I was looking to upgrade my WDTV HD for quite some time now, so when I came across the WDTV Live on special – I simply couldn’t resist and ended up going home with one.

I wrote quite an extensive post on the HD version of the WDTV, so I won’t go too much into every little detail with this post as I figured most know what the WDTV is capable of. Instead, I thought I’d just post my thoughts and findings on this unit and provide a little feedback to those who may be looking at upgrading. For reference, my setup consists of a Pioneer VSX-520 AV Receiver and Sony SA-VS350H 5.1 surround sound speakers.

The Unit Itself, Hardware
Western Digital have moved away from the all black, glossy finish of the HD to a black matte finish with silver trim on the Live. I quite welcome the change as it makes the unit look a bit more sleek, plus you won’t have finger smudges all over the remote. The hardware is quite similar in terms of the backpanel with the RCA connectors simplified and turned into was is essentially a 3.5mm jack. The other difference being the USB port on the back of the unit is now positioned horizontally, not vertically like on the HD.

User Interface
The UI in the WDTV Live hasn’t changed all too much in comparison to the WDTV HD. The style is very similar, the only two real differences are the positioning and speed. The HD navigation started from the left and menus expanded to the right, the Live starts in the centre and menus expand vertically. One advantage the Live has over the HD is speed, it is much faster overall. Apart from these two things, I don’t think there is much else to discuss in terms of the UI.

Streaming Video & Network Capability
With the Live HD gaining networking capabilities, one is now able to stream video from a media server or a share on a computer. While I don’t have any media servers to stream from, I do stream content from my iMac to the Live handles things just fine. I’ve found streaming large .mkv movies issue free, with no lag or hang ups. Fast forwarding and rewinding is also fine. I have noticed large MPEG based files do seem to lag or even freeze briefly whilst fast forwarding at 8x, at 4x they’re fine.

I don’t know if it’s firmware based, but quite frequently the WDTV will have troubles connecting to my SAMBA network share, other times it’s fine. Infrequently, browsing some folders the unit will just freeze up whilst in thumbnail mode, my guess is processing power. Another annoyance is browsing network shares in thumbnail mode; both the thumbnail and movie are listed. Apparently there is a fix for it which involves removing the .jpg extension, but I’ve had no luck with that.

One more annoying thing is that if you have networked your WDTV, it’ll go online by itself to check for firmware updates. This feature is actually pretty neat, the only annoying thing is the fact that there is no built in setting to turn this off – especially if you use an older firmware.

I don’t have any comments or feedback to provide on the internet media functions of the WDTV Live as I don’t use them. One thing I will note with the earlier versions of the firmware, these internet media options were present in the video menu, which I found annoying. With 1.04.xx they are no longer present.

File Management
A nice, new little feature of the WDTV Live is file management and the ability to move, copy or delete files of both locally connected and networked drives. No real issues to report with this feature at present.

Video & Audio Playback
Video: 99% of mkv videos playback fine. I have noticed that BluRay and HD-DVD rips can stutter depending on the Firmware used. 1.03/1.04 caused playback issues, whereas 1.02 plays things smoothly.
Audio: DTS-ES is passed through, DTS-HD/MA is downmixed to DTS Core 5.1. Dolby Digital+ and Dolby TrueHD are passed through. Dolby TrueHD only seems to be passed through from .mkv files on 1.04 firmware, not sure why as nothing is noted in the changelogs. Multichannel AAC from .mkv files does not play over digital (and from what I’ve read, never will), I did manage to get it working via Stereo though, but what a pain in the ass.

Subtitles
The Live has had some improvements with subtitles support and settings. There are a few more added sizes for subtitle display and positioning (which is set by the up and down arrows on the remote). Unfortunately, there still isn’t any support for styled softsubs which is a bit of a downer, but I kind of don’t mind. The Live also has issues playing PGS subtitles from mkv’s.

Movie Thumbnails (+ network fix)
In Firmware version 1.02.xx, thumbnail colours will show up saturated and do not cache properly, this issue is corrected in 1.03.xx firmware versions. Now, one very annoying bug which WD refuse to fix and call a feature is the display of movie thumbnails on networked drives. That is, the .jpg and and movie both show up. WD answer me this; Just what on earth made you guys think we want to see JPEG images when we’re browsing movies? /facepalm.

This bug annoys myself and many, many other WDTV Live users across the globe. The hardest part was sifting through the useless suggestions people were posting on how to fix this.
I tried everything from removing the .jpg extension to ThumbGen’s fix – all of which didn’t work. The ONLY solution I’ve found to get thumbnails to display on networked drives without them showing up along side the movie is to install the WDLXTV custom firmware. It takes a bit of tinkering to set it all up, but it works.

