Best 1080p MKV streamer with movie rental functionality and Netflix?

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smitbret

Diamond Member
Jul 27, 2006
3,382
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Let's put it this way. If you plan on frequently streaming local content then there really is no sinpler method of remote playback than WD Live. If you want a better selection of online content, go Roku or AppleTV if your already invested in the iTunes system. Everything else is gonna be something in between.

My WDTV Live Hub has:
Hulu Plus
Flixster
Flickr
CinemaNow
MLBTV
NetFlix
Pandora
Vimeo
Vudu
YouTube
Spotify
Picasa
Shoutcast Radio

And a handful of other services I've never heard of.
 

bearxor

Diamond Member
Jul 8, 2001
6,605
3
81
I completely disagree. If you plan on streaming local content, the Boxee Box is vastly superior to anything I've used and simpler. Boot it up, create an account, show it the path to your videos, and it will catalog them and present everything with a nice UI.

If you need file system access, you can still do that as well.
 

smitbret

Diamond Member
Jul 27, 2006
3,382
17
81
I completely disagree. If you plan on streaming local content, the Boxee Box is vastly superior to anything I've used and simpler. Boot it up, create an account, show it the path to your videos, and it will catalog them and present everything with a nice UI.

If you need file system access, you can still do that as well.

Setting up the Boxee is a piece of cake, but when I was trying them it seemed that there were a couple of files/file types that the WD could handle that the Boxee did not. I also didn't like how the Boxee screwed up my movie poster art. The WD Live's scraping for it's media library also seemed to do a much better job than Boxee.

That was just my personal experience, though. Like I said, ultimately I went with the WDTV Live Hub because it had the built-in 1TB of HDD storage and built-in Twonky DLNA server for just a few bucks more. The Western Digital Community is also hugely involved in its support and activity. In the end, they were very close in my mind. YMMV.
 

Face2Face

Diamond Member
Jun 6, 2001
4,100
215
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The WD files system UI is horrid. I use to own a Patriot Box office, which would play back anything perfectly and I liked it a lot, but the files system UI.... :( . I cut cable and needed something my kids could use with ease. At the time they could not read, so pictures were needed. Roku + Plex = Awesome experience. I had enough PC parts left over to build a primary Plex server, so the choice was easy for me. Although it is a large investment for most. I would personally choose the Boxee over the WD or any sort.
 

smitbret

Diamond Member
Jul 27, 2006
3,382
17
81
The WD files system UI is horrid. I use to own a Patriot Box office, which would play back anything perfectly and I liked it a lot, but the files system UI.... :( . I cut cable and needed something my kids could use with ease. At the time they could not read, so pictures were needed. Roku + Plex = Awesome experience. I had enough PC parts left over to build a primary Plex server, so the choice was easy for me. Although it is a large investment for most. I would personally choose the Boxee over the WD or any sort.

Sounds like you hadn't used the newer Mochi interface. It's pretty slick and once the Media library is set up, my 6 year old has no problem with it. The WAF is pretty good on it, too. I just couldn't get any advantage out of the Boxee Box versus the WDTV Live with the new interface.

A lot of people like the Roku + Plex option. I just hate the idea that so much stuff has to be transcoded which means FF/Rew is disabled at least through the beginning of the movie and there can be some picture quality penalty from the transcoding. I'm not sure how much more electricity the Plex server would use while transcoding vs. just serving the files but I like to look for places to cut power consumption where possible.

If I had to invest in another, I'd look strongly at the Dune HD boxes but they are SOOOOO $$$$$.
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
23,825
1,396
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Thanks guys. I ordered a refurb WD TV Live Streaming for $64 shipped, from eBay.

Besides the size of the Boxee Box, what also concerned me was the RF remote. I understand the advantages of RF (and the Boxee Box's integrated keyboard), but I like using Harmony remotes, and so IR is actually an advantage for me.

Who knows, maybe if the refurb Boxee drops below $100 again and they finally get Flash 11 working on it, I'll pick up one of those too. I have another spot where I could use the thing.

P.S. The non-refurb WD TV Live is sometimes $90 locally plus tax, which is a good deal. However, it's usually the Canadian model, which is missing all of the US apps. The one I ordered has the American apps as well. It's true I can't use them yet unless I get a VPN service or something, but at least they're there in case I ever do. It's not a deal breaker though for us Canadians obviously.
 

bearxor

Diamond Member
Jul 8, 2001
6,605
3
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It is kind of irritating having two remotes. I use the harmony to turn it on then use the boxee to control then use the harmony to adjust volume.

