Gadgetory

alright guys so welcome to the Harbour Canucks wish list segment I know I promised this a few days ago however here we have the Western Digital TV live media player now what this does is basically replaces the entire functionality of your HT PC or media PC into one very tiny little set-top box the great thing about it is that it will do Full HD 1080p now if you think about it in order to be able to play you know blu-ray quality video on your media PC you need at least a mainstream low-end a dual-core processor or a motherboard with integrated graphics and some RAM and I guarantee you that is going to run you much more than the hundred thirty to $150 price tag that this little thing carries with it sold tight we're going to unbox it we're going to take a look at the GUI interface and we're going to make sure that this thing can in fact play the 1080p video all right so we're gonna take a quick look at the box and read off some of the specs because there's so many of them I don't know them off the top of my head first thing this is the live version of the media player there's actually a non live version what that signifies is that it is network capable so it can connect your home network and get files off of there now in terms of file support it has your typical avi MPEG formats as well as MKV things like mp4 and MOV formats you also have photo support JPEG PNG etc audio files that supports things like mp3 your WMA but it also has support for things like slack and OGG as well as your Dolby Digital and your DTS support now the other cool thing about this is they partnered or asume partnered with live 365.com and Pandora which are both internet radio sites so you can stream your internet and radio straight from this into your home theater system other things we've already been to the 1080p the other thing it will do is it will stream directly from YouTube so if you have one of these you could be watching this video straight from it alright so we're going to open it up to a very quick unboxing here you have your typical manuals driver CDs etc now this was what really impressed me you know when I first looked at the box I figured okay you know it's a fairly large unit I open it up and this thing is incredibly tiny you know it's about well devote passport-size in fact you look here we have a 3.5 inch a typical hard drive and you look at the size difference in terms thickness it is a little thicker but just the physical size of the unit it's very small it's going to be very easy to hide behind your TV or right next to it it's a sort of a classy looking device you also have your remote basic functions which is also very tiny then you have your audio/video cables now they don't include an HDMI cable you're going to need to purchase that separately you have the AC adapter and then well you have some complimentary batteries excellent so let's dive in and we'll take a look at the actual unit itself alright so on the back you have your power input the rear USB HDMI connection your s/pdif optical connector rj45 network connection and then your your composite in your component outputs and then you have a second USB on the side here as well as I believe it's a reset switch and you'll also notice some venting and around here I assume I don't know the hardware specs but it would probably get a little toasty when you're playing that that 1080p video on the front you have your power and your USB indicator lights alright so we plugged it in hooked it up through HDMI and then put the power in as you can see it is very very simple just to if you have a receiver you can hook it up through there so you don't have to have audio cables running out well it was supposed to boot up that was the intention however it's looking oh there we go - excellent now what you'll notice is that the GUI interface on this unit is actually very slick it's well designed it's a little it's a little dark except for the center and it's very very smooth in terms of how it operates I put some batteries in the remote and we are going to take you have some very basic settings here there you do notice the occasion a little bit of lag however that may just be the batteries in my remote dying you can have the you have your basic adjustments to video settings including subtitles it has a whole bunch of support for other subtitles we have your basic photo settings you know I'm not going to go through all of these however they are just very simple settings that you would expect to have on nearly any sort of media style of device network settings system settings let's pop into system settings okay so you can change that screensaver autoplay there's really not too much exciting in here but it just sort of shows you that they've thought of everything you're not going to be without any features so let's play a video now what you have to do in order to hook up or in sorry in order to get your media you will either have to have an external hard drive plugged in you can plug it directly into the USB or you can hook this unit up to your network and you can host your files elsewhere you know if it's on a home server on another computer etc and you can access it directly from there or you can do what I'm doing and use a USB key and plug it straight into the side now you'll be able to use the USB key and an external drive at the same time because there are a couple of USB ports and you go to your section here for that's the other thing you'll be able to browse YouTube straight from here let's go to there scroll down as you know see a little bit of lag on occasion but it's really not too bad I don't notice it at all USB - this is where it'll show your your other files folders etc and let's take a look this is a 1080p video provided by Microsoft is sort of a sample file beautiful colors there's no lag I'm looking now no lag whatsoever in the video zooms board perfectly you have some really really high high color situations here it displays well displays perfectly I'm quite impressed now if you stop your DVD you also be able to restart where you left off so just boom there we are playback original fast-forward it goes out you have two times four times eight times I assume up to 16 times there we are there and you can play again excellent and plays flawlessly when you start it off again little flying scene here lots of colors lots of things going on and flawless flawless video so that is our look at Western Digital TV live there are a few other options out there ever that I should mention there's also the ASA so play and the Patriot Patriot box office I believe it's called hopefully I will I may have a chance to take a look at them but they're all going to offer the same sort of functionality that the Western Digital TV Live will and also don't forget to send in your suggestions for future wishlist episodes we want to see and review what you guys want to see before Christmas so send them in leave them in a comment in the YouTube section and we're going to try and get through as many of the popular ones as we can and don't forget to subscribe guys so we'll see you next time