The process is quite simple, within the WDLXTV configuration you setup your network drive to automatically mount upon start up using xmount. This makes the WDTV think the drive is connected as a normal HDD via USB and thumbnail problem solved!

I am not to be credited for this solution, I actually found it posted by someone else on a WDTV based forum.

Network Shares with Mac OS X 10.7 (WDLXTV specific fix)
So.. You’ve upgraded to Mac OS X 10.7 like I did and realised you can no longer access SMB Shares, WTF!!! I hear you say.. The reasoning behind this is due to SAMBA licensing, thus resulting in Apple writing their own implementation of SAMBA called SMBX. Anyway, after some Googling I found a solution. Read on..

Notes: You’ll need some knowledge of directory structures and paths in order to set this up. You’ll also need at least one USB device attached at all times for automount to work.

Open Terminal.app (found in Applications/Utilities).

Step 1) Type the following command: sudo nfsd enable to enable the NFS daemon.

Step 2) Type the following command: sudo nano /etc/exports to create the paths to your shares.

Step 3) A blank file will open up, in this you want to type the full path to the folders/volumes you want to share. For example, I’m sharing my Public folder, so I have added /Users/Rad/Public to mine. After you have added the full path of the folders/volumes, press control + O to save the file and press enter, then press control + X to exit the nano editor.

Step 4) Type the following command: showmount -e and you should get listing, such as:

Exports list on localhost:
/Users/Rad/Public 192.168.1.0

Step 5) In this step you’ll need to add an automount entry to your WDLXTV config file. I’ve added xmount “192.168.1.83:Users/Rad/Public” “Public” nfs to my config file; which specifies my Mac’s IP address, the path to the share, the share name (as it’ll appear on your WDTV menu) and the share type. Then reboot your WDTV, powering it off and on won’t work. After it boots navigate to your locally connected USB drive and the NFS share should appear in there! If it doesn’t, navigate back one step and try again. This process has worked for me.

Notes on Firmware versions
1.01.xx Nothing to report with this version as I upgraded pretty much instantly when I got the unit.
1.02.xx After some testing with a friend, I’ve concluded that this is the best firmware version. It is the fastest in terms of navigation and most functional by the looks of things.
1.03.xx Similar to 1.02 in terms of speed and functionality, with improved thumbnail caching. BluRay/HD-DVD rips will more than likely stutter, TrueHD pass-through lost.
1.04.xx I wouldn’t upgrade to any 1.04.xx version, no benefits to be had unless you want/need TrueHD pass-through.
1.05.xx I’m currently using this firmware, but the B-RAD version (1.05.04_V.WDLXTV_LIVE-0.5.1.1) which is running flawlessly. Has 3TB HDD support and TrueHD pass-through.

Tip: To remove the dreaded New Firmware Found message whilst using older firmware versions, you’ll need to setup a URL blocking filter from within your Router/Modem configuration interface. In the URL blocking filter section of your Router/Modem, add support.wdc.com to the banned/disallowed list and you won’t have it pop up anymore.

I was unaware that This Is England had been made into a mini-series. Unfortunately, it was only a 4 part sequel, but damn it was worth the watch. Shane Meadows is genius.

If you have seen This Is England, then you know what the movie is about. If you haven’t, check out my previous post on the movie.

This Is England ’86 revisits the main characters of the movie, Shaun, Woody and Lol. Based in 1986 and corresponding events of that year, the mini-series takes a look at Shaun, who has just finished his last school exam and now must find his own way in the world. Meanwhile, his old group of friends are all looking for different things in life including love, employment and fun.

For a 4 part mini-series, it was an enjoyable watch. There were quite a few funny bits but also some quite powerful ones. Especially in episode 4, far out – that had me speechless in some parts. I hope in 2-3 years time the series can be revisited again showing us how each character has grown up and how life has affected them.

I really hate it when a show I’ve been watching finally comes to an end. Without fail, I find I’m always asking myself; what am I supposed to watch now? For now the answer comes in the form of Human Target.

The series follows the life of character Christopher Chance. A unique private contractor who was once an assassin, now turned bodyguard/security expert. He is hired by his clients to protect their lives, but doesn’t do it in a regular way – he integrates himself into their lives and becomes a part of it until the threat is over. Each episode focuses on a different case/client, but one thing that doesn’t change is him kicking the bad guys asses – I guess that’s one of the things that make this show, along with the witty humour.

The supporting characters aren’t too bad either. You have Laverne Winston who is Chance’s Business Partner/Agency Manager. He’s the more serious guy of the three. You also have the token computer nerd/hacker guy, Guerrero. An interesting detail comes about on Guerrero later on in the first season, Which I didn’t quite expect to be honest.

