Testing the new WDTV Live Streaming

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live Streaming
1

 Just some initial observations.

Snappy response, no lag when moving between menu options or in/out of a movie.

The power supply from the older unit is identical.

The remote from the older unit works on the new one (in case you find the new one too bulky).

The new WDTV Live Streaming does support a USB hub.    Media Library compiles data from the 3 drives I had on one hub on one USB port.  :smileyvery-happy:

Audio works as expected when I connect the HDMI to my Sony amp and select Digital Pass-Thru on HDMI.

On the down-side, even tho Media Library compiles all the movies, it’s a bit odd.  If you select Filter ALL, every movie is displayed for all drives in one list.  If you have nested folders like I do, the nesting disappears and movies are all displayed in the same list, but not necessarily together.  Chamber of Secrets is near the top of the list, but I have to scroll forever to find Sorcer’s Stone much further alphabetically down the list.  If you select Filter FOLDERS, the nesting is retained and it is much easier to find things, but the drives become separate folders as well, so you have to select a drive, scan the folders, back out, select another drive, scan the folders, etc…  cumbersome.

And one thing I found is very odd.  When in FOLDER filter, the drives appear as folders.  If you sort them alphabetically, they are not sorted by the name of the drive, but rather by a unique naming convention the WDTV give to the drives based on their position in the hub!  I happened to notice that while waiting for the Media Library to finish compiling the drives, the WDTV was seeing the drives as USBxxxxx, USByyyyy, and USBzzzzz., not by the drive name.  Once the compiling finished, the drives were displayed with the drive name, but sorted byt the USB name, and reflects the order of the drives in the hub.  Took me a while to realize why I could not sort the drives by name correctly.  No big issue, just an observation.

So far, I like it.  I don’t stream from the network, so I’ll be ignoring those applications.

2

Thanks for the review. Knowing what you know now, How would you recommend creating the hierarchy for someone just starting out? Got my plus last week, getting V2 tomorrow and have just started collecting ISO’s and a few avi’s and can’t decide the best way to organize .

Video>TV>TVSHOW1 > DVD

                                         > AVI

or Video>TV>AVI>TVSHOW1

                       >DVD>TVSHOW1

or Video>TV>TVSHOW1   ---- with this dir having both avi and iso’s etc.

Thanks!

3

Thanks. I have not buy this product yet. Does this new WD TV Live Streaming support bluray ISO menu or 3D. Anything different from the older one?? Does it suport anything new?

4

Rider wrote:

 The new WDTV Live Streaming does support a USB hub.    Media Library compiles data from the 3 drives I had on one hub on one USB port.  :smileyvery-happy:

_ SAY IT TO ME AGAIN!  :smileyvery-happy: _

This makes me VERY happy.  What size are your USB HDDs?

Steve W

5

Another question (I have quite a few).  I’m not sure this has been covered, and I strongly suspect what the answer will be, but has anyone tried a dts-MA track yet?

Steve W

6

fletchb wrote:

Thanks for the review. Knowing what you know now, How would you recommend creating the hierarchy for someone just starting out? Got my plus last week, getting V2 tomorrow and have just started collecting ISO’s and a few avi’s and can’t decide the best way to organize .

 

 

Video>TV>TVSHOW1 > DVD

                                         > AVI

 

or Video>TV>AVI>TVSHOW1

                       >DVD>TVSHOW1

 

 

or Video>TV>TVSHOW1   ---- with this dir having both avi and iso’s etc.

 

 

 

Thanks!

 

That is really up to you, what kind of files you have and how you want it presented.  I use ripped DVDs, so I need to maintain a nested folder structure, but I also try to keep it simple.

root>DVD

                >video_ts

                >video_ts

                >video_ts

        >music

                >album

                >album

 

If you only have .iso and  .avi files, they can pretty much all go in the same folder and be more correctly sorted by the WDTV.

7

Pecker wrote> * * *

_ SAY IT TO ME AGAIN!  :smileyvery-happy: _

 

This makes me VERY happy.  What size are your USB HDDs?

 

Steve W

I have a combination of 1TB and 500GB drives that I’m testing with.  Right now, I have 3 x 1TB drives and 1 x 500GB on a 4-port powered USB hub.

8

Cheers.  3.5tb…hmmm.

If you get chance to test it with 4 or 5 2tb drives, let me know.

I’m hoping eventually to have 2 x 6tb My Book drives.

Steve W

9

Rider wrote:

 

And one thing I found is very odd.  When in FOLDER filter, the drives appear as folders.  If you sort them alphabetically, they are not sorted by the name of the drive, but rather by a unique naming convention the WDTV give to the drives based on their position in the hub!  I happened to notice that while waiting for the Media Library to finish compiling the drives, the WDTV was seeing the drives as USBxxxxx, USByyyyy, and USBzzzzz., not by the drive name.  Once the compiling finished, the drives were displayed with the drive name, but sorted byt the USB name, and reflects the order of the drives in the hub.  Took me a while to realize why I could not sort the drives by name correctly.  No big issue, just an observation.

