WDTV Live - ripening process managed

The newest Streaming Player from Western Digital can unfortunately unfortunately no points in many respects. This is all the more surprising since it is already the third generation of WD and recommended a series of homework by the development team to this day still not been implemented or improved. Positive eye drops the new GUI which comes generally very tidy and organized and additionally a halfway useful remote control is included for the first time; the previous Examplare were designed for baby hands. Even the setup knows how to please and can totally convincing. Out-of-the-box, however, you had to first an update let Arie go through. Why, however, each must always upgrade to certain firmware revisions, each followed by a complete restart of the player, and then sticks to come to stick to the final update remains a mystery and is unprofessional. Pleasant are like a 2.5 "hard drive comes also the dimensions of the box, which has become even smaller compared to its predecessor and about the same size. The white front LED can completely disable erfreuerlicherweise in the setup. It has then indeed no visual confirmation more whether the player is actually still on, but many home theater enthusiasts are likely to be happy about this feature. Also in terms of supported formats will remain open barely a wish. The image quality knows altogether convincing, even if the contrast and saturation by standard setting are exaggerated and unnatural.
All in all, good conditions for a super Streaming Player for a fair price. Unfortunately, Western Digital has made but serious shortcomings in the implementation of network support. The WiFi support is a joke. Even with 802.11n WiFi (Draft-N Wi-Fi) is to play 1080p content of liquid out of the question. To stream photos and music, it is sufficient, but no one needs this player. Even otherwise, the play is about network rather problematic. The WDTV has repeatedly caused crashes on different computers and was the spot the definite cause. It was irrelevant whether the source selects a release or accessed directly from the dashboard. In other accesses to the connected network drive, the box also freezes like one or the currently playing video has strong dropouts. The compatibility to ISO images is also much need of an overhaul. The play of ribbed BluRay's is pure gambling and at high bit rates (from ~ 30Mbps) he rises also like once completely and it can only be reset via the pull the power plug. Compared to an AppleTV or an HDX 1080 (Popcorn Hour), the performance offered is fair to poor.
Who has an overly large collection lying on his hard drive, it should also avoid to let the player create a library. Better advice is to, by the content to be played is connected to a hard disk directly via USB to the WDTV player. This shows to what the player actually would be able. That's not what you would expect from a streaming media player.

Conclusion:
++ Front LED can be deactivated
++ 3D HSBS Support
++ WD Remote app

+ Decent image quality
+ Beautiful intuitively designed GUI
+ Form Factor
+ Solid 1080p playback
+ Good behavior in coils (no desync)
+ Diverse format support (no ALAC)
+ Alternative firmware possible
+ USB HUB capable
+ Price / performance ratio is good
+ Good player in direct-attached hard disk
+ Convenient access to media server contents
+ Very good support from 2.5 "hard drives via the USB ports
+ Support by WD (since appear was much improved!)
Since appear greatly improved + switching and device boot time

o DTS / Dolby Digital decoding (bass good / satisfactory heights)
o firmware still has potential for improvement
o build quality (pretty plastic)
o exclusively HDMI & Optical Output (Support for device control)
o photo playback (Nintendo's Wii can more here!)
o for improvement ISO support (DVD solid / BluRay's is only the largest m2ts file play)
o a front side and a rear USB 2.0 port (compatible with 3.0)

- Reach and response of the remote control very bad (recommendation: use app)
- WiFi streaming of FullHD material impossible
- Support miserable when playing BluRay directories / ISO's
- Widgets regionally installed (Topic US VPN & Hulu)
- Network Streaming faulty
- Video settings go to device restart lost (recommendation: leave everything on the car!)

Conclusion: WD can not convince the new WDTV unfortunately. Light and shadow are so close together in this unit. The player is outputting a very good picture and sound ordinary capable. Why does the device but just in the network so discipline is weakening is a mystery to me. The competition can unfortunately much better. Already added shares disappear sometimes arbitrary. Another time was allegedly removed a content source. In Search of the shares, the device looks for a wolf. The release is supposedly no longer exists, although other devices on the network have no problems with access. There are those things that can spoil a home theater evening and they just annoy immensely. The otherwise solid impression is unfortunately disrupted violently by these shortcomings. Overall I give the device in the current development stages a 3+

Update 2012-10: Even with the latest firmware 1:11:14 the SMB mode is still very vulnerable. I would like WD would be more memory to buffer the device is better. I recommend everyone to look over DLNA. Since the LAN streaming problems over NFS and CIFS shares are less bad, I think that this clearly is an SMB bug. The Android and iOS apps for remote control are better than the original remote control and I make this every user his heart.

Update 2013-09: We are now at firmware 1:16:13. However due to the significant increase in comfort to be able to control the device very well on my Tablet / Smartphone, the box deserves half a point more. I now have a streame actually renders the Synology NAS and have fewer problems with the streaming as under Windows. There were significantly improved with recent firmwares just the compatibility of high bitrate MKV's. My private H.264 1080p60 recording with 36Mbit for Video and 4Mbit for LPCM 2-channel audio mastering the player now without a murmur.