WD TV Live first look

The Western Digital TV Live has just arrived in the Hardware.Info lab. Since this product is likely to spark interest among several usergroups, we want to provide you with a sneak-peek of the device. Western Digital's first media player, the TV HD, is still a rather popular device thanks to its price/performance ratio and userfriendliness. At its introduction, the TV HD was quite revolutionary, allowing HD video playback in H.264 and VC-1 at a pricetag of below 100 euro, about half the price of competing devices.

The drawback however was found in the connectivity options and features, such as the lack of a networkconnector. The new WD TV Live is Western Digital's cure for all those shortcomings; though it remains untested for now, it can clearly be seen that the device sports a networkconnector and component-output. Another remarkable thing is that WD has given both the player and the remote a dark-gray finish, rather than the conventional glossy black. Another notable fact is that the player's dimensions are equal to those of its predecessor.

Apart from a networkconnector, jack outputs are available for the bundled composite and component plugs.

The retail packaging.

First glance.

Inside the box.

Player and remote.

Though the player is equal in size to its predecessor, it becomes a lot warmer. While Western Digital advised users to place their harddisks on the old WD TV HD, this is greatly opposed with the new version due to the heat production.

For those who can't believe it: the WD TV Live is equal in size to ihe WD TV HD.

Apart from the matte finish versus the earlier gloss, the remote control does not seem to differ from the old version.

There's a difference after all!

Specifications

Supported filetypes:

Video - AVI (Xvid, AVC, MPEG1/2/4), MPG/MPEG, VOB, MKV (h.264, x.264, AVC, MPEG1/2/4, VC-1), TS/TP/M2T (MPEG1/2/4, AVC, VC-1), MP4/MOV (MPEG4, h.264), M2TS, WMV9  
Images - JPEG, GIF, TIF/TIFF, BMP, PNG
Audio - MP3, WAV/PCM/LPCM, WMA, AAC, FLAC, MKA, AIF/AIFF, OGG, Dolby Digital, DTS
Playlist - PLS, M3U, WPL
Subtitles - SRT, ASS, SSA, SUB, SMI 

Tags: dolby digital dts

Post to Slashdot Digg this Add to del.icio.us