ok i ack your right to rant/voice opinions…
but i find it odd that you complain about wdtvl’s picture/display quality but also rant on about it not having s-video connections…
you want good display quality stick with hdmi…those component/composite connectors that came in wdtvl are still in their plastic packaging in the box
You get what you pay for. For less than £100 I get an easy way to stream my movies from the NAS to the TV. The interface is easy though plain, Networking is mostly intuitive.
It does exactly what I want it to achieve. When I want to move on I would purchase something like the BD Prime or Popcorn c200. And there you also get what you pay for. Right now I want something to SIMPLY play h264 and mpegs.
Almost every device on the market cripples the under the hood chip sets. That is the way the commercial sector works. You see it in electronics, cars, computer systems etc. Yes they have put a top rate processor in the machine but they are not obliged to use it to the max. For the development time and costs they have just produced a basic kit. and seem intent on not offering access to the higher functions. I would say that every NMT on the market suffers the same issues. This remains a young market with a bunch of players who don’t quite invest enough time and money in developing a killer app. The WD offerings fall into the same bracket as the rest. Take a look at the huge issues over the mede8er a similar priced product with its won woeful issues. Or the ridiculously expensive Divico products who have experienced an appalling year of poor product support and under-performing firmware.
I totally agree that issues around thumbnails, chapters etc were an appauling mistake but again every other NMT manufacturer has doen similar when releasing new products. The test now is how well WD will offer firmware fixes.
When a truly decent media player is released which does not have the firmware/feature issues that EVERY NMT has at present then I will be the first in the queue to dump the WDTVLIVE meanwhile I am very happy with a product which achieves the short term target I want.
Again you are not looking at this device as a piece of consumer electronics made cheaply in China. You are reviewing it as a professional audio/video product which is ridiculous and unfair. Why not share your obvious experience positively instead making these long winded rants about what may happen. Yes it has its problems and yes WD are not getting their finger out when it comes to sorting out these problems but most of us have the unit now and we have to make the best of it.
On another forum a Sigma employee said that certain DVD functions were down to licensing as you say. As to" the firmwares WD keeps spitting at us" quote, there have only been two at this stage and one of those has been withdraw. This forum has since been set up and hopefully the next firmware update will address a number of both our and your issues. I assume you have condensed your many thoughts and put them in the ideas exchange, no it seems you have not, which again makes me believe that you have just got an axe to grind. If you want change don’t tell us, tell Western Digital via their ideas forum.
Sorry I could not keep my trap closed but hey it would not be a forum if I did. Happy New Year.
LOL - The fact I did not post in the ideas exchange, although I recall I did post there??? Is because my concerns have already been raised. The GO-TO function, menu support, etc…There are a few new features I came up with and yes I will post them, but I recall they have been addressed too (picture position, bad cropping, etc.)
I KNOW this is a piece of consumer equipment, and I disagree about the cheap made in china - I have quite a lot of units made in China and they are well built, considering their price. I mentioned on several occasions my Toshiba SD3990 player, which I purchased for nearly half the price of the WD Live, ok it does not play all formats, BUT if I compare the quality of the outputs, with the SAME mpeg files and AVI, yes it does support MPEG1/2/AVI, it’s like day and night ! Also the upconvert quality is by far superior! So either WD is not doing their job in properly programming the sigma chip, OR…perhaps the onboard SMP is not all cut out to be - but there again, this family of chipset can also be found in other players, set top boxes, DVRs, too.
As to DVD Menu, yes it would be a GREAT feature to have - they could have licensed and added an extra chip for DVD, but the cost of the unit would have gone up ! The reason they play those VOBs is because they are trated like MPEG files, essentially, and would only work on non multi angle based VOBs.
I will not hold a grduge against WD if they don’t add DVD menu support eventhough initially, when I read that it supports VIDEO_TS / VOB , thought it had built support for menu… With DVDs with multi titles, you can use a tool like VOBEDIT and “extract” individual MPEG streams from each title set - rename files accordingly afterwards.
Playback of a crisp, clean MPEG-2 file from a Toshiba SD3990, composite out = very clean, razor sharp.
Playing back of the SAME file through the WD Live, the result is the image appears over cropped / scaled larger than the overscan area, and it appears significantly softer. Yes it is an interlaced MPEG-2 720x480, and YES I checked the appropriate options ! 