Just a thought.  What you seem to be saying is that the first drive on your hub initially shows as USBxxxxx, the second as USByyyyy and the third USBzzzzz.  But when the compiling has finished they show as their proper names - so if you rename one HDD “Film Collection”, that’s what it’ll show as when you’ve finished, but the order will be the order they appear on the hub, rather than alphabetically by name.

Do I have that right?

If that’s the case, you could just shut everything down, do a full power down and delete the wd files from the HDDs, then plug them back into the hub in the order you prefer.

Fancy giving it a go?  That’s certainly be very nice.

BTW, any way you can put a thumbnail at the root of the HDD so the drives themselves show with a thumbnail, just like a normal folder?  That’d be extra nice.

Steve W

10

Pecker wrote:

 

Do I have that right?

 

If that’s the case, you could just shut everything down, do a full power down and delete the wd files from the HDDs, then plug them back into the hub in the order you prefer.

 

You’ve got it.  And yes, I could just re-arrange the drives in the hub to reflect their alphabetical order, but it’s not that important to me.  It was more an FYI in case someone else couldn’t figure out why hub’d drives didn’t sort they way they thought.

11

One more little sorting thing I tripped over…

If you sort the library with FOLDER/ALPHABETICALLY rather than ALL, the folders that have nested folders with more than one movie are displayed first, THEN the folders that only have one movie in them are displayed after that.

So if folder A, B, and E have nested folders, and C and D only have one movie with no additional folders, the folder display looks like:

A

B

E

C

D

With hundreds of folders, it was a bit confusing until I realized what was going on.

I think I’ll go back to an ALL sort and use the Search function…  :wink:

12

Ok one or 2 more newbie ?'s please. I am more of a networking guy and just getting into the multimedia world.

Is there an atvantage to leaving them in that raw video_ts format over iso?

The first program I use “DVDshrink” puts the dvd in the format you mention. I have a second “isoburn” that puts all those folders to the single file iso format. It just seems more organized to me, but if there is a technical reason to leave them in the raw folder format I can go back that way as I am just getting started.

I have noticed that MKV is popular, yet it strips out the menus, or so I am told. I am guessing the real advantage is just to save space?

Thanks from a mulimedia newbie…

13

For me, it was simply a matter of what worked.  I had discovered DVDFab which basically made a duplicate of a DVD.  The couple of times I experimented with .iso or .mkv files, there was always some little thing that either I didn’t like or didn’t work.  The video_ts format worked all the time the way I expected on a WDTV, so I just stuck with it. 

14

Okay, so if I have my films one to a folder, but occasionally more than one (each in a sub-folder), this will kick in?

Let’s say all of my films are one film per folder, except I have a ‘Planet of the Apes’ folder with all 5 original films in (each in its own sub-folder), then Planet of the Apes will come first,instead of under ‘P’, right?

Very strange!

Does the number of sub-folders in each nested folder matter?  I mean let’s say I have my films sorted by folder like ‘Film Noir’, ‘Bogart’, ‘Horror’, James Bond, etc.  will the folders with most sub-folders in them come first,or will these folders list alphabetically as long as they have 2 or more sub-folders?

Cheers.

Steve W

15

I’ve always just used ISOs, and I used DVDFab to create them…   

ISOs are just simpler for me; it’s just a single file.  No folders or whatever…

16

I’m still going over everything, but one thing I’ve found are some slight hesitations in the Netflix streaming. The unit is wired on a GB backbone and I’ve got my front-end configured as I had for my older WDTV Live. No hesitations with the older unit. Not a deal breaker. LAN streaming is solid across the boards. MKV, ISO, TS_VS, AVI, MP4V,etc. Nice option with Samba and NFS. ‘DVD’ menus work and MKV chaptering under  works real well.

I’ll continue to report back as I work through everything. On the whole, a 4th generation unit that shows progress and promise. At 99 bucks, it’s a no brainer.

17

I just put all my DVD movies in single file ISOs in genre folders (ACTION, HORROR, COMEDY,…) with the JPG for each one for the cover… and the folder.jpg for the genre folder cover…it’s that simple…

18

Thanks guys for the ideas on formating/structure.

Also on legitreviews.com I read some confilcting things about what features the new box has. Can someone confirm that the box has gige?

19

It seems that the ethernet port is actually gigabit…

http://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_wd_tv_live_review

20

I’ve been testing mine out for about a week and a half now.  So far I like it.  :wink:

All WD TV remotes work with all WD TV units.  So you can use the smaller classic or the larger newer remotes with any WD TV unit.  The extra buttons don’t function for the older units which came with the smaller remotes.

If you use a USB hub with the WD TV Live Streaming Media Player, make sure to use a powered up.  Those hard drives don’t run on happy thoughts!  :slight_smile: