I’m really really really really really really really really sorry I wasted $200 on this thing. It seems like a really cool product on the surface. I’ve had it for a few months now and I wish I could take it back and get my money back, but Best Buy won’t give me my money back. Only in store credit. There isn’t another product on the market that even comes close to doing what this product “claims” it does. There are a number of epic failures that I will list here in case anyone is thinking of buying one of these and expects the product to do something that it really doesn’t do.
#1 - It does not have a search feature for Netflix. What in the flying ■■■■ is the point of that? This means that you must use your computer (assuming you own one) to search for specific movies. The main reason I bought the thing was to stream netflix. Now I need use my computer every time I need to search for a movie. Really really really really lame.
#2 - It does not support the DVD-A format. This is not DVD-Video that comes on DVD movies. I’m talking DVD-Audio. It’s the industry standard format for High resolution surround sound audio. Now I’m still stuck using my DVD-Audio player and putting shiny round discs into it. Grrrrrrrrr. Another main reason I bought this thing was to eliminate the need for all my CD’s, DVD’s, Blue Rays, and DVD-Audio discs.
#3 - It crashes all of the time. Literally to the point where I have to pull the power cable and restart it. It does it multiple times a day, every day. This thing is less than three months old. It should work perfectly. It’s been sitting peacefully on my entertainment center and hasn’t moved since I bought it.
In my opinion, this thing is now a paperweight. It doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do, and even if it did, who wants to deal with the thing crashing all the time. I’m stuck with it for now, so here’s to hoping that they’ll come up with a firmware update that fixes these issues. If they don’t soon, I’ll be selling it on ebay and waiting for a product that actually works.
I know it never claimed to have a netflix search function. But that’s a big feature that’s missing. Why have streaming movies if you can’t search for them?
I know they never claimed to support DVD-A, but why the **bleep** wouldn’t they. I can click on a VIDEO_TS folder and navigate it just like a DVD, why not give us the same functionality for and AUDIO_TS folder.
Another thing that they screwed the pooch on, it downsamples all of my 24bit/96khz flac and wave files to 24bit/48khz. Why would it do this??? I don’t want to downsample my hi-rez audio. I want to listen to it at full quality. I know it’s doing this because my receiver tells me what signal it’s receiving on the display (I’m connected via HDMI). HDMI has the bandwidth to handle 24bit/96khz in up to 8 discrete channels. I know that optical only has the bandwidth for 24bit/48khz on 6 discrete channels, but that limitation should not be reflected with HDMI. What’s even crazier is that it will play 24bit/96khz DTS files. Some of my surround sound is in that format and they play just fine.
It seems to me that they totally and utterly ignored the audiophile market with this product. No DVD-A, no full quality surround wave and flac files. I can’t listen to any of my hi-rez audio on this unit at full quality. It even downsamples stereo 24bit/96khz flac and wave files to 24bit/48khz. Why??? It’s digital, let the ones and zero’s flow freely to my reciever. Why make the unit do any math? GRRRRRRRR!
there are such things called eBay and amazon to where u can sell ur items and people who will appreciate it will buy it, i love this thing, only knock i have on it is it does not support Hulu Plus like it says it is going to for i don’t know how long now, mine rarely crashes too, i even have tons of music and movies on it, maybe u got a bad device, but see if u can do an exchange and just sell it on ebay or amazon.
I want to listen to my music at full quality. Why would the unit reduce the quality? They had to have intentionally written code into the OS that runs the unit to make it do that. That tells me that they don’t want a full quality digital stream coming out of the HDMI port on it. Which tells me that they are worried about pirating. Which means that I’m screwed and can’t listen to my music at full quality unless I put one of my shiny discs into a separate hardware player. Which defeats the whole fricken reason I bought the thing!!! That and the total lack of usefullness of Netflix. Are seriously telling me that you are okay with having to use your computer every time you wanna use netflix. Basically, this unit is completely usless on it’s own. You need a computer to watch netflix (or at least be able to actually search for specific titles) and I need a DVD-Audio player to listen to hi-rez audio. So what do I even need the unit for? I can watch movies on my 17 inch macbook pro with a super kick **bleep** screen.
Being satisfied with mediocrity drives me nuts. You folks don’t even realize that they are totally reducing the quality of your audio. Or worse yet, you are aware of it and don’t even care. I’m willing to bet that most of you have your units completely filled with crappy sounding MP3’s. You have a 1TB drive. For the love of all that is holy, at least put CD quality audio on the thing.
Trust me, I will be selling this thing. Good riddance.
i think you expecting too much from the product that does not design for hi fi sound. you need to spend your money somewhere else like Cambridge DAC magic ($400). i have a lot of losses music, but if i really want to listen to hi quality music, i will not use my WD TV as my player.
i know that HDMI can support hi fi sound, but that only the spec that the HDMI cable can transfer, but the device processor should capable to do the same thing. I believe there is no product out there that capable to produce such hi fi (24/96) sound AND HD movies that cost less than $200. well, maybe BD player can fit that category.
and also, except for intel/amd/nvida processor (or maybe tegra 2), there is no processor good enough to produce both (hi fi sound and HD movies) at the same time.
i am not sure about boxee, since they use tegra 2 processor. maybe you can try boxee (about the same price as wd tv live), but no 1tb hdd.