I had tried to use the harmony with the boxee using the MCE IR reciever I had left over, and it works, but I kind of hate the harmony remotes so I went back to using two separate ones and disconnected the IR box.
 

Face2Face

Diamond Member
Jun 6, 2001
4,100
215
106
Sounds like you hadn't used the newer Mochi interface. It's pretty slick and once the Media library is set up, my 6 year old has no problem with it. The WAF is pretty good on it, too. I just couldn't get any advantage out of the Boxee Box versus the WDTV Live with the new interface.

A lot of people like the Roku + Plex option. I just hate the idea that so much stuff has to be transcoded which means FF/Rew is disabled at least through the beginning of the movie and there can be some picture quality penalty from the transcoding. I'm not sure how much more electricity the Plex server would use while transcoding vs. just serving the files but I like to look for places to cut power consumption where possible.

If I had to invest in another, I'd look strongly at the Dune HD boxes but they are SOOOOO $$$$$.

Hmm... Looks like I spoke too soon. I have never seen the Mochi Interface. I will have to check it out. I will say the Plex server uses more electricity than any set-top box, but electricity here is pretty cheap. You can FF and RW using Plex, kind of slow, but it's possible. Plex transcoding quality is actually very good to my eyes, has much improved since the first iteration. The true benefit of Plex is using MyPlex. I can watch movies from outside my network and can share content with friends and family. I now have access to my Dad's insane music collection and my friends movies and TV- shows. Kind of like having a Netflix server in your house. Video quality is limited to your bandwidths's upload speed, but 2mbps is still 720P. So I can access Plex with my Android phones, iPads, iPods and my Rokus. Even go onto Youtube and save youtube videos to my queue with the chrome ext and watch them later on my bedroom TV with a $50 Roku. I gotta say it's pretty sweet.
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
23,825
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You can actually install Plex as well on Apple TV, but I haven't bothered. As for transcoding, I don't want to keep my iMac on all the time, although I can have it wake on network request. That's what I do with my iTunes music actually. The iTunes music is on my iMac.

Almost all my video is on my NAS, but my NAS is not fast enough to support transcoding.
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
23,825
1,396
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BTW, I just had a run through with the new UI of Xbox 360. (I hadn't bothered updating the thing in the last couple of months.) Now it supports Rogers Anyplace TV...

...except even Rogers Anyplace TV requires Xbox Live Gold. Stupid, and disappointing. YouTube, Netflix, Internet Explorer, Rogers Anyplace TV, etc. all require it. For this reason, I have very little use for my Xbox 360. Even for my old HD DVDs I'm better off just using my standalone players.
 

Mloot

Diamond Member
Aug 24, 2002
3,037
25
91
A bit late to the thread, but I use a Sony SMP-N200 in the bedroom. It's UI is similar to the PS3. It seems to play most files stored on my HTPC in the other room, and it has a lot of different connection options in the back, similar to the older Roku models. I think it plays MKV files.
 

smitbret

Diamond Member
Jul 27, 2006
3,382
17
81
If I were doing it all again today, I'd still go Boxee Box. I still haven't used a piece of hardware outside of the more specialty boxes (like PH) that work better.

Eug, the Boxee Box remote is RF. The Boxee box can go behind the TV if you need it to. The remote will be able to control it from anywhere.

If you don't need the cataloging that Boxee Box does, like this:
boxee_box_tv_shows.jpg


And are more comfortable with browsing your shows through a file system, then the WDTV Live would be a great other choice.

Is that a screenshot off the Boxee Box? One of the reasons I went with the WDTV was that the Boxee used to screw up my cover art and tried to force everything into a square instead of rectangle and I just couldn't live with something like that.
 

KentState

Diamond Member
Oct 19, 2001
8,397
393
126
I'm very late to the thread, but I purchased a second WD TV Live for the house. I stream Netflix, Spotify and MLB on it regularly plus my entire DVD/Blu-ray collection is on my Synology as straight rips to MKV. I really like that they haven't supported Sony's Cinavia or whatever their new DRM is.
 

smitbret

Diamond Member
Jul 27, 2006
3,382
17
81
I'm very late to the thread, but I purchased a second WD TV Live for the house. I stream Netflix, Spotify and MLB on it regularly plus my entire DVD/Blu-ray collection is on my Synology as straight rips to MKV. I really like that they haven't supported Sony's Cinavia or whatever their new DRM is.

