Time to review a new piece of hardware!
I'm reviewing the new Western Digital TV box that allows users to play digital media files on their televisions. Basically, people would want this that have movies or videos that are stored on a computer, but would be much better on a television.
I absolutely love XBMC, which is a piece of media center software that can be used on Macs, PCs, and a hacked Apple TV. I think it's the #1 media player out there for playing Internet formats on a television. I compare every device that allows media to be displayed on a TV to XBMC.
So I hooked up the WDTV with an HDMI cable and plugged in the power. Everything was done except to connect a USB storage device. So I grabbed an 8 GB flash drive and loaded some test videos on it and plugged it in.
My first impressions were based on the 1.01 firmware.
-High quality xvid files played fine and smooth!
-Movies/Shows with external srt subtitles had a bit of trouble.
When I played a Korean movie, I noticed that the subtitles would appear half a second later than they should. This really really bothered me and made watching a movie very difficult. Another issue was the subtitle display. The subtitles themselves were white with a very small black outline, too thin for anyone to actually read them when something in the film was bright.
-The navigation menu is a bit clunky and unnecessary, but it works.
-The WDTV unit is very tiny! The pictures don't do it justice.
I was feeling regretful over my purchase until I found online that Western Digital had released a PreRelease version of its 1.02 firmware. I checked the changelog and it fixed all the issues I complained about with the previous firmware.
After updating the firmware on the device, my movies and shows play perfectly with more definied and better positioned subtitles. This makes me extremely happy.
The price on Amazon was $100, which was a really great deal. I was looking at the Apple TV ($220) and the WDTV ($100) and I went with the WDTV due to price and hoped that the developers would continue updating the firmware, which they have.
While the device lacks wireless capabilities for sharing from other computers, that problem can be resolved by attaching storage directly to the WDTV box.
Overall rating (with prelease firmware 1.02): 4/5
