WDTV plus B-Rad Firmware equals Many New Possibilities
I purchased the original WDTV (Western Digital HD Media Player) over 12 months ago – they are a fantastic little box that will play just about anything and have full 1080p HDMI output with 5.1 digital out – needless to say it has served me very well.
My only negative comment is that it required a lot of sneaker time (copying files from my torrent server onto USB drives and then plugging them into the WDTV player to view them on my HDTV).
Well, Western digital recently released a new version, the WDTV Live – the best new feature is that it includes is ethernet (on board) and wireless support (with selected adaptors). I’ve upgraded to the WDTV Live and I have to admit – I think it’s worth it.
Not only is the new WDTV Live faster than the original version it also supports DTS decoding and I’ve also found it’s able to play a larger variety of file formats than the original.
A couple of things worth noting:
1) WDTV is awesome – It plays just about anything, it’s silent and when connected via HDMI and Optical 5.1 (audio is also via HDMI if you don’t have optical) the picture and sound is fantastic – it also has a remote.
2) I recently built a MythTV box and the new WDTV Live plays the MPG files with no stress – it takes it about 2 secs to sort out the transport stream files but it plays them perfectly – so much better than having a noisy PC in my living room.
3) Saving the best to last – it’s runs Linux — yes — Linux — So I have a new WDTV Live – what should I do with the old one – Well, it runs Linux so the potential uses are endless…
Yesterday, I bought my first Apple accessory, not because I’m an Apple fan, but because the $39AU Apple USB ethernet adaptor is 100% compatible with the WDTV and the B-Rad Firmware.
So, tonight I took the 5 minutes required to install B-Rad unofficial firmware on my original WDTV following the simple instructions and it works with no problems.
IP address assigned via DHCP, login via Telnet – Hello Linux prompt – my familiar friend – now I can really start to stretch the WDTV into new areas such as an rtorrent backend, computer alarm, maybe a MythTV master backend – or many, many more options… stay tuned and I’ll let you know how I go.
In the mean time, if your looking for a really good, cheap, silent front end media player for less than $200AU – look no further than the WDTV Live.
where did you get it. I tried dick smith where I bought my original wdtv box but they don’t have any wdtv live?
thanks
Julian
Hi Julian,
I got my WDTV Live from Officeworks – they had plenty of stock just before Christmas. Haven’t checked lately though. Here is a short link to the WDTV Live on the Officeworks Website http://bit.ly/aBxXfy – check your closest store for stock.
– Merric
Sounds like a nice hack. But I have to wonder, could you not have used the apple ethernet adapter to stream video to your original WDTV rather that buying a Live?
Lars,
Yes, you are correct, I could have used the apple ethernet adaptor to stream video to my original WDTV (post the hack) but I also wanted the DTS decoding and full network and UPnP support of the Live. The live also supports a few other codec combinations so there is more playback flexibility. I can also be 99.9% sure the WDTV Live is going to work every time it’s turned on so I don’t have to worry too much about providing tech support when I’m not at home plus it gives me the old one to hack and play around with, without putting the family viewing at risk
– Merric
Hi,
Good news that you actually get the WD TV Live to play Mythtv. I have a question on the setup for mythtv – and my recently purchased WDTV Live (btw I use Knoppmyth).
Do you play the recordings from the mythtv library, or do you go to the recordings (WD TV Live menu: Video -> Media Servers -> MythTv Media Server -> Recordings). When I try the latter I can see the recordings, but I am not able to get them to play.
/Jes
Hi Jes,
I use Mythrename.pl (http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Mythrename.pl) to create a human readable directory structure and symbolic links to the original MythTV files.
WDTV Live has trouble following symbolic links so I modified Samba on my MythTV box to follow the symbolic links (more info here: http://www.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/2009-August/261448.html).
Then I navigate to the file I want to play via the Network Share option (not Media Server) ie Video -> NETWORK -> Recordings and play the file. It can take a few seconds to start.
If you can’t find you MythTV box via Samba you may have to reconfigure the Samba server (Mythbuntu worked fine for me) – search the forums here http://wdtvforum.com/main/index.php
Would be great if you could let me know how it turns out and whether this fixes the problem for you.
- Merric
Hi, I’ve only just got the wdtv live but was able to connect to my mythtv backend via upnp. I’m just wondering which you would think is better? A network share or upnp.
Hi Marcovanb,
I’ve tried both and I decided to use SMB (network share) because when I was using UPNP the backend machines would sometimes disappear and required a hard reset (and plenty of patients waiting) for it to re-appear. I haven’t seen any speed difference between the two options. If UPNP is working reliably for you then stick with that – if your UPNP shares don’t always show up then investigate using SMB. Given you are looking at B-Rad I might also suggest setting up an NFS share as they are suppose to provide better performance. I don’t have any trouble streaming HD MythTV files (720p / 1080i) over SMB on 100MB Ethernet but I can’t play 1080p MKV files. When I get a chance I will be setting up NFS shares on my MythTV media server.
Let me know how you go.
- Merric
Hi, interested in this solution. A key requirement for me is the ability to jump back/forward in the file, at a minimum 10s back and 30s forward (or similar) and +/-10 mins, same as default for Myth. Can you do that? That is where other solutions I have tried have broken down.
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