Western Digital WD TV Live – Next Generation Streaming Media Player Review
Next-Gen WD TV Live – Final Thoughts and Bottom Line
multimedia content in your existing library, but to stream content from
all over the internet. The sheer number of offerings that Western
Digital gives you out of the box with the WD TV Live is tremendous.
Once
you log in for the first time to all of these services, each service
gives you the option of remembering your username and password. For
some of the services, you can have more than one user. This is useful
when you have various playlists or custom settings for a service like
Pandora or Spotify. The hunt-and-peck method from the on-screen
keyboard got old really quick, so we just hooked up a generic USB
keyboard to make typing usernames and passwords quicker.
really loved having services like Pandora, Netflix (even though there
isnt enough High-Definition content!), and Facebook. We were a bit
wary of bringing up Facebook on our large-screen HDTV in front of family
members though since we have a number of friends who like to post
scantily cladded pictures from their latest trip to Vegas as their
profile picture.
The WD TV Live user interface was just as quick
and responsive in this set-top box as it is in the WD TV Live Hub, which
is a very good thing. The landscape for this player was very familiar
to us and we really didnt miss having on-board storage. With the
possible exception of the Apple TV GUI, the Mochi-powered user interface
is head and shoulders better than anything else on the market.
We
ran the WD TV Live non-stop for almost a week and it just did its job
serving up any media that we through at it. If you are looking for a
player that will run in absolute quiet and still not melt your A/V
cabinet, this next-generation WD TV Live player is the one for you.
With Western Digitals standard 1-year warranty, it really is hard to
imagine how a media player can get any better. The MSRP of $99 for the package helps seal the deal. When the original WD TV Live Plus came out in 2009 it featured an MSRP of $149. It’s great to see a new model come out with improvements in size, performance and features for less money!
Legit Bottom Line:
The
Western Digital WD TV Live is one of the best high-definition media
players and streamers on the market today. With built-in wireless,
support for Blu-ray ISOs, and a huge suite of applications built-in, the
latest generation WD TV Live only has competition from its big brother
the WD TV Live Hub.
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