"53 minutes ago
As the other Mike Kelley I feel compeled to present an opposing argument.
It’s not in a maker’s interest to announce new products like that – while details of the iPhone did leak, there were serious consequences (people were fired). Apple is VERY closemouthed about any new product just like any responsible company and for a good reason – as everyone here notes, you wouldn’t buy the old product if you knew the new one was emminent.
A company HAS to continue to sell its products and announcing a new product that will undercut sales before the product is available is a terrible move. If I had stock in such a company I’d be appalled. Yes, there is ALWAYS a cutoff where customers might have waited a day/week/month and gotten something better, but if you trace that argument backwards you’d never sell anything.
So – boo hoo. I have zero symphathy for anyone who feels wronged by this, because those folks just don’t understand the business world (and have obviously either never had their own business or run it poorly). The true bottom line is ALWAYS – buy only something that does what you want. If it doesn’t do all you want, don’t buy it until it does.
Mike “ex-genius” Kelley"
I disagree with this mentality. What should be in the maker’s interest is what is in the customer’s interest. Launching a new product line 7 months after the previous line without announcement only serves to alienate those who have invested in the previous product. If the current version of the player truly could not possibly do netflix because of hardware limitations, then the new product line should have been announced ahead of time, and should probably have arrived to the market later, with more features. Releasing it now with only 2 differences between the previous product just makes it look like WD considers their own products to be throw away items, rather than a good investment.
You compared this to a Apples products. Apple is closemouthed about what their new products fully contain, but they definitely tell people that they are coming before they make the announcement. Also, do you remember when Apple released the iphones for $600, then dropped the price to $400 weeks later? They had public outcry, and offered to credit the difference in price back to the customer.
Apple also has the benefit of an extremely loyal fanbase. They have done this by releasing solid products that are relatively trouble free and easy to use. They do not release a new iphone every 7 months just to fix 1 problem and add 1 feature. When they do release a new version, people are willing to upgrade their phones because the new phones have so many new features and because the previous product was so impressive. WD TV Live is nowhere near as solid or streamlined, it is very buggy, and sometimes takes some technical expertise to get it to work properly.
Digital Media Players are a relatively new item to the market. They aren’t extremely well known or sought after like cell phones are, they don’t have a proven history. However, there is suddenly a lot of competition for this market. WD TV, Boxee, Google TV, Popbox, Popcorn box, asus O!, AppleTV, etc… and I supposed you have to include the Xbox360 and PS3 (both of which now have netflix support even though they did not come with it, no hardware update required). Even the TV I bought has usb ports which I can use to connect digital media sources.
WD should be marketing their WD TV LIVE players as a product that will have a long life. Since they are internet capable, They should be a product that receive periodic fixes, updates, and new features. Instead they have established themselves something you buy now, and throw away 8 months later when a new version comes out. For the $150 pricetag the consumer would be smarter to buy another product line, or invest in a HTPC.
I would urge anyone who purchased the WD TV LIVE in the last 30 days to return it. Either to trade for the new version, or to invest in another product altogether. I bought mine in January, and have been plagued with bugs and random errors. I have since put together an HTPC and was planning to use my WDTV Live in another room to stream content from my HTPC, but now that I know how WD’s product updates will work, I will be returning it to the store tomorrow. Luckily I purchased from Costco, and they have a no questions asked extended return policy on electronics.
