WD TV Play or Live? Also video fast forward/rewind question

Community Archives WD TV Play Discussions
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I need another media player in our house.  I have a Roku but don’t want another one as I’ve found it very clumsy to fast forward through videos when trying to find a section as it does not show the video during fast forwarded on screen so you are pretty much blind as to the point you are in the video other than a display of the time markers.    I want something that will work more like my DVR or DVD player where you see the actual video being fast forwarded as it is progressing so that you can tell where you are.

First Question:  Will the WD TV Play do decent fast forward and rewind of videos with video shown in fast forward/rewind mode while doing this so you can see where you are?  (For files on network, USB and Netflix videos)

Next point:  My Primary use will be to view video files on my home network and/or from a USB stick.  Usually these are MP4 or M4V videos but sometimes other common formats such as WMV.  My other use is occasional viewing of Netflix

Second Question: Is there any real difference between the TV Play and the TV live for this purpose and is there any reason to spend extra for the TV live given my needs?  What are the pros and cons between the two units?

Thanks in advance for the info

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I’ll try to answer punctually

1.Fast forwarding: I’d say it’s decent and that’s about it. it has 2x, 4x, 8x and 16x speeds.

When fast forwarding, it only displays the keyframes in the video. It’s not smooth as you might wish but does the job ok.  For example, at 8x you get 2-5 images per second.

  1. MP4, M4V plays, as well as WMV, MKV, AVI etc. I couldn’t get MKV to play in the network but it plays ok from the USB. I haven’t tried it on Netflix yet

  2. DTS playback, DLNA and others. But for what you’re describing it should be ok as long as you’re ok with the frames forwarding (not smooth). I recommend searching through the forum ( this is an example) or watching this video review. I’m assuming you already went here.

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No mpeg2 support on play therefore no DVD playback.

Can only connect to network via a media server on WD play, no network share access.

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richUK wrote:

…Can only connect to network via a media server on WD play, no network share access.

Hmmm…  sounds like this means I couldn’t just play videos from a NAS hard drive then?  If so it is a good reason to go with the “live” model.