Western Digital TV Live Plus

[ftlaud_dj]

Many of you know that for the last few years I've been serving up my DVD collection to my Tivo HD boxes via a Windows Server and pyTivo which does on-the-fly conversions of video sources to the Tivo format.

As of late I've been moving my focus away from the Tivo and to the media player in the DirecTV DVR, using only a small low power NAS (Network Attached Storage) device that runs an internal medial server but has been nothing but a royal pain due to the strict formatting that the DirecTV box is locked down to.

Basically in the past I ripped my movie collection to a VOB file, copied it over to the pyTivo server and a few seconds later I could watch it on my Tivo units. When I tried to do the same with the DirecTV boxes, I found that the files had to be in a 'pristine' MPG2+TS format and even then they didn't have 100% success, also missing from this solution was the ability to rewind and fast forward like on the Tivo or get sub-titles.

Enter the latest investment in my home media server system, the Western Digital TV Live Plus, for 100 bucks online, 120 @ Best Buy, this thing rocks!

Any movie files that I have tossed at it have played perfectly, including my High Def video files that I produce for customer projects that I code to BluRay MKV format! The media server in this instantly found my NAS drives and all the media stored on there, movies, mp3's, pics, home movies everything and pumps it out on my TVs with no issue.

Reason I'm bringing this up is 2 fold, first if anyone is thinking about or has setup a home theater PC and is thinking about saving $$$ by not having to have a few hundred watt power supply running all the time, this thing draws <10 watts via a wallwart. If it meets my needs I can tell you it will likely do a nice job for anyone that is looking at this type of solution.

Next, if anyone is interested in a 2 yr old, modded TivoHD that has successfully played on Cox's system via Cablecard, has an ATSC tuner and a 1TB hard drive capable of recording several hundred hours of content, please PM me I'll make you a good deal.

Miguel

[Lloyd]

Oooh, that sounds nice. I've been streaming via AppleTV, but the formats are limited. Time to look into that.

[DoubleDAZ]

I hope you fair better than some on Amazon. I don't know enough about the unit to really evaluate some of the negative reviews though. I did happen to be in Best Buy today and took a look at the unit. It's really small and was $140 here in Fayetteville and $120 at Amazon. Aren't there some BR players that kind of do the same thing, stream for network HDs and Netflix? I know my LG BR370 does Netflix and I believe the LG BR390 also does network media.

[ftlaud_dj]

Lloyd if you're running Apple TV this will open your eyes to what could have been! I have yet to throw something at it that it can't handle, here is the video formats it will play;

Netflix, YouTube, RSS Feeds (Love my TWIT and HD Nation), ISO/VOB, AVI (Xvid, AVC, MPEG1/2/4), MPG/MPEG, MKV (h.264, x.264, AVC, MPEG1/2/4, VC-1), TS/TP/M2T (MPEG1/2/4, AVC, VC-1), MP4/MOV (MPEG4, h.264), M2TS, WMV9

I've got my NAS setup with some ISO, some VOB, some MPEG2 TS files and regardless of what I feed it, the box plays it flawlessly, also since my pipe is big enough it has no trouble handling NetFlix in HD and YouTube in HD. I've tried to do this with a few other solutions and this was by far the easiest and most reliable plus it comes with a remote and the coolness factor is HIGH! If you ever want a demo, let me know.

Dave; I never shop without my Droid and ShopSavvy, I pulled up the price in Best Buy and their own website showed 119, they matched it at the register without question. As for the reviews, I don't look at something seriously unless I see their webforum, those are the users that I care about because the problems are real time and with this box the only problems that I saw were mostly user error. In fact the only annoyance that I have to complain about is that if you put a title in a directory with a .jpg image of the cover from say the Netflix site, the unit will display the .jpg file and the movie with the box cover as 2 separate files, if Western Digital fixes that annoyance, the box is golden.

Miguel