I’d like to encourage anyone who has a MyBook Live and an iOS device to go to the app store and check out the new WD 2go app. It is very cool and also free(!).
“What is it?” you ask? It’s basically a file browser utility that lets you access your Shares. And you can access them from your home network or from the Internet cafe across town. It streams MP3s and certain kinds of videos (.MOV, .M4V, .MP4)(although in my experience this works much better on my local network than over the Internet. As you might imagine, it’s all going to depend on whether the Internet Bandwidth Gods are loving you).
It’s a seriously wonderful app and WD is to be commended for supplying it to us *for free*. Which kinda makes me feel nikulturi because I have a few minor complaints:
The app’s look and feel itself seems a bit rushed. Not a big deal, but something this cool, I wish it looked super-posh.
I had mixed experiences with the PDF viewer: sometimes it worked great, other times it was awful. Maybe a future version of WD 2go could hand off PDFs and other such docs to GoodReader or other apps that are specialized for reading those formats?
When I was out testing at the coffee shop, video playback was unusable. I wish the video player could buffer a substantial amount of video data – I wouldn’t mind waiting a few minutes for the video to start if it would then play smoothly through the end (others may disagree).
Finally, a question: is WD 2go streaming its video and audio via DLNA? Or will I still need TwonkyServer if I want to view video on my XBOX360?
Again, my thanks to everyone at WD who worked on this awesome app. Oh, one more thing, notice that the new firmware allows you to automagically back up and sync one MyBook Live onto another one on the same local network. Another very cool and highly useful feature.
Thanks for the kind words. There are a lot of people on the WD teams that contributed to this effort. I will let them know.
I will try to answer your questions, but may be a little coy on one of them. Lets just say that this app will have a big brother in a month
The app’s look and feel itself seems a bit rushed. Not a big deal, but something this cool, I wish it looked super-posh.
Thanks for the feedback. Sorry you feel that way. I will let the teams know.
I had mixed experiences with the PDF viewer: sometimes it worked great, other times it was awful. Maybe a future version of WD 2go could hand off PDFs and other such docs to GoodReader or other apps that are specialized for reading those formats?
When I was out testing at the coffee shop, video playback was unusable. I wish the video player could buffer a substantial amount of video data – I wouldn’t mind waiting a few minutes for the video to start if it would then play smoothly through the end (others may disagree).
The app was not designed for video streaming. Things that could help are to transcode at lower bit rates and in the resolution that the device supports. In a month you will have some other options as well.
Finally, a question: is WD 2go streaming its video and audio via DLNA? Or will I still need TwonkyServer if I want to view video on my XBOX360?
No. We use the Apple or Android standard protocols to stream . Streaming is not handled by DLNA. You still need the media server to talk to your DLNA devices.
This a great app. It works well on my android honeycomb tablet, the samsung galaxy tab 10.1, with honeycomb 3.1. I have two issues: 1. The streaming works well, but the player stops as soon as I switch to another app. Can this be built to run in the background? 2. In some wifis outside my home, even though the bandwidth is sufficiently high up to 10mbps, it gets stuck on “login” for a long time before displaying the list of shares. Sometimes up to 10 mins. Thanks Any help would be appreciated.
Sorry may be I dint explain it properly. I am specifically talking about streaming music. The problem number 1 I mentioned above. The streaming or the music player stops as soon as another app is chosen. So the streaming does not play in the background. This is how the app is built and is really a inconvinience since u cannot listen to streaming music in the background while u are working on others things on the tablet.
WDTV (any model) is currently not supported by wd 2go. wd photos does work with Live Hub however as it gives you the ability to upload videos to the Live Hub harddrive.