You see ? I am comparing 2 very basic, consumer pieces of euipment with the same playback file.
I haven’t opened my Toshiba SD3990 yet, I am not aware what chipset lies inside, perhaps a Zoran ? not sure, but the quality output of the same MPEG2/VOBs are so different.
Oddly, I don’t see this softening effect when playing back quicktime & WMV throught he lWD Live, whether they are SD or HD …
Yoou don’t need to open your Toshiba SD3990, it uses a Zoran Vaddis 882 chipset according to the folks over at Videohelp.
http://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers/toshiba-sd3990/6716
Oh dear it appears that some of the reviews for this player are similar to your reviews of the WDTV live.
Crummy remote with too many tiny buttons and a confusing layout; flimsy disk tray that seems likely to fall off each time you open it (although I've had my 3990 over 18 months with no problems); and no optical audio out, coax only.
Of course, in this day of disposable electronics from China I guess about one year of solid operation is the best you can hope for. Cost less than $50.
I'm already on the third unit (with the same problem). So far they had lasted only 2 months of almost everyday use with 2 movie viewings a day!! So If you would like to pay for shipping this to Toshiba every 2 months be my guest and buy one.
The subs are annoyingly at the 55% lower mark of the screen i.e. pretty much in the middle. This, as suggested, should be corrected through a firmware update... TOSHIBA!!
I just bought and returned this machine.
So you see nothing is perfect and you can’t please all the people all of the time.
The Toshiba SD3990 was cheap back then, paid half the price I paid for my WD Live. It is a miniature version of a DVD player. Remote is FAR from flimsey - yes it has small buttons because it crams a ton of features on it, but the buttons are SOLID, been using it extensively ! It’s true that the tray is very fragile, but not any more fragile than those ion my PC and I have abused the hell out of it and never broke, as long as you don’t push DOWN on the tray. The connectors are rock solid, they don’t rock back on forth like units with cheap solders - it is virtually impossible to break unless you purposely do it. The component outs deliver amazing quality and support 480i! unlike the WD Live. In terms of picture quality it beasts hands down the WD Live - plays my AVI with amazing quality, plays my MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 just like they are meant to be, crisp, clean, sharp… Upconversion quality is top notch…all this for a giveaway price !!! This is why I was comparing with another consumer gear, becuse you keep telling me that the WD is a consumer, gear, well I’m giving you an example of others.
The WD Live is ridden with bugs and is an INCOMPLETE product that lacks features and has less than desired quality ! If you notice, people see no difference between their component out and the composite, that is NOT normal… I see a huge bloody difference between the 2 . Scaling quality on the WD Live is mediocre. Scaling quality on my Toshiba, which is less than half the price or even scaling on a cheap TV is far superior.
I would expect this from the WD Mini, but I spent money and paid for the top of the line version WD Live expecting it would deliver on quality - I mean what kind of unit supports HD and plas it like ■■■■ on regular outputs FFS !
I can DOWNSCALE myself an HD using software and put it on DVD and it will play much better through my dvd player.
It is clear WD has no intentions of supporting this product - too long for firmware updates, they get it wrong, and when they update firmware, no new features are added, just small fixes…THAT’S NOT ENOUGH !!!
I’m so glad I never purchased a HD from WD… Most if not all the PCs from friends and relatives that I have fixed due to crashed HD were WD !
Learned my lesson - this is the last product I will buy from Western Digital until they get their act together - The .12 firmweare FIASCO is proof that backs up my claims, something so simple they overlooked, PROVES without a doubt that they do not test their products.
Posting in the exchange /ideas section is a bloody waste of time mate - it goes in through one ear and out the next, they don’t listen - they don’t read and they clearly have no intentions of implamenting any of the features recommended…only cosmetic changes !
Sad really.
Then in 6 months when they discontinue the product they will have a bigger excuse not to keep supporting the firmware.
BTW, anybody heard of the slingbox ? is it any good ?
I think the WD TV Live is intended to be really enjoyed with a HDTV via HMDI.
SD compatibility is really a stop gap for people planning to upgrade from CRT to HDTV.
I agree with you that the quality of mpeg playback is subpar, as my Pioneer DVD play can play VCD via composite output better than via the WD TV Live via HDMI to my 32" LCD TV.