At times the show does feel a bit corny, but none the less it’s an enjoyable watch every week if you’re not too skeptical, enjoy reasonable plots with lots of action. Watch the trailer

I purchased the WDTV HD Media Player unit probably two weeks ago now and it is proving to be a good investment. Primarily because I got tired of exporting mkv files through Quicktime so that the PS3 could read them, and the fact the PS3 doesn’t read my HFS+ formatted HDD.

Even then, if it did manage to read the HDD, it probably wouldn’t play half the files. Adding to this, I really didn’t want to run 8 metres of Optical Audio cable and HDMI across my lounge room floor, so the WDTV was the ideal solution.

The WDTV itself is pretty much the “middle man” between your TV and a HDD. You simply plug the unit into your TV using HDMI or the older Composite A/V cabling, plug your HDD into the unit and huzzah, you can now view your photos, music and videos on the TV with a few simple clicks.

What mostly made me buy the WDTV is the specifications. It uses HDMI, Optical Audio output, has support for various HDD formats including NFS+, NTFS, FAT, has a decent looking, yet functional user interface and plays a broad range of file formats:

Music
mp3, wma, ogg, wav/pcm/lpcm, aac, flac, dolby digital, aif/aiff, mka
Photos
jpeg, gif, tif/tiff, bmp, png
Video
mpeg1/2/4, wmv9, avi (mpeg4, xvid, avc), h.264, mkv, mov (mpeg4, h.264), mts, tp, ts
Playlists
pls, m3u, wpl
Subtitles
srt (utf-8), smi, sub, ass, ssa

As I do watch a fair bit of Japanese anime and the fact most releases are in mkv format, the support for this format was important. With the 1.01 firmware update WD added further functionality and improvement to the playback of mkv files, perhaps dozens of anime crazed fans emailed them.

The general playback of video is smooth, most of the video files I’m playing are either avi, large mp4′s or 720p mkv, but I notice no jittery or lagged processing. The fast forward and rewind functions work to a decent speed, nothing extremely fast but it’s good. The WDTV also supports resuming of playback, so you don’t have to start all over when powering the device off.

Overall, the WDTV is a great little unit, but it does have a few minor annoyances: The UI while looking good, is a bit laggy.. probably only by a few milliseconds, but it’s noticeable. Sometimes the HDD can take a minute or two to initialise, (significantly decreased from 1.02.10 firmware). I’ve found on occasion I’ve had to power the device on and off for it to be recognised. There could be a few more options for audio setup as well. I use Optical Audio on the device, yet I need to mute the TV as the WDTV plays the audio through both HDMI and the Optical Audio – you should be able to select only one method of output in my opinion. Additionally, while it is not an annoyance I’d like to be able to turn off the music and photo menu options as I’d never use these two.

Notes on Modifications and Other Observations

Reference Frame fail
Well, it appears the unit suffers to play H.264 encoded 1080p content that is greater than 5rf, resulting in artifacts all over the screen. I’ve learnt this after trying to watch a Gundam 00 episode in 1080p, which uses 9rf (ridiculously high?)

OSD mod: Simple and Unadorned
Tired of the standard WDTV OSD? Well thanks to the hacking scene, people have been able to design custom OSD’s. Over the weekend I installed one designed by Lilibabe from the WDTV Forums which I thought looked pretty sweet. Check it out here →. The good thing about this mod is that you can use the standard WDTV firmware. Simply download the the 1.02.10 firmware and use the wdtv.ver file from it along with the wdtv.bin from Lilibabe. If you’re already on 1.02.10, you’ll need to open the wdtv.ver file and adjust the version to say 1.02.11 so that it’ll read as a new firmware update when you plug it into the unit.

OSD Mod: Picto
In November of 2009 Lilibabe released another high quality OSD Mod, this time titled Picto and I have to say it’s my favourite so far. Check it out here →

Notes on Firmware releases

1.02.10 firmware
The only really noticeable thing with with this firmware is the time taken to detect your HDD. On older firmware versions, it took 30 seconds to 1 minute, sometimes longer. After updating to 1.02.10, it’s approximately 2-3 seconds!

1.02.08 firmware
Great success! After doing some googling I found a prerelease of the 1.02.08 firmware which adds support for vorbis audio. Now some of my anime titles have audio.

1.02.07 firmware
So I upgraded my firmware to the latest that was available on the WD website. Was rather excited as a included update was more audio formats for the mkv container. I was hopeful that this would sort out the lack of audio from some anime titles I have, but no joy.. still the Japanese 1 (unsupported) text.

1.03.01 firmware
Haven’t noticed any real changes in this firmware, but I always update to the latest whenever it comes out.

Installing custom firmware by Lilibabe
I’ve noticed a few searches for how to install custom firmware created by Lilibabe so I thought I’d break the simple process down. Lilibabe usually hosts the wdtv.bin file with a wdtv.ver file in the same directory – you will need both.

