WD TV Live HD gets 'Play To' functionality, full Windows 7 compliance
By Sean Hollister 
posted May 7th 2010 2:43AM
posted May 7th 2010 2:43AM
WD TV(TM) Live HD Media Player is the First Network Media Player Compatible With Windows 7
Consumers Can Use 'Play To' Feature to Stream Music, Videos and Picture Files Stored on Their PCs and Home Network to Their Big Screen TVs
LAKE FOREST, Calif., May 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- WD® (NYSE: WDC), the world's leader in external storage solutions, today announced that the WD TV Live HD media player, featuring network capability and Full-HD 1080p resolution, is the first network media player compatible with Windows 7. The WD TV Live HD media player makes it easy for anyone to play media stored on USB and network drives, any PC on the home network, as well as content from popular websites, on the biggest screen in their home -- their big screen television.
Using the Windows 7 Play To feature, users can initiate and control the streaming of video, music or photos to the WD TV Live HD media player and home entertainment systems from any Windows 7-based PC on their network. Any compatible media file accessible from the PC – located either on the PC or the network – can be played to the WD TV Live by right clicking on the file name in the folder or directly from within Windows Media Player 12 and choosing the WD TV Live HD media player as the playback device.
Current users of the WD TV Live will need to update their WD TV Live HD media player to the latest firmware in order to use the Windows 7 Play To feature. Instructions for updating the WD TV Live HD media player can be found here: http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/updates/?family=wdfwdtv_live
"Microsoft is pleased that Western Digital has earned the Compatible with Windows 7 logo and is supporting the Play To feature with WD TV Live HD media player," said Mark Relph, senior director, Windows Ecosystem Product Management at Microsoft Corp. "Now more than 100 million Windows 7 customers will have an affordable and easy way to play files to their HD TVs and other devices from their PC."
"We regularly engage with WD TV Live enthusiasts in our online community. Many have been asking for a way to "push" media from their PCs to their TV or home theater system, especially from laptops. With the new Windows 7 Play To feature, users can select music or movies from their laptop and play it on an HD TV connected to a WD TV Live HD media player, whether the HD TV is across the living room or in a different room altogether," said Dale Pistilli, vice president of marketing for WD's branded products group. "WD worked closely with Microsoft on this exciting new feature to ensure the seamless compatibility of the WD TV Live HD media player with Windows 7 PCs and deliver WD TV Live users what they want."
WD TV Live HD Media Player
Features of the Windows 7-compatible WD TV Live HD media player include:
- Full-HD 1080p video playback and navigation with the included remote control and crisp, animated navigation menus;
- Play a wide variety of file formats including support for the most popular file formats with no need to spend time transcoding;
- Play videos, music and photos from the Internet on your big screen TV and discover new music with Pandora® Internet radio or listen to thousands of radio stations via Live365 Internet radio;
- Ethernet port for wired or WiFi® connection(1) to access files anywhere on the network to play movies, music, and photos from any PC or drive on a home network;
- Turns a USB drive(2) into an HD media player and plays content from most popular USB drives, and digital cameras, camcorders, and portable media players that can be recognized as mass storage devices;
- Unlimited media collection, just add more USB drives for more space;
- Two USB ports for seamless media playback from multiple USB drives and ability to access them simultaneously while a media library feature collects the content on all the drives into one list sorted by media type;
- Transfer files by copying, moving or deleting files stored on a USB drive, a network drive, a camcorder, or a camera to the attached USB drive using the on-screen menus;
- Picture Transfer Protocol support to show photos and movies directly from digital camera or video camera and/or any digital imaging device that supports Picture Transfer Protocol;
- Advanced navigation options including thumbnail and list views, media library and search;
- Photo viewing to create custom slide shows, zoom and pan and search;
- Movie viewing with fast-forward, rewind, pause, zoom and pan, view subtitles, and search;
- Music playback with fast-forward, rewind, pause, shuffle, repeat and search;
- File copying between USB devices;
- HDMI® 1.3 port, composite video and component video output(3) for the highest quality HDTV or home theater;
- SPDIF digital output that sends digital signals to your AV receiver for the best surround sound experience; and,
- Ultra-compact design to fit easily into a home entertainment center.