That said, I didn’t buy the WD TV Live for SD, I bought it for HD like many others, so I’m more than happy with its performance in HD as I can stream high quality 1080 mkv files from my PC.
I really like this device. I have it hooked up to my home network (wired), a NAS (DNS-323) and I am using HDMI to my Panasonic 26" LCD TV. It works great for all the reasons I bought it for. 
I’m glad that JSMITH posted his post. I purchased a WD Live last week and I’ve been going crazy tying to get the WD Live to produce a decent quality video on my HDTV using an HDMI cable. The one thing I don’t understand is that the WD Live seems to output good quality video judging from sample mp4 files but when watching my movie files (vob, mp4 etc…) the quality is horrible. I’m thinking about returning my WD Live. I get much better quality resolution watching DVDs over my little low quality toshiba TV
Welcome to the forums.
There must be something wrong with your setup.
I have three Live units, and they all produce video that is indistinguisable from the original blu-ray disc when playing quality rips/re-encodes even on a 9’ HDTV screen (I’ve done A/B tests and at least half of the time guests pick the Live as being the “original”).
If you want us to help I’d suggest you start a new thread and describe exactly what you have and how you are using it (include how your rips are made, how you are playing the Live (local drive, wireless stream, etc.) and what equipment you are using to watch. It may be something as simple as you using the “auto” setting on HDMI output instead of setting the resolution properly for your TV.
8ball2001 wrote:
The chipset used is capable far more than WD gives us in the firmware ! This is what is unacceptable. Why the hell would WD would license a powerful chip and only use a fraction of its true power ???
Ok theboard design also supports 2 1.5Gb/s SATA (eSATA) mind you they didn’t use that and the supported S-Video output probably due to cost constraints - although it would have been nice to have a S-Video connector and an eSATA connector rather than 2 USB ports ! Etc Etc Etc …
Dude, all I can say is jump in the Homebrew Pool and start coding up some custom firmware. The tools and resources are out there, the world is your oyster, and fame and fortune await you!
8ball2001,
you’re right in everything you said about this product and western digital engineers team. I own a old TViX 4100 since 2007, with a 8623 Sigma chip and 16Mb memory. It does everything, I repeat, EVERYTHING, that you claim WD doesn’t do.
In fact , it difficult to understand how a unit with a Sigma 8655 chip and much more memory doesn have basic functions as DVD menus from ISO or Video_TS folder, BCS control, volume control, GOTO…
All I can say is I’ve been very happy with my WD HD Tv Live. It has given me hours of enjoyment. I also have the Asus and an Apple TV and the WD was less money and kicks the pants off both in features and quality–apples for apples. Picture quality is better, it plays as many codecs as the Asus while the Apple TV plays very few file formats and is limited to 720p. I hear the complaints about menus and other things but for an inexpensive consumer device (I paid $79 for it, $250 for the apple TV and $99 for the Asus O Play) it has given me many many hours of enjoyment. I’m a video engineer and have worked at many TV stations over the years so I’m really picky about picture quality and other such matters. All the complaints about picture quality are unfounded as I hooked my portable digital scope to it and levels are dead on and what you’d expect to see out of any good broadcast server. Hecka bit is a bit and the levels are set right coming out of HDMI–any picture adjustments can and should be done at the TV not before. I have been happy given the price I paid. For under $100 I wasn’t expecting miricles and got what I think is a great product.
I GUESS CRT issues have been Solved …Do chek out the video …
0.9x zoom solves this …Firmware 1.02.21
heavenlydmeonic wrote:
Dude, all I can say is jump in the Homebrew Pool and start coding up some custom firmware. The tools and resources are out there, the world is your oyster, and fame and fortune await you!
Most of the issue’s the Topic Opener had, have already been addressed by the homebrew community. There’s a VERY good ‘goto’ function and wmapro support but also goodies like native framerate playback, NFS sharing, resolution enforcing, volume control, auto subtitle downloading, bugfixes and tons of other improvements ! Actually the reason I love my WDTV so much is that the homebrew scene is so vivid and awesome and has made the WDTV Live to be THE best player currently availalbe (at least to my, honest, opinion)
Of course, you could say ‘yeah but WD still ■■■■■, THEY should have done all this instead of the homebrew community’. Maybe. I don’t know and I don’t care, all I care about is that all the neat features are available already.
