I love movies and I love watching them. Nothing better than a weekend marathon of classic movies or series with a bowl of popcorn. One thing that always bothered me with DVD's is that you have to keep changing the discs in your player. I mean it's no problem for random usage, but for an enthusiast like myself, it's just annoying. Especially if you plan to watch a series with 5 seasons in a row. And not just the disc-juggle, but the storage problem as well. 500+ DVD's take some shelf space.
Some time ago I started to move my collection on to my home server, much easier to browse and store on a server than on DVD's. I have plenty of hard drive space to spare and today the amount needed for some avi and mkv files is cheap enough. However, this approach created another dilemma. I don't like sitting in front of my computer while watching, I'd rather have something to connect my TV and the server so I can watch the movies on the TV. I tried video cables from my computer to my TV some years back when the only DVD player I had was my computers DVD-ROM drive, but the results were far from optimal. And the other thing is that I don't like keeping my computer on while I watch a movie, especially at night. Who needs that extra noise that the computer makes?
So I went out and got myself a Western Digital WD TV Live Full HD 1080p some time back for testing since the price was very reasonable, only around 90€.
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| The player is quite small, smaller than many books |
I realize network media players have been around for years so nothing new there, but the previous players were mostly only designed to be used with some proprietary server software that you'd have to install on your computer. And the file format support has been too limited for my use. That's why I have not been too keen to try them out.
Nowadays there is a wide selection of players available that support most file formats, and most importantly samba file sharing protocol which is common and works well.
The WD TV Live is connected to your LAN through Ethernet port in the back and to the TV either by HDMI or AV connection. The player is able to find samba shares from local network automatically. The player pretty much works right out the box, but you can of course adjust settings to fit your needs. The player can also update itself over the internet, so no need to mess around with USB sticks.
At first I had some issues playing certain files, specifically mkv and mov files, but the latest firmware fixed those issues and now it has played flawlessly anything I've thrown at it. Also it can play subtitles from the most common formats, which is a must for kung fu and samurai films. My japanese is a bit rusty...
The player is able to play not only movies, but also music and photos from a network share or USB-drive. I mostly use it just for movies. Also, there's several network media services that you can use on the device, such as YouTube, Deezer, Mediafly, Live365 and such.
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| You can select subtitles, audio channel or zoom in and out from onscreen menu during movie |
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| Info bar (hides itself after few seconds) |
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| The menu is simple to use and intuitive |
If you don't already have a server or a network hard drive, you can get a player that has a 1 TB hard drive in it. I bought one with just the player since I already have a server with lots of hard drive space.
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| It's kind of shaped like a book so I quess you can stick it into your bookshelf if you like. Our TV is nowhere near the bookshelf. |
T.A.
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