Hi peers, I've been tossing up whether to buy this or the Roku (do not own a smart TV, too smart for me). Many of you know the other benefits of the WDTV. Anyhoo, I thought this is a good price. Hope it helps someone out there.
Western Digital TV Live Streaming $110.00 at Centrecom
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Agreed and I was about to make a similar comment however these still have their place for those who just want a quick & hassle-free way of playing media off USB etc. Still, even $110 is probably too much to pay nowadays.
"these still have their place for those who just want a quick & hassle-free way of playing media off USB". That's exactly the application I am thinking of.
I did consider the chrome cast in recent deals, but after reading maaany review/comparisons, as an overall option I feel the WDTV is abetter option (it also comes with a remote so I like that), specially for the non-techie (many still around).
A friend of mine is buying it for his in-laws as their 55" sony LCD, does not play any video files off the USB, and all they have is a DVD player, which plays some avis.
This is a good unit. Kogan sell them for $109 plus delivery. But I agree that chromecast with Plex is a better option.
Not if you want to waste smartphone battery streaming stuff to the Chromecast. But agree that there are better options out there including full Android TV players that will do more than video playing.
Sorry bchliu but the Chromecast only works like that if you're actually streaming media from your smartphone.
With a NAS and Plex setup on your home network (not expensive or difficult these days) your smartphone acts purely as a remote control and in fact once you've started playing the file you can turn the smartphone off completely! I've then even tested it further by switching my wifes smartphone on and allowing it to take over control while my phone is off then switching hers off, mine back on and regaining control.
What, CC is not even remotely close to what WD TV can do. Can it playback a 16GB MKV with DTS HD audio? Nope
CC is a small convenient and problematic device.
My WD TV can handle every file I throw at is with no grunt required from any other device. In my case, my NAS just needs to supply the file, and WD TV does all of the work. Try many files via Plex, or similar in CC and everything locks up as it needs to transcode the larger files, and my NAS doesn't have a CPU capable of that.
You can plug an external drive full of files into the WD and it will happily play them all, again, CC can't do this. CC requires a device to stream from, WD TV is standalone. Has it own physical remote or works with universal remotes such as Harmonys.As per UFO below, it is a little old and slow to navigate through, but it still the best resource to playback localised files.
Thank you for sparing us all the trouble.
That shiny Google logo and sleek form factor seems to put like-minded Apple Hipsters into a trance.
Whereas this no-nonsense, simple black box that can play every file format under the sun and also features WiFi streaming is apparently a bit harder to justify to them.
Chromecast is great for watching sub-20 megabyte FLVs that have been compressed to within an inch of their life via the average soccer mum's el-cheapo router which drop outs every time someone sneezes in the house.
For everything else, get a proper media player.
Yes & no. I think it all depends what the individual wants. For me I literally just sold my Media Player 3 hours ago for $50 after using it daily for over 5 years (it was also a HDTV Tuner). It was excellent and did the job very well however the Chromecast suits my needs now a lot better plus it can regularly be had for close to a third of the price of the player in this deal. Never had a drop-out or poor playback on any of the four Chromecasts I have running but don't forget, the Chromecast itself is just an appliance, it would be absolutely nothing without excellent software such as Plex.
Can chromecast plays 1080p movie smoothly in any or most format? I have been thinking about it, but read some forum state playing MKV from my PC ect is not easy. I got appleTV which give me pretty bad experience if you aren't watching the movies from itunes
Difficult to answer as different systems can/can't do different things. An example… my NAS runs Plex which streams to Chromecast. Plex doesn't just organise the media into pretty menus, it also does a lot of the processing as it sends the media out to the Chromecast. I'm running an ever popular N54L Microserver as the NAS but because it has a very low-end CPU it really has to work very hard to process things as it streams. It's not bad enough for me to worry about but a year or two from now when more of my collection is 1080p I might look into upgrading the NAS which will improve 1080p playback… but between now & then there will probably be three more versions of Chromecast, one of which will hopefully include a hardwired version. Welcome to the tech rollercoaster!
