Western Digital 1080p Media Player Review
While Western Digital isn’t much of a big player in the whole media streaming/playing market, their WD TV Live Plus HD media player is quite impressive when compared to its competitors from the likes of Apple and Roku. Packed with a bunch of great features; including full 1080p support, support for a wide variety of audio and video formats, support for USB storage, and more; the WD TV Life Plus HD is certainly a great buy.
Hardware
Some key hardware features found in the WD TV Live Plus include Wi-Fi and Ethernet support, micro-USB, HDMI, and so much more. Western Digital doesn’t go into much detail on the specifics of the hardware used in the WD TV Live Plus, but they certainly must be powerful to support all of its great offerings.
Design
This is one area where I believe the WD TV Live Plus falls short in, as it is certainly less attractive than most of its competitors. Both the device and its remote control are unnecessarily bulky, although the color scheme used isn’t too bad. Unfortunately, this poor design likely has negative effects on the WD TV Live Plus’ sales, when they shouldn’t considering what the device boasts.
Size
The WD TV Live Plus is 1.57 in x 3.94 in x 4.94 inches in dimensions and it weighs 10.72 ounces. This is definitely one of the larger and heavier devices that you will find on the market, and if that is a big deal to you, you may want to consider your alternatives instead.
Battery
The WD TV Live Plus is one of the few available media players that does not run on batteries, and rather relies solely on AC power. The remote control is, however, powered by AAA batteries.
Conclusion
If you don’t like the Roku, the Apple TV or any of the other major competitors in the media streaming/player market, then the WD TV Live Plus is definitely one to consider. Unlike most of the others, the WD TV Live Plus allows for media on external storage to be played, has file transfer features, is compatible with Windows 7 for streaming from a PC, and much more. As an alternative to the more mainstream solutions, the WD TV Live Plus definitely measures up.
Here’s some more pictures of the WDTV media player:
