Would you replace your HTPC with a WD TV Live?

[zylander]

Last month, Anandtech wrote a review on the Patriot "Box Office". While it seems like a capable media player, its generic and cheap looking, its clunky and it has a very basic and unattractive interface. Shortly after I read that review I found the Western Digital "WD TV Live". The WD TV Live is just like the Patriot box but much more dressed up; looks nicer, has more features and has a much better interface which looks very similar to Media Center. The WD TV Live is also $10 cheaper on amazon than the Patriot Box.

Ive been looking at this WD TV box for the last few days online and I am really tempted to trade in my HTPC for it. I love my HTPC but with standalone Blu-Ray players becoming pretty affordable it just doesnt make sense to deal with the headaches of an HTPC. With a WD TV and standalone BD player combo in place of an HTPC I would save on power and space. Now, if I used my HTPC as a DVR, this may be a different story but since I only use it for network streaming and BD playing, Im really thinking about getting rid of it.

So how about you guys? With networked media boxes like the Patriot Box Office and the WD TV Live being released, are you tempted to ditch your HTPC in favor of a compact alternative?

 

[sdifox]

I have both

Different rooms though

 

[Aharami]

i never had a HTPC, but I just got a WD TV Live. At first I wasnt too impressed with all the dropped network shares and the quirks of the WD TV live. Also didnt like the fact that I cant stream a lot of internet media via the WD TV Live. But then I discovered TVersity Pro. Now I can watch hulu + many other internet streams on my TV via the WD TV Live. It is good for my living room, but I will still build a HTPC when I build my basement home theater. I want a cool GUI with cover art and descriptions of the movie, which the WD TV Live cant provide

 

[alyarb]

my main machine is an HTPC. it's also the NAS and it's also the encoder and it's how I terminal into my house so it's always on. It's my only ATX machine so it has to do everything. a 42" LG is the only display. i couldn't really imagine using a home/consumer PC any other way; probably will never use a desktop again. desktops go where there is a need for a desk. like at work. but laptops are better for that because you can take them home or wherever.

 

[kalrith]

What software are you using with your HTPC? I'm using MediaPortal, and while it was a headache to set up, I've had about the same amount of headache as I had with my DirecTV DVR (very few).

Anyways, for what you're wanting to do either a WD Live + BD player or a PS3 that would act as both would be good choices. It wouldn't work for me, however. I do use my HTPC as a DVR, but I also use it to stream video directly from various websites (Food Network, History Channel, Discovery Channel, etc.), and I'm not sure if the WD Live or the PS3 would be a good substitute for that.

I personally just like the extra control I have over my HTPC. I was always frustrated when I couldn't do things on my DirecTV DVR, but there's very little that I haven't been able to work like I want it to on my HTPC.

 

[zylander]

Im using MediaBrowser on my HTPC to manage my networked media library. By 'headaches' I was referring to playing Blu-Rays on my HTPC. For the most part BD play back works fine but it seems like once every month or two I have a problem with something. Plus I dont like having to watch BDs through a separate player. I really wish BD playback was supported in MC so I coul dhave a much cleaner interface without having to switch back to the desktop to play BDs.

I also really like the extra control that you have with an HTPC and that is whats keeping me from jumping ship to the WD TV.

 

[kalrith]

TotalMedia Theater has an MCE plug-in for BDs, and here's a utility that will launch PowerDVD from MCE and then reopen MCE when you're done.

 

[Modelworks]

I have owned the WDTV Live since November. The main reason I chose it over the other boxes at the time is that there was already custom firmware released. I like to hack embedded gear like routers and players like this so it was a good fit for me.

The live uses the sigma 8655 chipset . This same chipset is used in DVR and blu-ray players . It can decode 2- HD video streams at one time , each with their own 5.1 audio streams , WD has not enabled that for consumers but it gives you an idea on how good the hardware is. Playing back a single 1080P video the hardware doesn't even break a sweat. Onboard is DDR2-667 512MB ram , of which the box leaves over half free so it isn't starved in that area either.

It can play back any industry standard H.264, Xvid/Divx, AC3 file.
After using it for about a month I disassembled my HTPC. The reason was that I can plug in this box, connect a hard drive to the usb port and play back my videos in under 5 minutes. I don't have to mess with codecs, updates, or drivers, it just works. The other thing is the video scaler in the hardware is superior to any video card output I have seen. I was watching video and thought it was HD in size , but when I checked the info the details were : 624x352 , 1117Kbps, 349MB total size.

I tried to duplicate the result with a PC and a ATI Radeon card using scalers like lanczos ,etc and it was either blurred more or too sharp making artifacts stand out. The Live has just the right combination.

The other thing is the custom firmware. The Live runs linux as the OS. After you install the custom firmware you have full access to most of the internals. Want a bit torrent client running, install it. Want it to download and process usenet , install it. Want to change the remote control functions , change it. There is an active home brew community developing and more is being added every day. The live does all the video processing in hardware so the cpu spends most of its time just handling loading of files and processing the network, so even with torrent , ftp, running video playback is unchanged. Installing the custom firmware takes about 2 minutes, put the files on a usb drive and power on the box.

One last thing I like is the power usage. The most the box can ever use is 12 watts. With an external HD my setup maxes out at 17 watts while playing back video. HTPC can't come close to that.

Downsides:
The internet interface is 100Mbit . This limits Lan transfer of files to aroun 11MB/sec . If you are sending a file to an external drive this can take longer than I would like.

Out of the box retail the networking setup is not that great. Windows 7 seems to have issues with getting file sharing working correctly. Install the custom firmware though and you can customize it for any network that exist, including cifs, nfs, etc.

The remote is really small and easy to lose.
No volume control on the box itself.
Some problems with formats like DTS , depending on the file.


Custom firmware:
http://b-rad.cc/wdlxtv-live/

Features

external dvd drive capability with cd-manager-0.7
Web Server
Python, Perl, and PHP
Deluge Bittorrent client w/ web interface
nzbget NZB downloader w/ web interface
SSH server
Telnet server
FTP server
NFS share mounting in local folders and Network Shares
sshfs for mounting a remote server as a local directory
curlftpfs for mounting remote FTP server as a local directory
unionfs for consolidation of multiple directories/locations/servers/etc as one entity
patched samba configuration for better detection of Windows shares
user customizable background & screen saver images (3 backgrounds to choose from)
extra subtitle size options of 44, 48, 50, 56, 60, 64, 68, 72, 76, & 80
selectable 4/8/10/12/21 video thumb view (see Changelog)
selectable 4/6/8 file list view (see Changelog)
sleectable 10/15 photo/music thumb view (see Changelog)
ext2 & ext3 filesystem support ** (un)officially supported now **
device hotplugging
all media (including network shares & optical devices) can be viewed in ‘All Videos’
USB Hub support
mounting of app bin packs (if available) at boot, for plugNplay addtional functionality
mounting of OSD overlay (if available) at boot, for full theming
user customizable init.d scripts for full os customization
emergency flash recovery
many, many additional system binaries and related tools for power users.
probably more I’m leaving off…

 

[CubanlB]

replace, no. Get one instead of an additional machine, yup.

 

[sivart]

Does the WDTV box have a built in OTA tuner so I can record TV shows and watch sports on my big screen?

Will it play any format I throw at it?

Will it allow me to stream Hulu, Netflix, etc?

If yes is the answer to all of those I would consider it.

 

[Crucial]

DVD playback is crap on the WD. No menu support and WD has said there won't be any. You have to play the vob files individually. Other than that I have been happy with mine. It would be nice if it could play the Win 7 MCE recorded tv files but I put the blame on MS just as much as WD for that.