media and playing music, photo and video files from the WD MyBookLiveDuo media server. What a disappointment! I (and 1000's of other users as I've discovered from joining the WD Users Community website) have discovered that the WD MyBookLiveDuo media server cannot for the most part reliably perform as a DLNA media server (refer to my updated Product Review of this product)!! Unique Features of this Product: it can (for a relatively short while at least until the WD MyBookLiveDuo media server fails as a DLNA server; which happens typically after 8-24 hours of use) stream photo files in a slide show format and simultaneously play any type and quantity of music selected from the media server. Regrettably I found out that the Sony SMP-N200 Streaming Media Player cannot do this; however it USUALLY performs its published functions without experiencing errors, lockups, esoteric media streaming problems, etc. that the WD TV Live Streaming Media Player may or may not perform, at least in my home wired (not wireless as I've learned my lesson the hard way when using media streaming devices) IT environment which has been extensively tested and determined to be performing to spec. What WD TV Live Streaming Media Player Does Well: plays photos and music from a DLNA server simultaneously, as long as the media server performs properly (which WD MyBookLiveDuo media server currently does not). Also services such as Netflix, VUDU HD, Pandora, etc. work quite well. HuluPlus show playback has some annoying shortcomings that I've documented in great detail to WD Tech. Sup. as part of my many support cases (and for which they have displayed their typical lack of response as they seem to avoid acknowledging that their products have major design flaws and defects--the words "customer disconnect" come to my mind after dealing with them as I have over the past 3 years). Also as the title of my review implies it is the most feature-packed media player that I've owned and far surpasses all of the competition in that regard. The remote control has all the features that I need or would want (if only they would work properly and reliably which they do not...) What WD TV Live Streaming Media Player Does NOT do Well: it may lock up for 1-2 minutes after power up to update its database. After powering up the unit the owner hopes that the blue LED on the front of the unit does not start flashing (indicating that it needs to update its internal media database) because if it does, then all bets are off and the owner may need to wait for a good long while before it responds to the remote. Speaking of lockups, it seems to lock up at random if it is in use. If this problem occurs, then the user must pull the power plug from the back of the unit to reset it as attempting to use any cmds on the remote control (incl. the power off btn) is totally futile. Forget about playing DivX fmt HD video files > 9 GB from the MyBookLiveDuo media server for no matter if the selected connection type is Media Server (which as I was recently told by WD Tech. Sup. that means that the media server is performing the decoding); or Network Share (which as I was recently told by WD Tech. Sup. that means that the streaming player is performing the decoding--a big difference); video playing will halt every 10-15 seconds to queue up the next segment of decoded video. Talk about intolerable viewer frustration! Also forget about accessing Amazon Instant Video as that "Service" is not provided (which in my opinion is truly an oversight if WD wants to sell this product on Amazon.com). To their credit WD is issuing regular firmware updates for this player and it can be configured to check for updates and install them automatically (highly recommended). With MyBookLiveDuo media server the last firmware update was issued Fri 18 Oct 2013 09:47:20 PM EDT and WD seems to be more responsive lately as countless very frustrated owners of this product were on the brink of staging a user revolt of unprecedented proportions due to this server's inability to reliably perform as a DLNA server as well as having many other MAJOR reported (and acknowledged by WD Tech. Sup.) problems. In summary my opinion based on a year of extensive evaluation and testing is that WD TV Live Streaming Media Player would be at the top of the class and handily outperform the competition IF it performed properly and reliably, which it does not at the current time. WD is continuing to update the firmware of this product and they may fix most of these problems in the future.
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