It's why I dumped my PS3 (and everything else Sony) and got the WDTV Live Hub in the first place.
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
23,825
1,396
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For $64 I ordered a refurb WD TV Live box on Friday from California off eBay, and I got the unit today (Wednesday) in Canada. Not bad for free international shipping (USPS). I see they've raised the price a bit since then, but that's still a good deal considering the new crippled WD TV Play costs about the same new, not including shipping.

I plugged it in and then updated the firmware immediately. My Harmony remote had the remote codes programmed in already from their database and everything works as expected. Initially it seemed insensitive to the power toggle button but that was right after the firmware update. Now it seems perfectly fine. Hopefully this is not a sign of future glitches.

UI is decent, albeit not as slick as Apple's. Speed is OK, but switching apps could sometimes be faster. It's faster than switching apps on my Blu-ray player though. Access to my my NAS's network shares is fast and reliable, but that's on wired Ethernet. I haven't tried WiFi, but WiFi in this setup wouldn't be a good test anyway because the WD box is right beside the wireless router.

No iTunes or other similar DRM support of course, but Netflix works great. I'm getting most of the titles listed as SuperHD and the quality is very good. (I'm on a 25 Mbps connection.) For some reason they're not showing up as SuperHD on my Sony Blu-ray player, but I wonder if it's just because the icon isn't there yet in the current firmware. If not, I suspect it will get that at the next firmware update.

MKV playback is excellent, and audio on some files that cause wonkiness in DicePlayer in Android works perfectly with this box. Moderately high bitrate MKV is no problem, at least up to the 12 Mbps I tried. I haven't tried higher yet. Having the audio sync management settings are nice too. I'm not seeing any artwork though. It plays my full DVD rips (VIDEO_TS folders) too, complete with menus.

So, if you want DRM support and don't have a jailbroken Apple TV 2, I'd have no problems recommending this unit alongside an Apple TV 3.
 
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smitbret

Diamond Member
Jul 27, 2006
3,382
17
81
For $64 I ordered a refurb WD TV Live box on Friday from California off eBay, and I got the unit today (Wednesday) in Canada. Not bad for free international shipping (USPS). I see they've raised the price a bit since then, but that's still a good deal considering the new crippled WD TV Play costs about the same new, not including shipping.

I plugged it in and then updated the firmware immediately. My Harmony remote had the remote codes programmed in already from their database and everything works as expected. Initially it seemed insensitive to the power toggle button but that was right after the firmware update. Now it seems perfectly fine. Hopefully this is not a sign of future glitches.

UI is decent, albeit not as slick as Apple's. Speed is OK, but switching apps could sometimes be faster. It's faster than switching apps on my Blu-ray player though. Access to my my NAS's network shares is fast and reliable, but that's on wired Ethernet. I haven't tried WiFi, but WiFi in this setup wouldn't be a good test anyway because the WD box is right beside the wireless router.

No iTunes or other similar DRM support of course, but Netflix works great. I'm getting most of the titles listed as SuperHD and the quality is very good. (I'm on a 25 Mbps connection.) For some reason they're not showing up as SuperHD on my Sony Blu-ray player, but I wonder if it's just because the icon isn't there yet in the current firmware. If not, I suspect it will get that at the next firmware update.

MKV playback is excellent, and audio on some files that cause wonkiness in DicePlayer in Android works perfectly with this box. Moderately high bitrate MKV is no problem, at least up to the 12 Mbps I tried. I haven't tried higher yet. Having the audio sync management settings are nice too. I'm not seeing any artwork though. It plays my full DVD rips (VIDEO_TS folders) too, complete with menus.

So, if you want DRM support and don't have a jailbroken Apple TV 2, I'd have no problems recommending this unit alongside an Apple TV 3.

Add your network shares to your Media Library. It'll scrape for the data on the files and will retrieve artwork and metadata. Then use the Media Library to view your media. It will read embedded artwork and metadata from .mp4 files without this step, but most .mkvs and other file types won't have that.
 
