To buy WD TV Live or not?

Right now I’m streaming non hd DVD rips from my computer to my directv receiver using tversity but I want to be able to watch all my Blue Ray HD rips on my TV so I am looking into buying a dedicated media player so I can hook a USB hard drive to it and watch all my HD rips.

My question to everyone who has the WD TV Live is, if you had to do it over again would you buy it again or go with a different product? I just want to buy the best product for what I want to do which is watch my hd rips at 1080P, I don’t really care about the music and picture part of the media players, I just want the best possible picture and sound.

Also is there any rumors about any new WD media players coming out in the near future that maybe worth to wait on?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Being no native speaker I’m probably setting different priorities but I’m not very impressed by localization problems or this attitude:

James_K wrote:

WDTV Live’s Windows-1252 support is only for subtitles and does not support Windows-1252 characters for filenames. I have placed this on our future features request list for you as I do not see this being a big issue to add to the unit.

However, if you don’t need subtitles you should give it a try. Then again your idea of best audio quality most likely does not include out of sync issues so you might consider checking Syabas upcoming Popbox to see their response to WD’s poaching in their preserve…

???

I like the Live so much I bought another one (and I’m looking at buying a third).  For the use you want it’s perfect (I do all my blu-ray encodes using Handbrake and the MKV container and they play flawlessly).

Like with any product there are issues because it is not all things to all people.  Other such devices have similar problems and nothing is perfect.  But it sounds like the Live is perfect for what you want to do (it’s only when people have unrealistic expectations that they are doomed to failure).

You can wait for a new one to be announced (and, no, there is no emminent product that anyone knows about – that doesn’t mean that one isn’t in the works or even will be out soon) and you can wait for other such products but you can always spend your whole life waiting for something or enjoy what’s available now (if you waited until the best computer came out you would *never* have a computer, as every two months they are improved).  As I said, for  your own purpose it doesn’t get any better (or if it does, the Live will improve through firmware upgrades to do what the other units might).

There are many many of us who are satisfied – don’t worry about all the folks here who have problems (and 90% of those aren’t wanting to do what you want).  If all you ever saw was a hospital you’d think there weren’t any healthy people in the world.  People like myself seldom come to these forums because we’re happy and enjoying things and don’t need to complain (I come to help others but sometimes I think I’m an ■■■■■ for trying).

If I were in the market right now?

I’d look to the Popbox or the Boxee Box. You can pre-order the Popbox w/802.11n wireless for, I think $150 or $160… The unwired version is $30 less I believe. The Boxee Box will come out later this year.

Don;t get me wrong… I like my Live, but for roughly the same price you can get any number of devices…

I would NEVER wait for a brand new device to come out to buy it  – for one thing, being the first to get any device is being a free beta tester (ask the folks here who had the first versions of the WD unit).   But if you like life on the bleeding edge, by all means jump in (and be prepared to give lots of feedback so they can get it right, because it won’t be out of the gate).

As radio says, there are all kinds of devices out there and there’s no need to wait for something new unless you want to wait at least a year (because that’s how long it will take for these two mentioned to be worth getting).  If you want alternatives the Seagate isn’t a bad choice right now (but do take a look at their forums, as they have many issues as well and may not do what you need your device to do).

(Like the carney barker says, “You pays your money, you takes your chances!”)

I have had the oportunity to try both the seagate and HD live HD live won out biggest issue with Seagate was video quality with same hardrives and same files I seen a noticeable difference. I did like Seagates file system as it showed all hardrives as on big folder and also you could plug in a hub and run several hardrives and once again it showed all files not separate hard drives and also there was the chapter skip on the player itself that was nice. However I am just learning my Live unit and found out just 2 days ago that as you Fast Fwd you can hit skip and it moves movie 10 min ahead. That was nice to find out. I am having a mediocre issue with mine on network shares the movie about 1 out of 3 will start to chop I think it is more of a computer or connection issue than the un it itself. Also on the Seagate it would not play my h64 video camera files without losing sound after about 5 to 10 seconds. Netflix seems to be a big topic personally I would love to see Netflix however I agre  with Mkelly lets get the other bugs on firm ground first. I do realize this industry will only get better and I hate the idea of buy buy buy but that is the way electronics go. I do hope WD stays on top of it’s game in this market. Back to netflix Netflix is huge and I do believe netflix may have chosen Seagate as an exclusive user after watching WD back of soon after Seagate took on Netflix. So one word of Caution to WD stay on top of the fast moving media industry.

mkelley wrote:

But it sounds like the Live is perfect for what you want to do (it’s only when people have unrealistic expectations that they are doomed to failure).

I wasn’t aware that playback in sync was an unrealistic expectation for a media player. Oh well…

To mkelley,radio1,tm224, and techflaws I really thank you for taking the time and effort to answer my question.  I really think media players is the way to watch movies, all your movies right there in a list and ready to play at a touch of a button, not having to replace DVD after DVD in the DVD player, to me its the wave of the future.

I understand there are some that are having great success with the WD Live and others are having frustrating problems, I’ll just have to spend my money and take my chances.

Thanks all

Good luck (and whatever you get, get it from someplace where you can return it for a full refund, like Amazon, or Best Buy, because you’ll know in less than a month whether it works for you or not).

Techflaws wrote:


I wasn’t aware that playback in sync was an unrealistic expectation for a media player. Oh well…

 

And, of course, the Live works perfectly well in this respect as long as you use the right container (which since the OP is ripping his blu rays to his hard drive, won’t be an issue for him at all).

Right, and so all the people with these issues are suckers because they also expect their MKVs (the right container?) to be in sync…

Eh… huh?  (You lost me – never had any sync issues, never will).

Apparently. I was simply correcting your statement about the Live working “perfectly” since a lot of people are experiencing sync issues with files in an MKV container.

A “lot” of people?  You mean you? 

I’ve been on these boards for months now (reading and responding to hundreds of messages) and haven’t seen more than a handful of people with ANY mkv problems, let alone sync issues.

But point me to a dozen threads and I’ll stand corrected.