My LCD TV at home is dumb I call it so because it was one of the first few series of full HD LCD TV with a USB port which only does the task of reading pictures and as well as any firmware upgrade on the television which rarely happens can be done through it, I am so hooked to these new so-called smart TV’s available in all the electronics store which plays internet radio, YouTube so its matter of time I may upgrade to one of these in future but for the time being I would like to make my not so smart TV a much-needed facelift with the help of a WD TV LIVE set-top box. So let’s check out its features.
Table of Contents
WD TV Live hardware:
This small box about the size of your external hard drive comes with an HDMI port for high definition streaming to your TV, 2 USB ports to access files from your external drives, LAN port to connect to the internet optical port for connecting your home theatre system speakers and AV OUT if your TV doesn’t have the HDMI port and the power cord slot, and to mention the device has WiFi access to your routers and also it runs on DLNA. For the theatre like experience its Dolby True HD digital plus and DTS 2.0 digital out
Online content:
This is a must these days WD TV live comes with YouTube, Facebook, HULU, BBC I Player, Vimeo, and lots of online apps, and also due to the frequent updates on the firmware any new service/apps addition is always possible. For the radio, it has the popular tune-in radio app and for the kids, there are few games to have fun with.
Access to USB Drives
WD TV LIVE has encoders that can read most of the file formats which is the best part of any USB reading devices, most DVD players or TV itself has USB slots installed but is capable of reading only the popular file formats available for pictures, music, and video. For the few tests I carried out with WD TV LIVE it ran most of the file formats from my huge collection of movies and music on my external hard drive which I thought was the best part of the device and no unnecessary connecting my laptop to my TV to watch movies in HD. You can even connect your keyboard to the USB if you have difficulty typing on the screen with the provided WD remote. The USB can even access your digital camera, video camera.
File Formats Supported
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, FLV (h.264)
Photo – JPEG, GIF, TIF/TIFF, BMP, PNG
