I am an admirer of WD's line of products and especially love their quality Hard Disk drives, WD My book Live DUO NAS storage and I also have been following Western Digital releases of Media players since their Generation 1 of WDTV series and quite happy with their products and performance.
IMO, The best ones of these series is either WD TV Live Streaming Media Player Wi-Fi 1080p (If you do not care about built-in HDD) or WD TV Live Hub Media Center 1TB Full-HD 1080p (If you do not care about Built-in Wi-Fi) Both these products are by far the best of media players one can think of in today's market even after all these years of technological innovations. These two players boasts a perfect balance of the ability to play local media but also has multitude of streaming media capabilities. The most versatile being in my opinion WDTV Live Hub in terms of video connectivity to older generation of component TVs and DTS surround sound options via optical or HDMI.
Having said, WD TV Play Media Player is utterly disappointing. Here is why...
IMO, The best ones of these series is either WD TV Live Streaming Media Player Wi-Fi 1080p (If you do not care about built-in HDD) or WD TV Live Hub Media Center 1TB Full-HD 1080p (If you do not care about Built-in Wi-Fi) Both these products are by far the best of media players one can think of in today's market even after all these years of technological innovations. These two players boasts a perfect balance of the ability to play local media but also has multitude of streaming media capabilities. The most versatile being in my opinion WDTV Live Hub in terms of video connectivity to older generation of component TVs and DTS surround sound options via optical or HDMI.
Having said, WD TV Play Media Player is utterly disappointing. Here is why...
- lo·bot·o·mized features and functions - Utterly disappointing.
- No DTS Support - Big Bummer especially when it boasts Optical Audio out!
- No MPEG 1/2 support - (Old tech but still a lot of people still has these DVD media)
- Cannot play via Network shares (SMB shares) (DLNA only - Big Bummer!)
- Very poorly implemented 'My Storage' option to access your local media connected via USB drives
- Enough horsepower to start apps faster but still seemingly very Sluggish UI experience?! - Beats me!
- Cheap looking IR remote (I hate when they have dedicated buttons for Vudu or Netflix) - IMHO, Today these are popular but that does not mean you need a button for that! just have painted RED, Green, Blue Buttons and allow users to assign apps to it - agree?
With all that negativity - Now you might say - what is it good for?
- [+] Oh yeah! - Streaming Netflix, Vudu, Hulu+ - It plays beautifully without any buffering issues. BTW - All these sorts of devices should come free from these subscribers! Why pay WD for a streaming media player?? for a paid subscription streaming service?
- [+] Getting Local weather! - Oh! there is an APP for that as well!
- [+] Bonus - Can also be used as hockey puck! - It is that small :D
Sorry WD, This is the first time I am giving poor rating to any WDTV series of media players - check out my other reviews and photos of other WDTV live series that I have purchased and reviewed over the years but the first impression of this one is the most disappointing of all.
I do have love/hate relationship with my other WDTV Live series but mostly because of some initial poor Firmware releases. But after about 2 years of constant feedback to WD user community and tech support ITRs most of those annoying Firmware bugs have been fixed and we have a more or less matured WDTV live product and may be that is the reason for this utter disappointment. It is more like a 'little child' I was expecting more out of this newer generation of WDTV series just like before with other WDTV series of media players and did not read the 'fine print' carefully. The WDTV play delivers all that is given in the fine print but that is not good enough! - When you release a newer generation of product you must improve upon the series not lobotomize it! - Agreed that MPEG 1/2 are old tech and DVDs are getting replaced by Blu-ray but who has the time to re-encode one's collection just to be complaint with one media player? - No way!
Save time, money and frustration if you can shell out some extra bucks buy WDTV Live Streaming media player while it is still available if you want a 'better overall' product which has good 'local' media support including DVD Menu plus audio DTS & Dolby TrueHD all kinds of network storage attached options like linux NFS, windows SMB shares support with better UI.
Bottom-line:WD TV play provides what the specifications say (Truly a "three" star product as per specs) but even being the lowest end device in the WDTV Series why take out features that made WDTV so popular? Why buy a lobotomized WDTV Live? product? - No sir! Thank you.
You can buy one of these from Amazon by using the link below:
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