Western Digital appears to be working on a networked version of its WD TV streaming media package. The first version is an adapter that depends upon a USB-attached external drive, onto which streaming media files are loaded. The idea is that customers will have backed up media files into an external hard drive already, so will …

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Monday 17th August 2009 11:53 GMT Law

lets hope...

...they add dts decoding to the current version with a firmware update too... not sure if they have the spare power to do that, but it would be nice... nothing more annoying than finding files that won't output audio through the hdmi connector.

Also - hope this doesn't mean they will stop updating the current model firmware too... such as adding things like dvd art support and other library features.

For £70, it was a decent buy for me, most video is transfered from my laptop to a 2.5 ext drive, and I hated having a pc in the front room... the popcorn hour boxes were a little overkill for what I wanted it to do too...

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Monday 17th August 2009 12:10 GMT Joe K

Ace

Best gadget ever, renders tiresome HTPC's pointless.

You can add network streaming to the original using WDLXTV, but as the whole point of it was to have one bloody computer LESS eating power, i fail to see the point of it.

Though the auto-torrent/newsgroup additions sound nifty.

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Monday 17th August 2009 12:34 GMT Charles 9

Why lessen the twinning option?

Probably they realized that people still need space to store their media files. If they don't use WD external hard drives, they may still get WD INTERNAL hard drives to put in their machines, especially if the machine is already being set up as a home media server for use with devices beyond just WD TV (mine, for example, is a Win7 Media Center and can stream to all sorts of devices).

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Monday 17th August 2009 13:31 GMT Adam 10

Blu-ray player?

Seeing as most new blu-ray players also do network streaming and are getting to the sub-£100 point, has WD missed the market with this one?

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Monday 17th August 2009 23:30 GMT Anonymous Coward

old WD boxes

I really like the original box. Got one for my mom (although my 5 year old brother has an easier time operating it). I put a 500 gig. drive with family photos for my mom to go through when she wants, music and movies (since she doesn't get to finish them with 2 kids running around). I like them because anyone can stop by with a flash drive with a bunch of movies on it and it plays without an issue (very rarely does something not play). If wd manages to keep the size and remote about the same size (and ease of use), I may upgrade and pass mine off to a friend.

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Monday 17th August 2009 23:30 GMT Dick Emery

@Adam 10

Most of those will not play so many formats though. The WDTV and Popcorn players play rather a lot of formats natively.

Of course I am still awaiting a wifi enabled version as I do not want trailing cables from upstairs to the HDTV in the lounge downstairs.

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Monday 17th August 2009 23:30 GMT lord_farquaad

why not !

"It says the new box adds DTS decoding - that's surround sound ..."

oh, the DTS fans will love that one !

@Adam 10

1- can you give examples of such blu-ray players because that seems very interesting

2- and let's give WD a cahnce as the y have not yet announced the product nor the price. Maybe this could be as cheap as 30£ (pls do not comment on that one !)

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Tuesday 18th August 2009 00:16 GMT Neoc

A happy WDTV v1 owner.

Bought one when it first came out. Immediately jumped on the AVS Forum sub-group dedicated to modding it (it runs Linux) and soon had an Ethernet USB adapter plugged in running off a 7-port USB hub, along with 4x1Tb external HDDs. And if you're *really* that interested you can also add an external DVD player to the mix. (and wifi, and streaming, and web-page controls, and...etc)

Most of my media resides on the HDDs, and the Ethernet connection is for updating the contents (not stream) and I am a happy munchkin with my box. The DTS might be nice (although I believe there is missing hardware in the WDTV v1, so a firmware update might not be enough) and if I had a complaint it would be that the subtitling system it uses is rather primitive in its capabilities compared to (say) FFMPEG and its derivative packages.

Still, I use the box almost daily, am currently ripping my DVD/CD collection to it (hanece the large number of HDDs), and now that I have upgraded the signal path to HDMI, the picture looks great.

very, VERY happy. (damn, I sound like a marketroid)

So v2 will need to bring more to the table than an integrated ethernet port and possible DTS to make me upgrade.

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Tuesday 18th August 2009 00:16 GMT Nexox Enigma

Hmm

I just noticed the WD TV v1 the other day and was almost shocked that it lacked network support. I was kind of excited by the price until I realized that it was large, has no internal storage, and no ethernet. I suppose it'd work for lots of people, but I only use removable media for things that I actually need to carry around. I'll take my fileserver over a stack of externals any day.

Which is good, because I've already bought a popcorn hour, and if WD made an equivalent device for far cheaper I would have felt a little burned.

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Tuesday 18th August 2009 07:53 GMT Goat Jam

Ethernet for the Win

Would have bought one of the V1's to stream from my server ages ago were it not limited to USB.

Might consider getting one of these if it can connect to my network and stream from NFS or samba shares.

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Tuesday 18th August 2009 19:03 GMT andy 103

Still a gap in the market

I'm quite interested in this device, but it's still not what it should be. No manufacturer has made anything in my opinion that's worth having. The cheaper devices - like the version 1 of this - lack features and the more expensive media streamers can be too expensive or limited in playback support.

Any device like this must have a network connection - if it's wired Ethernet with no wireless then I'm fine with that - so long as that's reflected in the price. It should play most common formats out of the box without need for modification (sorry Appletv) and crucially it should offer SOME storage, even if a very limited amount. If this device had a small in-built hard disk (even say 80 Gb) then it would be great because you could download content over Ethernet then leave your PC switched off. The idea of having to have 2 devices powered on (e.g. PC/external HDD and the streamer) seems a bit silly to me.

Also - especially for the UK market - these devices should offer some support for older TV's, e.g. scart/component/composite output rather than just HDMI. If anyone makes a device like that at a very reasonable price (e.g. under £150) then they'll be on to a winner, in my opinion.

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