Step 1
Open up the wdtv.ver file in a text editor. All you need to do here is edit the VERSION=’1.02.00′ bit. Make it a higher number, such as ’1.04.00′. Don’t worry, the WDTV will write the correct firmware version to the actual unit – this method just tricks it into thinking it is a newer firmware file.

Step 2
Put the wdtv.bin and wdtv.ver files onto a USB drive – FAT32 formatted just to be safe. Then, plug it into your WDTV and you’ll notice it picks up the new firmware. From here, go through the usual routine of updating firmware.

Step 3
The WDTV will go through its process of flashing and reboot, all done.

Notes on DTS Playback
DTS-MA
So it seems the WDTV HD can actually pass-through DTS-MA. How do I know, well because I have The Marine (2006) playing in the background which has a DTS-MA audio track (.mkv) and it’s working just fine. From some Google searches I previously had done, it appeared as though it didn’t — hope this helps others wondering the same thing.

No DTS from MKV file
The following information is only for those who know they have their hardware working 100% — I’ve noticed some .mkv files I have wouldn’t playback the DTS audio track for some reason. I recently came across what appears to be a fix, this fix involves turning off “mkv header removal compression”.

If you are using a Mac, MKVTools will do this for you, if you use a Windows based computer, I’m not sure what tool has this feature. So far this has worked for 3 files I previously had no audio playback from.

Channel 10 finally launched its new 24 hour sports channel last night, One HD. I think it is a good move, to be honest I wouldn’t pay for cable TV these days when it has just the same amount of advertisements and half of the shows are repeats. Moving back on topic, the sports line up for One HD is mainly a mixture of Australian and American sports.

Some of the sports that will be/are airing on One HD will be: AFL, Swimming, Netball, Cricket, F1, MotoGP, Nascar, Golf, Major League Baseball, NBA, NCAA, NFL, ARC (Australian Rally Championship) and many more. So, as you can see it is a reasonable variety, which I can only assume will expand in the near future.

My only real gripe currently is how the programming is laid out. For example, today from 12pm to 7:30pm is the F1. Ok, now.. I may be a fan of the F1 and don’t mind watching it, but 7 hours worth? Then, you have a repeat of the programming on Sunday. Not the best way to start the weekend considering a new launch of the channel in my opinion, unless this was the plan as the launch time and F1 in Melbourne do coincide and the F1 does have a large fan base.

The only thing really missing in the line up, which I think would be good additions are the EPL → and the WRC →, hopefully One can gain licensing to show both. I’d also like to see that the NBA Playoffs and Finals get some decent air time.

The latest episode of South Park (season 13, episode 2) entitled “The Coon” is probably one of the best and funniest to date in my opinion. The episode is pretty much a parody styled around the recent comic book movies, The Dark Knight, Watchmen and a touch of Spiderman 3.

Eric Cartman plays as The Coon, a vigilante superhero in South Park who is paid no attention. He soon finds out there is another superhero in town called Mysterion and attempts to rid of this masked person so he can remain the sole superhero in town.

Butters also makes an appearance in his Professor Chaos persona, which I found to be the funniest parts of the episode.

For the full plot, movies references, have a read here →

Another year, another NBA All-Star Weekend. This years was pretty good once again, I think a bit better than last years. The dunk competition was pretty good with Dwight Howard and Nate Robinson going against each other in the final round. Dwight pulled off an amazing dunk on a 12 foot rim, in turn Nate dunked over Dwight in his green kryptonite game uniform, shoes and ball.

The game itself was a good watch too, plenty of action with the East taking an early lead in the 1st quarter. The West pulled back in the 2nd quarter right through to the 4th and eventually won 146-119. Shaq pulled off some awesome plays and Kobe showed his stuff as well. Both received a joint MVP award.

Looking forward to next years All-Star Weekend, especially if Lebron James indeed does enter the dunk comp as he stated when asked about it.

Indeed it is. In the 20th season of The Simpsons, tonight’s episode was finally shown in HD, Woo Hoo!

I’d say every Simpsons fan rejoiced at the same time and the show airing in 720p certainly helps on a 42″ LCD TV. While the scripts may have gone sideways over the last few seasons with the humour a bit hit and miss, I’ll still watch every Simpsons episode until the day they decide to call it quits. In saying that, tonight’s episode was pretty good.

Check out the new opening sequence →

From what I have read, the sports mainly aired will be ones out of the US, which I don’t really mind watching as I’ve played quite a few of them. I think it’s a good move as I really can’t be bothered paying for cable tv which now has the same amount of advertisements as free-to-air. If only they’d get a licence to air the English Premier League, my life would be complete. You can view the schedule for Australia at the NBA website.