Digital Media Player Guide Review - Western Digital WD TV Live Network - Ready HD Media Player

If you are looking for more bang for your buck then the Western Digital WD TV Live Network-ready HD Media Player WDBAAN0000NBK-NESN has some of the best features and capabilities on the market. The WD TV live is a very popular digital media player, and is highly rated by its owners for ease of use and functionality. WD TV Live added some key upgrades from the previous release from Western Digital, the WD TV. This player is network ready, provides video playback up to 1080p TrueHD and digital sound though the media player optical output or the HDMI output. One of the biggest improvements were to the menu system for selecting your media.

Western Digital WD TV Live Network-Ready HD

The WD TV Live digital media player is a media streamer that allows you to stream your video, music, and photos to your high definition TV and play your audio via your home theater system. This player does not come with an internal hard drive, but rather must be connected to a USB mass storage device or network containing your media files. The recommended storage drive is the Western Digital My Book Essential USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive (1 Terabyte -1TB Model) which will provide ample room to store lots of movies, photos, and music. As it comes from the manufacturer, the WD Live HD is a hard wired network ready media streamer. There is nothing to prevent you from going wireless also with a USB wireless dongle. A popular wireless adapter for the WD TV Live is the Linksys Range Plus Wireless USB Compact Adapter that will let you connect to your existing home or business wireless network. Either wired or wireless this digital media player has it's competition cut out for it. It is very similar to the Patriot Box Office HD and the HDX1000 Network Media Tank, but it doesn't offer the feature of adding your own internal hard drive to the media player itself. If this isn't a concern then the WD TV Live is really a fantastic media player. It offers the latest and greatest including 1080p true high definition through HDMI and Dolby Digital and DTS Encoders. Here are the goods, on the WD TV Live:

Includes HDMI 1.3 port, Supporting up to True HD 1080p

Connect external hard drives directly or connect to your network to view movies, photos, and music

USB port for USB drives

Audio formats: MP3, WAV/PCM/LPCM, WMA, AAC, FLAC, MKA, AIF/AIFF, OGG, Dolby Digital, DTS

Video file formats: AVI (Xvid, AVC, MPEG1/2/4), MPG/MPEG, VOB, MKV (h.264, x.264, AVC, MPEG1/2/4, VC-1), TS/TP/M2T (MPEG1/2/4, AVC, VC-1), MP4/MOV (MPEG4, h.264), M2TS, WMV9

Photo formats: JPEG, GIF, TIF/TIFF, BMP, PNG

Connections: Video: HDMI v1.3 (up to 1080p), Composite Video Out; Audio: S/PDIF Optical Digital Audio, Other: 10/100 Ethernet.

Remote Control Included.