No way, I have both and the chromecast had its place but for playback of local files it can be quite jerky, even with non hd files on a good connection
How have these held their value over 5 years. They were great in 2009 but very little has been added outside of inbuilt wifi.
I'd assume WD should be charging around $50 these days.
I've got this exact model.
There's nothing wrong with it… works as it should, but it's showing its age (even with firmware updates).
Moving through the menus is slow and much more delayed than what you'd expect.
I've even turned off the dvd cover browsing to try and speed things up… which has helped, but its still slow.And its not like I have hundreds of movies in the one folder. I've got it set up for the kids movies in the spare room, and there's about 80-90 movies tops.
Chromecast would be a good alternative, but having the standalone remote like this model has does have its benefits as well.
I shudder to even think it, but have you considered the Apple TV?
Im not an Apple fan, but a mate has their little box and it seems to work much snapier than the WD Live.
The remote is smaller and the user interface oozes typical Apple user friendliness.But as said above, the WD Live shouldnt be over $100 anymore.
I think its because of the lack of serious competition on the market at that price point, that theyve left the price as they have.UFO, I am a mac user (not a fanboy), here's my Rap sheet, 3 MBPs (15" 2007,2011 and 2014 models), a Mac mini in the study-2010 model and an iPad-2nd Gen. I hate that you cannot add external storage to the iPad and iPhones, so I vote with my feet and stay away from iPhone, IPad- but that's another topic.
unfortunately I believe the Apple TV only plays nice with iTunes/QT video formats (in particular the new models, again, I believe ?/? the new models can not be jailbroken to install certain 3rd party Apps etc).
So the plug and play off USB feature of many video codecs is what i like about this and also the Roku.
Thanks for the heads up re: the lack of speed.
mine just gathers dust on our cabinet
Don't be a hoarder, I'll send you my address, and you can donate it to me. OZBrother to OzBrother… or sister!?
I prefer the WD media player personally. It allows you to subscribe to Netflix with an Australian ISP address.
Buy a Roku. More modern, supports casting, has Plex and is marginally cheaper.
And can only handle H.264 files natively, doesn't sync screen rates of 24P. Plex is more modern, quicker to move through although it requires other apps to interface (Plex etc..). It has it's own issues, I sent mine back to Amazon as I found it was not as goos as my slower WD.
WD media player plays everything I've thrown at it, and in 5.1 with the added bonus of Optical & Hdmi.
I have one and use it mainly when travelling with the kids. WDTV, a usb 2.5" hdd and a hdmi cable means you have a full media centre anywhere there is a tv. Quite often that means motels and hotels are easy to set up for kid to watch their favourites or a new release for the adults (if you have the mkv's).
I have a chromecast and that may work with a laptop I guess but many of my files are larger than 4gb so usb stick is out.
edit: I should say I paid around $80 for mine, over $100 is a little steep for reasons mentioned above.
Maybe the price has been reduced as a new model was released in June without netflix and they are retailing for $149+ shipping of 14.55 kinda kills the deal
i'm tempted to neg but i won't.
This is a terrible price. This is the last gen model I paid $83 for it last month. Heck go to good guys today (instore) and they have them for $89.
or if you want to pay for delivery, try their ebay site:
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/NEW-Wd-TV-Live-Streaming-Media-Pl…office works will price match this…
$110 is no bargin…
the latest model is $150…but its pretty much the same thing with a new interface and no netflicks…
Also, i'm able to connect to plex with this so i dunno what the others are on about…You can connect to Plex, but you don't get the full integration, it is far from ideal. I find the Media Library superior for access anyway.
The latest model is quicker, but apparently not better in other ways.bowtiehoon, are you sure about TGG price?, I'll go to officeworks and get another $4…whatever off (5%). If that's the case that's good enough for me. You should post it as a deal. I saw the new version on a US site, the RRP there seems tobe $100.00.
didn't post the deal because i thought it was a the normal price since its the last gen model..
Hmm…looks like they decided to end the ebay link from my last post and create a new one for $119…no idea what this means for the instore price…
Hopefully you got it at $89 or less…
I bought it for less 2 years ago .
These days if you have a smart phone, chromecast is a much better option than one of these media players.