WHDI Reviews – Wireless HDTV News

The Western Digital WD TV Live Plus HD Media Player WDBABX0000NBK-NESN is the upgraded version of the earlier WD TV model. It is fundamentally the same device but with upgrades in the hardware that allow it to do things that it could not do before. One of the most important feature additions is the Netflix playback capability that everyone so greatly missed in the last version.

The WD TV Live Plus from Western Digital brings to the table mostly improvements like Netflix connectivity and reading full DVD menus. The latter was originally not present on the earlier WD TV model but was later added as a firmware upgrade. Whilst a lot of people thought that the company was purposely not fixing the Netflix compatibility, the truth is that the older model was based on a chip that could not handle the encryption that Netflix demands from any such device. WD TV Live Plus has been blessed with different hardware on the inside and hence it can now access Netflix.

On the WD TV Lice Plus, Netflix works quite well. Items can be added to the queue and you can also browse Netflix through the device – something that is not common on such devices. It also reads full DVD menus as promised. The new model comes with a feature called the MediaFly. It is essentially an aggregation of several audio and video netcasts from all over the Internet that you can easily navigate through via stacked categories and play.

Live Plus uses Samba by default to read your files over the network. However, this creates jitter and lag errors for high bitrate content. The way to escape this is to choose the “media server’ option on the device and install a media server on your computer. Windows Media Player 11 by default acts like on.

With the more features and upgrades under the hood, the Western Digital WD TV Live Plus HD Media Player WDBABX0000NBK-NESN charges somewhat more that its competitors at $99 but it is a complete solution in itself for it what it intends to do.