Western Digital’s updated its popular media streamer. New features include games and integrated social networking, as well as an HTML remote control, while the new drives offer “personal cloud”.
I’m just back from a quick product demo of Western Digital’s new product lines, including an updated version of the WD TV Live. This is the third generation of the product, and visually it’s much like last years; you can alter the dynamics of the interface to your preferences — not just the backdrop but if you fancy it the entire UI — and it covers the usual basics of music, photo and video playback. It’ll also access a variety of online program sources, although not all the features available overseas, such as Spotify will work here. Interestingly there’s two entries for YouTube; the Google supplied player (which is apparently a mandatory part of the licensing deal) as well as a WD-written YouTube client that more closely mimics the TV Live’s own UI.
New also in this unit are a bunch of Flash games. I didn’t get a chance to play any of them so it’d be unfair for me to pass absolute judgement. Still, we’re talking things like Chess, Sudoku and the like — hardly captivating stuff.
One interesting facet of the new WD TV Live is that it acts as a very limited Web server, serving up a single HTML page which mirrors the remote control and acts as a relay for remote control operations. Load up the page on any tablet or phone and you can control the TV without needing a platform-specific application, although WD reps told me there are plans for iOS and Android apps further down the track. The WD TV Live is 802.11n and Ethernet compatible and on sale now for $179.
The other part of the demonstration covered WD’s new range of My Book Live hard drives. Retailing for $169 for 1TB, $269 for 2TB and $319 for 3TB, they’re network connected drives that allow “personal cloud” access (AKA you can access them remotely) via www.wd2go.com or mobile device access via iOS or Android devices running WD’s Photos or WD2Go and WD2Go Pro apps.
The basic photos and 2Go apps are free, but the Pro app will set you back $2.99. The key difference between the pro and basic version is that while both will handle media streaming and document access, the pro version allows “clipping”, which is a fancy way of saying it’ll copy documents and files to your tablet for offline viewing.
light487
Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 3:46 PMIf you don’t care about built-in Wifi, you can still get the old model for around $99. This is the one I have and I just have a 1TB WD Essentials USB3.0 drive attached. I can load a lot of content on there and it works fine. Honestly, even if it had Wifi I don’t think I would use it all that much because you still need to have a media server (ie. main PC) running to access all your files..
For the price.. it’s not really worth it right now in my opinion.
Jd
Monday, October 31, 2011 at 4:52 PMThe newer model has more to it than just wifi. It has a newer chipset in it, running at a faster mhz, along with twice the memory.
Adz
Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 3:48 PMThe update we all want with WD TV Live is to be able to watch ABC’s iView, and other online content.
Roland
Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 3:52 PMIf you get lazy constantly attaching yuor USB hard drives to it you can run PS3 Media Server (1.40) off your Windows or Mac computer and stream it that way. Works a real treat! I love my WDTV Live box! Plus it’s so easy my gf has no issues working it either! :)
Sim
Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 9:47 PMWasnt there a post on here once about detecting posts from pr people? This post should be compared to that.
Reaver
Thursday, October 27, 2011 at 12:56 AMSeriously mate you have problems if you don’t think someone might have had a positive experience with a wd product and might feel moved enough to post about it, I have owned the wd tv and live versions and yes I agree it is so easy anyone can use it, I tried a media tank at one point and ended up trading for a live as I had never had any problems with it. The driver support is excellent they are adding new features all the time, how many others support non proprietary USB wifi sticks keyboards etc, I think you you need to learn the difference between hype and testimony.
Captain Picard
Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 3:58 PMI’ve been tempted to buy one but I want it to have the HDD in the box, the Asus O’Play can do this and so do a few others, it saves having to arc up two units at the same time. Asus product support sucks balls though, so don’t expect much there!
Honestly if they could combine them I’d be all over the WD!
The Joker
Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 5:57 PMI’ve got an external drive hooked up to mine and it simply puts the HDD to sleep when not accessed for a while. I don’t bother shutting it down anymore as that means the other 2 I have in the house can access it’s content anytime they want, ie. any content from anywhere in the house from any WDTV Live. Easy and it works.
