if your getting your movies off your hard drive do you need to be online? i thought you could connect the hard drive to the WD Live box and then from there HDMI cable to your tv?
no need to be online (unless you wanna use internet functionality, youtube, live 365 etc). You can get content from by streaming or via network shares (LAN, e.g NAS or your PC - WLAN possible with compatible WLAN sticks) or local drives (2 USB drives)
The WDTV live supports ISO, but not as good as you would like to: In particular I had issues with some BluRay iso’s (wrong sequence of chapters, but I didn’t use DVDfab for backup), but also some usability restrictions with DVD.iso.
The main restriction is Menu support: official firmware does not support DVD main menu, current beta stages do appear to do the job. However: I’m pretty sure you will want to use b-rad fw for various reasons (customization / moviesheet the most apparent one), and b-rad custom fw is build upon the official version (and not the beta).
My guess (as good as anybody elses) is that WD will issue a new official FW soon (incl. Menu support) and b-rad will than use that to tweak his customized version of that. With that you could have both, otherwise you need to choose either or
If you are about to make a buying decision I would still recommend - this is good, solid value for imho. not to much money. I liked that it is pretty much plug & play, and if you wanna go towards the more fancy or really advanced stuff … it is possible, too (but requires some read here: http://forum.wdlxtv.com/)
it seems that this is the best product on the market for the job of playing full 1080p blu ray movies off my hard drive (to save on disks) to a big hd tv. and supports ISO…which is what i needed lol.
ok got ya, thanks. so i guess since it does not support menues yet it probably be easier to just back it up as a movie only ISO but then the question of pausing, skip forward comes in… will the device still be able to do that? i ask because some dvd’s will not do that if copyied as movie only.
sorry for the noobish questions i have one more for you… in terms of playing this on my 50 inch plasma what is the best files to have these movies? like i said i use dvdfab and that backs them up in a ISO file… but whats the best for quality and sound?
If disc space isn’t a consideration I’d just rip to an ISO and leave it at that.
The Live “likes” MKV files very much, but I’m not so sure it’s worth the trouble to make one if you aren’t going to re-encode. If you ARE going to re-encode (to save disc space) then by all means use Handbrake with the High Profile preset and encode to an MKV file (and passthrough AC3 or DTS sound).
if i go to the trouble of a mkv file (never done that file before) how much space are we talking about i’d save? would the picture quality and sound be the same?
Problem is that WD still hasn’t fixed a bug where perfectly good Vobsubs become unreadable when muxed into an MKV. So if you need subtitles you can’t go with MKV for the time being if you want only one file per movie.
@techflaws: I guess you are talking DVD iso - BluRay iso is significant bigger … more the 30GB region. Haven’t tried MakeMKV, though - I understand it works with BluRays.
If no compression is choosen: What benefit do you see of creating an MKV rather than an iso? My current backup solution is to simple (from desktop: 3 clicks and GO) and Iso is easy to back up for other players at a later stage (right click, burn).
Not trying to preach, but looking for better or at least alternative options, as I had issues with a couple of BluRay iso’s on the WDTV live.
DVDs and blu-rays are two very different beasts. With DVDs there isn’t any good reason NOT to use ISOs unless space is a factor (because an MKV will lose menus and won’t gain anything). Using Handbrake as I said you will compress your files to about 25% of the original with absolutely no loss in quality (so a typical movie will end up around 700K). But you *will* lose menus and it does take time (not much on a fast machine – about 40 minutes per movie is my average).
Blu-rays compress accordingly but because the size is much larger the savings are as well. My typical blu-ray is around 7GB compared to the 30GB or more of the original. With blu-rays you can’t play menus anywhere (the Java is not supported and never will be) so you don’t lose anything there. But they take a correspondingly longer amount of time to encode (my own take around 4 hours per movie). You can queue things up overnight so it works while you’re asleep or at work.
There’s another advantage – not all blu-rays play well with the Live, particularly over the network. Compressing them into MKVs will fix this. I’ve made hundreds and never had a single issue. But again, you need to consider the time issue. It’s a whole lot longer than simply ripping to the hard drive (but it’s not complicated at all – takes about three mouse clicks to setup a file once you know what you’re doing).
That’ll get you there, but I STRONGLY recommend you use one of the NIGHTLY builds which are MUCH better and further along in development than the old 0.9.4 which is almost a year old:
I’ve used it for literally thousands of files and never had one problem with it, neither in the encoding nor the playback. I would think that’s fairly reliable.
If you have issues the Handbrake forum is excellent (a *little* snarky at times, but they are freeware developers so have the proper respect and you’ll do just fine).