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Home » Laptops & Computing » Peripheral » Western Digital WDTV Live HD Media Player » Video

Western Digital WDTV Live HD Media Player video review

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The Western Digital WDTV Live combines support for networking and making playing your multimedia files on your TV easier than ever before. However, other devices on the market offer the same and better functionality for less money. Read full review

Overall

8/10

Write your own review

Edward Chester

By Edward Chester
Reviewed 29 October 2009
Updated 19 December 2011

Price as reviewed

£68.33

  • Review
    • 1: Western Digital WDTV Live
    • 2: Western Digital WDTV Live
    • 3: Format Support
  • Video Review
  • User Reviews
  • Comments
  • 9 Photos
  • Reviewed by Edward Chester
  • 29 October 2009
Read the full Western Digital WDTV Live HD Media Player review
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Awards

Western Digital WDTV Live HD Media Player details

Value
8/10
Features
8/10
Design
8/10
Overall
8/10

Pros & Cons

Pros

  • Network-enabled
  • Excellent connectivity
  • Improved functionality

Cons

  • No inbuilt wireless
  • Lacks RMVB support

Price as reviewed

£68.33

Manufacturer

Western Digital

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Kinn

1:07 AM on 29 October, 2009

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Great review (as always).





Just wondering about its noise levels. Does this get noisy and hot at all?

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lifethroughalens

1:32 AM on 29 October, 2009

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I wish i'd waited to buy this unit over the Xtreamer that I got a couple of month ago. If anyone's considering the Xtreamer, i'd advise against it until they get their firmware v2 out of beta and actually get the unit working smoothly on the networking side. Also the internet integration is plagued with bugs and is poorly implemented.





If the FW is sorted out then it's a worthy competitor to this WD effort.





This WD unit looks like it has a much more polished UI and I have no doubt that it's probably a lot quieter in operation than the Xtreamer. (v.noisy fan)

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MSIC

7:02 AM on 29 October, 2009

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The one feature everyone was wanting was.... what????


What about DTS audio? Every single person i know who has a mark 1 device wants DTS decoding! -That- is the newly included codec which makes the mark 2 better, not some rubbishy Real Media whatever!

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HarryButler

8:00 AM on 29 October, 2009

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The device is completely silent - no moving parts at all, and it's rated to over 70°C, which it doesn;t hit even when playing very high bitrate files (60MB/s. While the Xstreamer does come with a fan, you can turn it off though with no discernible difference in playback.





MSIC is spot on here Ed - no one cares about realmedia (who else but BBC radio still uses it anyway?) - it's the DTS support that's awesome here, especially the extra offering of automatic 2.0 DTS downmix for those of us without awesome pimptacular 5.1 setups.





The WDTV Live also has improved HD file support in regard to the number of reference frames in a file. On the original if a file had too many it just wouldn't play - now it doesn't matter how many reference frames there are in HD media - they just play.





Add those improvements to the new networking capabilites and this is surely a superior offering than the WDTV?

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Ed

10:55 AM on 29 October, 2009

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@Kinn: As Harry says, it's completely silent. It does get warm to the touch but not to a level that should concern you.





@MSIC, Harry: I'd argue DTS decoding isn't necessarily that big of a deal but it all depends on your usage so point taken.





All told, this is definitely an awesome device but depending on your usage you may be better off saving some money and getting the O!Play.





I've added the video for this now. When we shot it the price of the WDTV Live was £120 - thus the reference to the Asus being £40 cheaper - but obviously that's changed now.

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drdark

10:58 AM on 29 October, 2009

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Can anyone actually find the Asus one anywhere? Last time I looked it was either impossible to search for due to the bloody stupid name (yes, Asus literally deserve to be punished by losing sales over the silly name), or everywhere seemed to be out of stock, or still expecting stock in.





Plus, if you do happen to find it anywhere, by the time you factor in delivery, it's less than a £10 difference, if that.





WD wins.

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Nick

11:59 AM on 29 October, 2009

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@everyone: I recently bought the original WDTV - mainly to play mkv files. It seems to be happy to play audio and video on most of my mkv files (tv shows) but my larger film files only play the video.





Does anyone know if the new wdtv will play the audio files on these films because of the DTS decoding (or am i getting the wrong end of the stick)? Also - i'm waiting for my Onkyo TX-SR507 amp to come. Will this be able to play the audio seeing as i'm connecting the wdtv to this and then into my tv?





I've got another week in which i can return it and was wondering if it's worth spending the extra £30 on this version (i'm not really bothered about the network connection).





Any thoughts/comments would be much appreciated :)

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SirStuie

12:29 PM on 29 October, 2009

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I agree with MSIC and Harry, DTS decoding and network support was the only thing lacking on the WDTV (never encountered a RM whatever myself). They hit the jackpot with the WDTV and this improvement will keep brand loyalty and positive word of mouth going.





I will be picking one up for xmas, just need to decide to give the old one as a present or keep it as a spare.

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Luan Bach

1:04 PM on 29 October, 2009

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@Nick, yes, the film files would most likely to be DTS so the WDTV won't play the audio. If you plug it into the Onkyo through hdmi it will work fine, just set your WDTV audio ouput to digital.

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AndyVandervell

1:07 PM on 29 October, 2009

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@drdark: Seem to be plenty of stockists now: http://www.google.co.uk/products?q=Asus%20O!Play%20HDP-R1&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wf

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