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bearxor

Diamond Member
Jul 8, 2001
6,605
3
81
Is that a screenshot off the Boxee Box? One of the reasons I went with the WDTV was that the Boxee used to screw up my cover art and tried to force everything into a square instead of rectangle and I just couldn't live with something like that.

Well that's just one I found on Google Images to demonstrate.

I'm not sure what you mean by "forcing everything in to a square". But, I also don't spend any time on my cover art as I just don't want to spend any time on it. Now, Boxee isn't perfect, I'll be the first to admit. If you're willing to put time in, then there are better options. I was looking for "Open box, point to network share, watch videos."

These are some pics of what mine looks like, though.
sU4IV4z.jpg

h1CFEdM.jpg

cWZC7JN.jpg
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
23,825
1,396
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I plugged it in and then updated the firmware immediately. My Harmony remote had the remote codes programmed in already from their database and everything works as expected. Initially it seemed insensitive to the power toggle button but that was right after the firmware update. Now it seems perfectly fine. Hopefully this is not a sign of future glitches.
It had to do with the sequence of turning on the devices. It seemed trying to turn on the WD TV Live as the first device on caused problems. I guess it got confused by the barrage of conflicting IR commands being thrown at it for the various devices. So I changed the sequence to have the WD TV Live turn on last, and now it works every time.


Add your network shares to your Media Library. It'll scrape for the data on the files and will retrieve artwork and metadata. Then use the Media Library to view your media. It will read embedded artwork and metadata from .mp4 files without this step, but most .mkvs and other file types won't have that.
Thanks for the tip.


Well that's just one I found on Google Images to demonstrate.

I'm not sure what you mean by "forcing everything in to a square". But, I also don't spend any time on my cover art as I just don't want to spend any time on it. Now, Boxee isn't perfect, I'll be the first to admit. If you're willing to put time in, then there are better options. I was looking for "Open box, point to network share, watch videos."
FWIW, that's what I did, save the stuff above. It defaulted to a Windows share. I entered my account info and voila all my files were available.

In the settings it defaults to having Linux shares off, but that didn't seem to matter for my Synology NAS. Is it correct it's just using SMB shares by default? Is that what is meant by Windows shares? It doesn't actually say SMB.
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
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I just ordered a second one of these refurb WD TV Live Streaming Media Players. The price has since gone up from $64 to $70, but that's still pretty good. I didn't get dinged with brokerage charges or tax (cross-border shipping from US to Canada) last time either - fingers crossed it will be the same this time too.

I find it curious though that WD introduced the WD TV Play without updating either the WD TV Live or the Live Hub. Perhaps they feel the hardware is mature enough to not require frequent hardware updates. They'd be better off keeping the hardware the same for an extended period and reap the benefits of lower cost components as time goes on. No big need to update to 1080p60 support or 4K or 802.11ac at this time.

Mind you even if they did update the Live & Live Hub, the pricing would be significantly higher than the $70 I'm paying for this so I'm not complaining.

However, I still do wonder what would they add in a new model.
 

smitbret

Diamond Member
Jul 27, 2006
3,382
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As a local streaming box, the WDTV Live's don't have a lot of room for improvement except maybe a smoother interface. Their biggest limitation is some of the audio codec support for tracks that are DTS-HD and a couple of others. I'm not exactly sure which ones, since I never keep anything larger than a DTS track. From what I understand, the boxes would support it, but the licensing costs would force the price of the boxes to increase substantially. If you have a need for that, there are specialty boxes like the Dune or Oppo BR Players, but you'll pay a pretty penny for those.

Other than that, the WDTV could have a few more online services. I think there are a lot of people that would kill for Amazon On Demand. I know I would.

The next iterations of hardware upgrades will be things like 4K resolution and the h265 codec but those are a few years away.
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
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As a local streaming box, the WDTV Live's don't have a lot of room for improvement except maybe a smoother interface.
Oh yeah I forgot - I mentioned on the other page that it could stand to gain a dual-core SoC.

The WD TV Live's interface is OK and is faster than my Blu-ray player's but it's not lightning fast.

Plus they could clean up the UI a bit. I'm not sure why some pages allow you to exit the page, while others require you click on the checkmark. It's very inconsistent. Not a deal-killer, just a bit annoying.

I also find the adding of folders from the Files area to a separate heading (Video) in order to get artwork somewhat counter intuitive.