Captain Picard
Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 6:41 PMAre you talking about the “Mybook” HDD? I find WD HDD’s and in particular the “Green” ones they put in those Caddies can be a bit finicky, IE constantly being checked by Windows etc! That was a while ago though. Plus I don’t think they are USB3 yet, but that’s from the previous experience, and could also be out of date.
The Joker
Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 7:49 PMNo. I have a Samsung 2TB ext HDD with USB2. The previous version(s) of the WDTV Live, ie. the ones clearing for $99 in Australia recently only have USB2 anyway so USB3 was never a concern. I transfer everything over the network so the drive stays connected regardless. I wish the WDTV live had gigabit ethernet as the 100Mb only gives me about 10MB/sec transfer speed but that’s still only a few minutes to transfer a 2-3GB file. Moving forward I’m seriously looking at a Synology NAS device to serve the media around the house + act as my cloud storage. Call me paranoid but I don’t like the idea of my data being out of my direct control with the possibility of being held to ransom down the track when some greedy company decides they want money from me for something that was offered free to start with. If it’s free, you are the product.
Richard
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 12:22 AMWD has models with the HDD built in. I bought the family one for XMas last year…they love it.
Captain Picard
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 9:48 AMModel and year please :)
AJ
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 10:18 AMThe one with the built it HDD is called WD TV Live Hub. Has a 1 TB drive in it.
Jaezass
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 12:20 PMThanks for that, do you know if it can play iso properly? Last time I tried a WD media player it could only play each vob file separately? thanks
Kieren
Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 4:07 PMSo nothing in the form of thunderbolt hard drives? Sad panda :(
and
Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 4:18 PMmy wdtv already has social networking and games
i also already have an iphone app.
what was new again?
TSH
Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 4:22 PMI’ve seen the older models running and they’re pretty sweet. The big advantage is if you prefer not to stream over the network: my PS3 only reads FAT32 drives but NTFS is better for terabyte sized volumes.
The Joker
Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 8:20 PMI’m wondering about your comment “if you prefer not to stream over the network.” I have one WDTV live on each TV and they stream content from each other all the time. In fact, one of them doesn’t have a local drive at all. I do have gigabit ethernet through the house specifically to avoid any bottlenecks even though the WDTV live is only 100Mb.
jj
Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 5:19 PMI picked up a Live tv yestetday and love the interface….quick responsive. The games are like the ones in airplanes. …Pretty average. I replaced the crappy DSE media player that was very buggy and slow.
L225
Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 7:12 PMDoesn’t have cinavia does it?
Usman
Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 10:23 PMJB hifi has been selling these for few weeks now for
148 Au$.
daniel
Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 11:09 PMDoes the hardware make any real advances on the old units? Software sounds like its only just catching up to b-rad’s hack of the last two TV Lives.
Charlie Kelly
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 1:06 AMBuilt in WiFi is nice. I just got a WD Live Hub and the wireless adapter I used for my old WD TV Live wouldn’t work on it and I had to buy another. Which was most frustrating.
It has the same web stuff as this, it’s pretty useless unless you want to check the odd youtube clip.
There’s a non official Android App you can use to remote control these devices on the network. It’s a must because when you have to type words it’s pain with the controller.
Jan van Ottele
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 2:34 AMFor those of you who already bought the new WD TV Live, as of yesterday, the free ZappoTV app from the Apple App Store is now working with this new box as well! If there is any Australian content you want to see on the WD TV Live, let me know and I can check if this can be added to ZappoTV.
Lachlan Bromage
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 12:06 PMDoes it stream MKVs yet? Last I looked (and tried with the WD TV Live that I have) it didn’t.
light487
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 3:38 PMThese are actually retailing for $148, not $179.
fires
Sunday, February 12, 2012 at 8:36 AMhi just got my wd 1 not very happy i wanted to store my cd collection for ease of selection but i don’t find cataloging Very good as it only gives either artist or album not both can it be up dated to a better media player