Pricing and Availability
The WD TV Live HD media player is available now at select retailers and online at shopwd.com. Covered by a 1-year limited warranty, the MSRP for WD TV Live HD media player is $149.99 USD.
Now THIS is awesome. I'm going to tell my gym... easiest way to setup all their TVs to play stuff.
@buoy What's a gym?
@buoy
So I wonder if it's possible to play content to multiple devices at once. This would be great for parties to be able to play a playlist to multiple rooms all at the same time.
@annoyingposter3 ROTLFMAO! Made me spit coffee with that one. lol
But this is cool stuff. I don't have the Live version yet but it's on my tech shopping list.
At that price...I cannot argue with the awesomeness of WD live...
I mean, I get to play 1080p .mkv files on this thing from a 16GB flash drive...and it only cost me 100 bucks...with taxes.
I will still get an HTPC someday, probably once ION 2 becomes a bit more attractive...or Tegra 2 comes in HTPC form...
WD live...best toy I have bought for my home theatre yet...
@kapanak
Shoot, thanks for reminding me that I need to do a firmware upgrade.
Or you could just, you know, play the file off of the network and not have to tie up your desktop PC.
@Ned Scott
But what if I'm outside on my patio and I'm feeling a change of pace at the moment. I guess I could walk back inside the house to change the track, buy an RF Remote for a couple of hundred dollars or I could just use my laptop or ultramobile PC to change it from my seat outside by the pool.
is this the same as the other WD HD play box they have???
This is great, last version had this to but the play to didnt work as supposed to, but me like it. And they fixed the network support with Win 7 so now it works as it should have since day 1. Just wish spotify came with play to support, or at least with basic dlna..
its nice that they're supporting these features for integration and better control of media in the home. however, the price of this device is bordering on the price of an xbox 360, which has far more capabilities including full media center extender, dvd (i know who cares), xbox 360 game support, and xbox 360 application support (netflix, pandora, twitter, facebook etc). in my house i set up a multi terrabyte media center pc with 3 hd cablecard tuners / bluray drive and then 3 xbox 360 arcades as media center extenders (no storage at all). the low cost ($200) for these devices make it a no brainer. other standalone media center extenders are upwards of $200-250 and they do nothing but play media.
bring down the price! SOC chips with hardware decoding like tegra are cheap and can handle these tasks with relative ease, even en 1080p. this stuff should cost $100 max when tablets and netbooks are on the market with DISPLAYS attached for similar prices to the WD.
Step in the right direction though
@annoyingposter3 Um, amazon has this device for under $110. It's not without its faults, but its a cheap, silent, low power device that does a pretty good job of playing HD content on my TV.
@annoyingposter3
Where are you buying your 360's from? I just set up a TV in my bed room with one of these boxes. When I was trying to decide what to put with it so I could stream stuff to it, I had to choose between this box and the360. I went with this because it was only around a 100 bucks and the cheapest 360 I could find was a refubred one at gamestop for 160 bucks (they have a 149 version on their site that is completely sold out, and it doesn't look like they will be stocking them again). 50-60 bucks is a pretty significant price difference to me
@annoyingposter3 how are you muxing from bluray to xbox?
@annoyingposter3 I have to strongly disagree with you. I have an xbox 360 and 2 WD TV Live boxes hooked up to my 50" 1080P tv in bedroom and my 1080P projector in living room. The xbox is never used at all anymore. The xbox only plays .wmv files and maybe divx if I remember. The WD TV Live plays everything. MKV support = winner . You can also watch youtube on these which can be entertaining. Oh, and you can also listen to pandora and live365 among other things if you're having a party or whatever.