And finally I think there should be an option to completely turn off moving files and deleting files. Since they're all on my NAS, I'd prefer to do everything from my logged-in web browser, instead of having all that available through the TV interface, since I won't necessarily be the only one using that TV interface. I'm fine having my login info there, so all my video files are available to everyone, but it's strange they would allow anyone to modify those shares.

However, aside from the dual-core SoC, all off those changes could be added in a firmware update for existing hardware.
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
23,825
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Arghh. So, I ran into my first WD TV Live lockup. It seems to work fine for MKV playback, but on Netflix the UI started to really lag, and eventually it just locked up. I rebooted and it was fine after that, but it was annoying nonetheless.

Off Topic: Speaking of Netflix, here's a good documentary for you AV geeks:

http://sidebysidethemovie.com/

It has a ton of big name directors and cinematographers talking about film vs. digital.

Movies were shot, edited and projected using photochemical film. But over the last two decades a digital process has emerged to challenge photochemical filmmaking.

SIDE BY SIDE, a new documentary produced by Keanu Reeves, takes an in-depth look at this revolution. Through interviews with directors, cinematographers, film students, producers, technologists, editors, and exhibitors, SIDE BY SIDE examines all aspects of filmmaking — from capture to edit, visual effects to color correction, distribution to archive. At this moment when digital and photochemical filmmaking coexist, SIDE BY SIDE explores what has been gained, what is lost, and what the future might bring.
 
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smitbret

Diamond Member
Jul 27, 2006
3,382
17
81
Arghh. So, I ran into my first WD TV Live lockup. It seems to work fine for MKV playback, but on Netflix the UI started to really lag, and eventually it just locked up. I rebooted and it was fine after that, but it was annoying nonetheless.

Off Topic: Speaking of Netflix, here's a good documentary for you AV geeks:

http://sidebysidethemovie.com/

It has a ton of big name directors and cinematographers talking about film vs. digital.

Movies were shot, edited and projected using photochemical film. But over the last two decades a digital process has emerged to challenge photochemical filmmaking.

SIDE BY SIDE, a new documentary produced by Keanu Reeves, takes an in-depth look at this revolution. Through interviews with directors, cinematographers, film students, producers, technologists, editors, and exhibitors, SIDE BY SIDE examines all aspects of filmmaking — from capture to edit, visual effects to color correction, distribution to archive. At this moment when digital and photochemical filmmaking coexist, SIDE BY SIDE explores what has been gained, what is lost, and what the future might bring./i]


Hmmm, I've never had a lockup of any kind with my Live Hub. Sorry that it happened. My only complaint is that if I shut off the PC that has my locally stored media, I have to rescan the shared folders before anything will be shared.

I think I'll take a look at Side By Side, it sounds interesting and quite frankly I think Keanu Reeves gets a lot less credit than he deserves. He'll probably end up like Ben Affleck, questionable actor and excellent director.
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
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The WD TV Live runs a bit warmer than the Apple TV 2, but it doesn't get hot by any means, so I don't think the lockup has anything to do with heat generation. I suspect the Netflix app just has a few bugs, or maybe a memory leak or something.

---

Keanu isn't the director of Side By Side. He's a producer as well as the interviewer and narrator. Actually as the narrator he's kinda stiff, but I think the fact that he's a big blockbuster actor helped a lot in making this movie interesting, because he was be able to his foot in the door to interview guys like James Cameron, Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, etc. and I think he was thoughtful as an interviewer. It was obvious he was in the industry and had been for some time, as opposed to just some movie critic or n00b documentary director or something.

Here is just some of the cast. Lots of big names:

Keanu Reeves, actor
John Malkovich, actor
George Lucas, director, producer
James Cameron, director
David Fincher, director
David Lynch, director
Robert Rodriguez, director
Martin Scorsese, director
Steven Soderbergh, director
The Wachowskis, directors
Christopher Nolan, director
Joel Schumacher, director
Lena Dunham, director, actress
Greta Gerwig, actress
Caroline Kaplan, producer
Lorenzo di Bonaventura, producer
John Knoll, visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic
Tim Webber
Dennis Muren, special effects artist
Bradford Young
Craig Wood
Derek Ambrosi, film editor
Dion Beebe, A.C.S.
Jost Vacano, A.C.S.

It doesn't list Anne V. Coates but it was interesting to listen to her and her transition from film to digital video editing, since she is almost 90 years old now and edited Lawrence of Arabia.
 
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