Using My Book World Edition (white LED) with WD Live HD

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live & Live Plus
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Hello. I am new to the forums here and I am looking for some information regarding the interoperability of my WD World Book and the WD Live HD. At home I have a Windows Home Server and a WD World Book but at the moment I do not know what would be the best strategy to utilize all three of these devices. I would like to do the following,

  1. Access media from the internet. I currently use WHS to do this but I am concerned about power usage. I setup the WHS because I thought I needed more power to trancode and do more stuff than I could do with the WD World Book.

  2. I would like to stream video to my Plasma TV using a Network device such as a Network Media Tank or WD Live TV. Again power is a crucial factor here . Using the WHS and a laptop with an HDMI interface to play video does not look all that appealing.

I have looked into using XBMC, WD Live TV HD, laptop, netbook, eGreat and Popcorn Hour C-200 to do the video decoding but I am at a loss as to what would be the most economical and more fluid solution.  Any ideas would be appreciated. Currently I am using the WHS but I would like to use the WD WorldBook for my primary NAS and use it in conjunction with a WD Live TV HD. Again, I would like the ability to stream over the intenet if possible and take advantage of DVD and Blu-Ray playback. I believe the WD Live HD can do this. At this time I am using my Laptop to play video to my Plasma TV vfrom my WHS but I am concerned about power consumption.

Thank you for your input!

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Ralph_P wrote:

Hello. I am new to the forums here and I am looking for some information regarding the interoperability of my WD World Book and the WD Live HD. At home I have a Windows Home Server and a WD World Book but at the moment I do not know what would be the best strategy to utilize all three of these devices. I would like to do the following,

 

  1. Access media from the internet. I currently use WHS to do this but I am concerned about power usage. I setup the WHS because I thought I needed more power to trancode and do more stuff than I could do with the WD World Book.

 

  1. I would like to stream video to my Plasma TV using a Network device such as a Network Media Tank or WD Live TV. Again power is a crucial factor here . Using the WHS and a laptop with an HDMI interface to play video does not look all that appealing.

 

I have looked into using XBMC, WD Live TV HD, laptop, netbook, eGreat and Popcorn Hour C-200 to do the video decoding but I am at a loss as to what would be the most economical and more fluid solution.  Any ideas would be appreciated. Currently I am using the WHS but I would like to use the WD WorldBook for my primary NAS and use it in conjunction with a WD Live TV HD. Again, I would like the ability to stream over the intenet if possible and take advantage of DVD and Blu-Ray playback. I believe the WD Live HD can do this. At this time I am using my Laptop to play video to my Plasma TV vfrom my WHS but I am concerned about power consumption.

 

Thank you for your input!

I had a Popcorn, I got rid of it in exchange for the WD Live, but realize that anything I say here is my opinion … you may get better mileage / results with whatever solution you end up with.

 If you are looking for low power and low cost, the WD Live would work. The only part I am confused about is that you want to stream over the internet.

 Home Server will let you do this, but not from the WD Live natively. If you leave the WD Live on with the attached drive shared (or the Worlbook shared off your WHS) you should be able to stream your videos, music, and pictures out via Media Center pretty easily, but maybe not exactly how you are looking to do it.

 The easiest way I have found to stream my media to a netbook or my phone, wherever I am, is with Orb, which is free:

http://www.orb.com/

Another option, if you are looking to spend a little more money, would be to build up a micro-shuttle box in place of the WD Live. It would be a bit more robust, play anything you could install a codec for, etc. I run XBMC on mine and think it’s great. XBMC also has a built in media server, and there are tons of great free plugins to do pretty much anything you want to do.

 Hope this helps you at least a little bit…

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heavenlydmeonic wrote:

 

Another option, if you are looking to spend a little more money, would be to build up a micro-shuttle box in place of the WD Live. It would be a bit more robust, play anything you could install a codec for, etc. I run XBMC on mine and think it’s great. XBMC also has a built in media server

I too have been using XBMC as of late. It has many features I like. I just saw that D-Link will be releasing The Boxee Box later this year. http://www.dlink.com/boxeebox  As Boxee is a  spin off of XBMC I am thinking I may go that route. That would solve the power dilema.  In the mean time I think I may get the WD Live HD and stick with that for a while. I see that WD has a compatibility list on this site and My World Book is supported. It will be interesting to see how this combo works rather than the WD Live HD + WHS.  The remote web interface of the WHS is really a nice feature. But the My World Book has one as well.  That brings up another question that I need to post for that dev ice. 

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Hey Ralph_P!

 I personally was never a huge Boxee fan, I am not a giant MEdiaFly fan either, but I think that is just me. I never got into podcasting or youtube, etc … I am pretty simple in my tastes and like to watch my movies and shows, and that’s it, haha!

 I really was internested in the World Book, I looked at them pretty hard for a while, but for whatever reason I decided to go with the Hauppauge / XBMC solution, with Orb server running as a service to place shift my media if I wanted to watch my cable TV or recoded media at work or whatever. I actually had WHS installed at one point, but it didn’t like the IR drivers for my Hauppauge so I had to move back to XP 32bit  =P