I don’t know about anyone else, but most of us that use the wdtv, use it for it’s ability to play just about all file formats. I would love to see WD build us a smart Blu-ray player, with all the abilities of their wdtv.
Based on your post, I would presume the goal of this product would be to bypass the process of ripping/encoding your Blu-ray files in your PC. Interesting.
Actually the intent would be to eliminate another electronic/remote. I’m currently considering building another media player. There isn’t a smart DVD player that will stream all my file types, and I hate using multiple devices
Sorry to say but that won’t ever be happening Lol WD is not in the business of making optical based drives and given the times now when optical media is slowly dying now would not be a good time to start. We will be lucky to see any kind of new media box from WD, let alone one with an optical drive lol
Trouble is, it would have to be the other way round. A Blu-ray player incorporating WDTV. Since Sony, Panasonic, etc., are the Blu-ray player tech experts (decades ahead), presumably it would mean WD offering up their media player tech to them to incorporate into their Blu-ray player which would undoubtably mean an unattractive, unequal partnership for WD, their media player in an existing high volume market share Blu-ray leader, WDTV bolted in - not going to happen without WD in financial meltdown and selling its assets - so no chance. Still, they do say most tech is already in existence and most of what will appear will be new and better combinations of that existing tech. That a Blu-ray/WDTV unit is unlikely, I agree, is a shame!
My belief is that WD will indeed release a all new media player. For those of you that have being a part of this community for a while may remember a few years back the survey they released here on the forum that was loaded with questions about what the community wanted to see in a new media player. I filled the survey out myself and it was one hell of a lot of questions lol I don’t think they did that just for something to do and because of the survey they were obviously interested in continuing in the market. Because of all the questions it was obvious they want to start from scratch. Starting from scratch would require a lot of R&D, testing, licensing and manufacturing. All that stuff can take quite some time and is why I think there has been a large gap between the last release (refresh) a few years ago and now. I expect to see a new media box anytime now if it’s going to happen. The 2 year timeline since the survey is about right for an all new hardward release anytime now.
Just my thoughts
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Oh and I forgot to mention, Blu-ray players don’t make a very good media player for local content due to cinavia protection.
The only option I know of, other than a desktop pc, would be an xbox one…but the media player aspect is a bit lacking. At least in terms of playing media files, blu-ray seems ok. The best blu-ray player I saw was the ps3, the number of options was amazing, but no idea if the ps4 plays media files.
Recently my friend in Cambodia has advised me of some blu ray players. Some have more functionalities and have many fancy features. Check the blu ray players here.