SjefDeKlerk wrote:
heavenlydmeonic wrote:
Dude, all I can say is jump in the Homebrew Pool and start coding up some custom firmware. The tools and resources are out there, the world is your oyster, and fame and fortune await you!
Most of the issue’s the Topic Opener had, have already been addressed by the homebrew community. There’s a VERY good ‘goto’ function and wmapro support but also goodies like native framerate playback, NFS sharing, resolution enforcing, volume control, auto subtitle downloading, bugfixes and tons of other improvements ! Actually the reason I love my WDTV so much is that the homebrew scene is so vivid and awesome and has made the WDTV Live to be THE best player currently availalbe (at least to my, honest, opinion)
Of course, you could say ‘yeah but WD still ■■■■■, THEY should have done all this instead of the homebrew community’. Maybe. I don’t know and I don’t care, all I care about is that all the neat features are available already.
I liked mine so much, I bought a second one to replace my HTPC in the living room =P The OP just seemed to have a huge problem with b.Rad’s FREE firmware, which I didn’t understand at all. I mean b#ch about WD features on the WD site … yeah, ok, I get that … but to ■■■■ all over seperate, open source firmware from some guy tinkering around and adding features for people who are into modding their stuff in the same complaint thread is a whole new type of crazy.
I am waiting patiently to see what new bells and whistles b.rad is going to come up with, now that new firmware (beta) is out!
heavenlydmeonic wrote:
The OP just seemed to have a huge problem with b.Rad’s FREE firmware, which I didn’t understand at all. I mean b#ch about WD features on the WD site … yeah, ok, I get that … but to ■■■■ all over seperate, open source firmware from some guy tinkering around and adding features for people who are into modding their stuff in the same complaint thread is a whole new type of crazy.
LOL, yeah I just read his comment. He hates WD, he hates the WDTV and he hates the free homebrew project. Hehe. Ok, I guess he should just buy another player, but I’m pretty sure he’ll end up hating it even more 
SjefDeKlerk wrote:
LOL, yeah I just read his comment. He hates WD and he hates the free homebrew project. Hehe. Ok, I guess he should just buy another player, but I’m pretty sure he’ll end up hating it even more
Not butt-kissing, this is simple fact: I tried three different players before the WD Live, and they were all pretty terrible. I was lucky enough to jump on the WD Wagon late in it’s dev cycle, and a lot of the bugs seem to be worked out (at least for me), so I missed all the “bad 'ol days”.
Coming into this as a new customer, the Live and Live Plus are hands down better than anything on the market now. YOU CAN NOT get any more functionallity for $120 anywhere!
I am not sure what a lot of these guys expect here. Codec Support? 7.1 Surround? Makes you coffe and fetches the paper in the morning? Come on, people, be serious. This is a $100 box that plays videos, music, and shows your fat @sses at the beach when you throw your family pics on it, ha ha!
It sounds like the OP needs to build a HTPC, but that would cost more $$. Trust me, I will be one of the first to yell when something blows up on my WDs, but for right now, they seem pretty great as opposed to the terrible piles of ■■■■ I tried before…
heavenlydmeonic wrote:
Not butt-kissing, this is simple fact: I tried three different players before the WD Live, and they were all pretty terrible. I was lucky enough to jump on the WD Wagon late in it’s dev cycle, and a lot of the bugs seem to be worked out (at least for me), so I missed all the “bad 'ol days”.
Well, I brought up the argument before that people who dislike their WDTV most probably haven’t tried any of the other players out there. I come from the TVIX 6500, that thing is just a nightmare ! Unstable, crashes, weird unsolvable bugs, no good homebrew and a buggy SDK. And look at ALL realtek based players, they’re just REALLY ■■■■, if only for the fact that chipset can’t even distinguish between 23.976 and 24 hz, which causes stutter every 40 seconds, I’d go crazy with such a player ! And then look at the so called ‘top segment’ of the market: the dune 3.0 and Popcorn c200 and read the bug threads. Man there’s tons of weird stuff going on there.
And then … there’s the WDTV This thing just does exactly what I expect it to do: it’s stable and plays pretty much anything I throw at it. Yeah, I’m using homebrew firmware, maybe that’s why I’m so happy, I can’t deny that, but I just think there’s NO better player out there at all. And if somebody would like to proof me wrong, please do !!
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