352
people found this helpful, as of 2023
ranked #65,594 most helpful
out of 571,544,897 reviews
★★★★☆
Now I'm Happy with WD Live Plus
I purchased the WD Live Plus HD Media Player to watch movies from my Windows Home server. I got tired of all the DVD's and no where to store them so I built a WHS from an old computer and ordered the WD Live plus. I ran a CAT5 cable to my LCD, hooked up the WD Live Plus and it automatically connected to my WHS. I was up and running in as little as 5 minutes streaming a video on the big screen. The 1st movie played flawlessly until I started to watch the 2nd movie. Towards the middle of the movie, WD Live started to freeze up. At first I thought it was my server so I rebooted the WHS and was back up and running again. Started to watch the movie and froze again. Now I'm getting very upset. Now I powered off/on the WD Live Plus and same issue. Some movies played with no issues and some movies just locked up. Now I'm getting upset with this media Player. I checked WD's website and could not find any solution to the device freezing so I ordered the "Asus O! Player" unit to replace my piece of crap WD live Plus. I was already to mail it back and connect the Asus O! Player but something told me to check the WD support website one more time before I mail back WD Live Plus HD Media Player.
I found this on their site:
"When playing a movie over a Network location on a WD TV Live HD Media Player, the video may slow down
Problem:
When playing a high bitrate movie from a Network location (computer or NAS), after a period of time, the video may slow down and jitter.
Cause:
Samba (the method the WD TV Live uses to read a network location) cannot play back high bitrate movies.
Solution:
If this problem is encountered there are two solutions:
1. Try playing the content from the Media Server selection on the WD TV Live HD Media Player. This may require installation of a Media Server on your computer. Windows Media Player 11 has a built in Media Server. There are other alternatives such as TwonkyMedia, and TVersity which may also work for these videos.
2. Copy the high bitrate content to a USB drive, attach the USB drive to the WD TV Live HD Media Player and play the content from the local drive".
I said Hmmm, "playing a high bitrate movie from a Network location", well this was my problem. I went to TVersity and they explained how the software transcodes any video depending on your network speed and devices for proper streaming settings. So I installed the software on my WHS. During the installation it prompted to install the additional AC3 codec. So I installed it on my server. After installation completed, I configured TVersity to use my Video folder on the WHS and behold video was streaming to my LCD with no issues. Actually I believe the video quality is slighter better now than it was before.
So I'll take that back about calling the WD player crap. Now I can say I'm very happy with WD Live Plus and will give it a 4 star rating now. TVersity is excellent software for streaming videos and will help any media player handle video streaming. Oh did it mention that it's free! So go ahead and purchase the WD Live Plus HD Media Player and install TVersity on either your WHS or desktop/laptop and the 2 together they'll make a perfect couple.
Enjoy.
July 2010 · Electronics · verified purchase