I bought a WD Mini in December for my SD TV and then in April when I
got my Plasma I bought a WD Live. These things are the best piece of
tech I have every bought. They earn their Maximum PC Kick Ass
award. You plug it in to your TV, plug a USB drive in, and use it.
They are brain dead to use, easier then a VCR. They are about the
size of two packs of cigarettes and have a tiny remote that
disappears in a shirt pocket. They have supported any file I have
asked them to play and I record 1080i TS files off of cable. They
playback flawlessly.
The Live lets you plug in a two USB drives, I use WD externals and
Corsair Flash drives because they turn on and off automatically with
the WD Live, get a new small WD drive and you don't need a power
adaptor. The Live has a network connection so you can get Netflicks,
Amazon, Utube and Bios updates. I have not used network features much
at this point as I tend to just put stuff on the external hard drives
and I have an unresolved issue with my LAN network... not the WD
The only issue I have with the Live is the way it plays ISO files. My
WD mini plays them just like a DVD with menus while the Live plays
them from start to finish ignoring the menus. There is a lot of
complaints about this and hopefully it will be addressed in a future
Bios update. However, I worry that this might be this way to appease
manufacturers and avoid a law suit.
I know high end BD players have external hard drive and network
support... I have one. But mine is nothing like the ease of use and
simplicity of the WD players. Andy you get all this for around 50
bucks for the mini and 120 bucks for the Live... cheaper on
sale...they are a fantastic.
w
At 10:11 AM 7/8/2010, you wrote:
Hey guys, so I guess I'm getting persnickety in my "old-age" (I use
that term loosely, k? :P).
But dealing with computers and tech stuff all the time has meant
that I have little patience for futzing around with stuff and
wanting to tweak things and mess with all the details and whatnot-I
mean I still do it when needed, but I don't go out and look for it,
and avoid it if I can...
So I'm not so into building the PC-I'll just buy it all ready to go
and hope it has as few problems as possible (there are still always
some that need work).
Similarly, while I could build a HTPC for my HT to play any video
files (for missed TV shows and all that), I'd like to avoid that as
much as possible, as long as I can get something that'll do the job
with minimal fuss. Sadly, I've lacked the ability to do this (play
PC video files easily), and have to manually connect my laptop via
VGA to my Samsung 60" DLP whenever I want to play files of stuff
I've missed, so it's a bit of a PITA...
But then I came across this:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003MVZ60I/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk
The WD TV Live Plus! The reviews are really great for something
this simple, and it sounds like it'll play just about any format of
video file from my PC w/o me having to futz with dl'ing codecs and
all that (and even plays .iso files directly with DVD menus too!).
So is this the device I want-the one "true" device?! :P I figure a
few other people here must've looked into things like this,
especially to keep it simple for wives/GFs. ;) I keep hearing the
"POPCORN" mentioned in the reviews, but apparently it's
vaporware. And at $120 shipped from Amazon in 2 days (I have
Prime), I'm ready to pull the trigger, but figured I'd check with
the collective for thoughts first...
So any opinions, thoughts, shares regarding this device and the
state-of-the-art in this area (or recommendations for better
devices) are much appreciated. Thanks all!
BINO