Has anyone checked out the firmware uprades from
www.b-rad.cc for these things?, Cool extras and I'm keen to have a go but I'm not a linux user and love mine too much to brick it if it all goes wrong.
@JBQLD
Don't fear about the Linux. I just spent the last week playing around with the latest b-rad firmware. It updates just like normal, you just have to edit some setting in a text file beforehand (or you can telnet in and send commands to change settings that isn't too difficult) The only problem that I've had was to get the moviesheets to work correctly.
No this isn't awesome, I have the 1.02.21 firmware and it broke network shares, so while I can 'play to' .avi & .wmv files, I now have no network shares from my win7 machines for more useful files like .mkvs.
@TravUK Update your firmware or reset the device. Something is wrong on your end. I have 2 WD TV Lives connected to my network and have no problems streaming from my 3 windows 7 pcs.
@F2a Just cos it works for you, doesn't mean its my setup thats wrong. There are hundreds out there with buggered network shares on their WDTV lives since this latest update. Every time they fix it for some, they break it again for others. Its been a disaster from the start, and its a real shame because the video quality is great.
I bought an Argosy hv335t for $99 and runs everything flawless and even has a bittorrent client. Wanted to buy this one but wasn't available to international delivery. thank god, the argosy even has room for the hard drive inside.
@Ridgecity Nice device but I read it doesn't show Album art. Is that true?
I bought the Asus O!Play when it came out but it did not like password protected Windows 7 shares unless you used telnet to hack it and keep a USB stick plugged into the side at all times. New firmware seems to have resolved that though.
I also have the WD Live which worked great out of the box. I like the WD more because it has component outputs which is great when I visit my parents who have an old HDTV with no HDMI inputs.
What format does MC record in? There are some over the air shows I record with my PC and would love to be able to stream to my other TV where the WD Live box is hooked up.
@admlshake 7MC records shows in the .wtv container. Inside that container it's h.264 with AAC audio.
Just a quick, nerdy correction:
Not only Denon has already brought out Windows 7 compatible AVRs, Onkyo (/Integra) did as well. Since last year I happily use my TX-NR 3007 which is wholly integrated in the network.
One has to admit though, that those AVRs are only capable of audio streaming, not video as the WDTV is. But hey, I don't want the AVR to display any videos on it's two line green and black pixel disply, right?
Isn't this really compatibility with DLNA standards that were implemented in Win 7? It's really just using the roles of DLNA (server, renderer, player, etc) to allow for this functionality if I'm not mistaken.
It's just that Windows 7 was one of the first if not the only implementation of this in an OS so far.
i dont see these being around much longer. With dvd/bluray players, and even TV's having this kind of functionality being built into them, having a separate box for media is becoming obsolete. I myself am looking into a Blueray player with this in it. And they are only 30-60 more.
@lyian As long as they have .mkv support and streaming from network.
Costco has the WD TV Live for $109 in store, which is a pretty strong price point (I think Bestbuy website was $130). Amazon also with FSSS and no tax for many.
I have this, plus the original WD TV. I still use it on my old TV, but couldn't stand the win7 network issues. Replaced it with a single core Acer Revo for $160 and never looked back (with XBMC).
Moving house soon, so need to get a wireless dongle thing for it so I can watch stuff on the other TV. But I'm glad WD are still working the firmware.
@thespacecowboy Costco version also has a free HDMI cable included in that price, if you need it.
Can this be used as a Media Center Extender now then if you record tv shows with MC on windows 7?
"Play to" is fun and all, but i cant get it to work with many different formats (audio and some video). And has me having to hook up my laptop straight to the HDMI witch kills the whole point.
Was hoping to see the WDTV device in the video, not a demo of something I've been using for ages..
But will it play protected content recorded on a cable card media center?
...I coulda been an extenda
Wishing one of these media streamers would add a Windows Media Center Extender mode.