Western Digital’s WD TV range has gone through quite a few iterations since its inception in 2008. However, couple of things remained constant all these years – impeccable file format support and lack of Wi-Fi. Of course, the WD TV Live Hub added Wi-Fi support but it needed a compatible USB dongle to make it work. But behold the new WD TV Live that comes with the built-in Wi-Fi. We recently tested it and this is what we think.
Package Contents:
The WD TV Live comes with the main unit, a remote control with batteries, Composite A/V cable, AC Adapter and user manual.
Design:
One major difference between WD TV Live Hub and WD TV Live is the lack of an internal hard drive in the latter. This means WD TV Live has a smaller footprint with minimal ports on the front and back. There’s only one USB 2.0 port on the front and the back is crowded with an AC adapter port, Ethernet port, HDMI, Composite A/V and Optical Audio. Component ports are missing, which means hooking the WD TV Live with an HDMI cable is the only way to enjoy HD videos.
Overall, the WD TV Live is small and portable enough to hide behind your TV’s set top box or a home theatre.
User Interface and Remote Control:
WD TV’s user interface does not contain major surprises if you’ve used its WD TV Live Hub. The interface is clean, streamlined and pretty responsive. Users can easily skim through videos, images, music or services or RSS feeds under dedicated tabs. Users can even customize the inside menus to suit their style.
WD bundles a conventional remote control but if you find that too clunky, you can download the free WD Remote app for mobile devices. The app is available on both iOS and Android and allows users to control their WD TV Live units. Needless to say, to make it work the device and the WD TV Live should be on the same Wi-Fi access point since the device communicates with the WD TV Live over Wi-Fi.
Performance:
Users can play content by attaching their HDD or a USB flash drive on WD TV Live’s USB port, via a NAS or stream directly from the supported online services. As mentioned before, WD TV range has been known for its excellent format support and WD TV Live is no exception. It can play virtually any type of multimedia file. The only things it cannot play are DRMed content, which is understandable.
WD TV Live supports many online streaming services but it varies according to region. In India, I was able to use Facebook, Picasa, YouTube, TuneIn, Live365 without any issues.
Conclusion:
WD currently sells two variants of WD TV – this one and the WD TV Live Hub with the integrated 1TB HDD. If bandwidth while streaming or using an external storage are not an issue, WD TV Live is the way to go since it will cost few thousand rupees less and comes with an integrated Wi-Fi.
It sells for Rs. 7,900.
Rating: 
Pros: Compact, integrated Wi-Fi, Android and iOS-based Remote
Cons: No Component input support
Leave a Reply