Which model do I buy?

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live & Live Plus
1

I have not bought one of these yet, advice given to me is that I should buy the 2nd generation version but I am having trouble telling the difference.  He tells me that this one will play the HD movie files without a surround system.

Is there a model number that I should look out for?

2

Hello and welcome to the forum!  :)

Have you checked out the comparison table here?

http://wdc.com/en/products/index.asp?cat=30

An omission is that the WD TV Live supports DVD Menus (with the current beta firmware and the next official release).

Also, the Live (and Live Plus if you live in the US and want Netflix) are more recent and better supported than the Gen 2 (which hasn’t been updated since December last year).  

From a support perspective, the Live may be a safer purchase even if it has a few features you don’t need.

A Live or Live Plus will play surround files no problem (it’ll downmix to stereo).

Might be worth also asking this question in the WD TV HD forum to get the opinion of those actually using the Gen 2.  Check it out here:

http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-TV-HD/bd-p/tv_hd

3

Welcome to the forums.

It’s all a matter of what you want it to do.  If you don’t need network capability, buy the 2nd Gen HD unit.  If you need network capabilities (including internet access to such things as Netflix) then buy the Live.  That’s all there is to it.

4

thanks very much I live in the UK .

5

PixelPower ive noticed on your reply you have stated that live and live plus will downmix to stereo can you let me know were you got the info from and also let me know if you know of any way to downmix mkv hd files in dd/dts to play in 2 channel stereo ,the reason i ask is because i have bought a wdhd player.many thanks in advance

6

Hi Frank,

If you go to Settings > Audio/Video you’ll see an option called Audio output.

Change that from Digital to Stereo.

In Stereo mode, all audio should be down-mixed and output as PCM 2.0 audio.  I’ve just tested this on a BD rip with both AC3 and DTS audio tracks.  Both play fine in Stereo mode (neither play in Digital mode as my TV can’t decode them).

This should also work for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-MA audio tracks (although in the latter you get a down-mix of the DTS core).

Hope that helps!  :)

7

mkelley wrote:

Welcome to the forums.

 

It’s all a matter of what you want it to do.  If you don’t need network capability, buy the 2nd Gen HD unit.  If you need network capabilities (including internet access to such things as Netflix) then buy the Live.  That’s all there is to it.

But if you want to play mp4 files, don’t get the Gen2. There’s a terrible audio/video sync issue with this. Half way through a movie it’s off by as much as 8 seconds or so. Also, Gen2 hasn’t gotten an update since Dec of '09 as was already stated, so it’s pretty clear it’s not supported nearly as much as the Live.

8

“I have not bought one of these yet, advice given to me is that I should buy the 2nd generation version but I am having trouble telling the difference.  He tells me that this one will play the HD movie files without a surround system.”

the GEN2 will have DTS on the box, and the 1st GEN1 will not have DTS on the box.  Both Live versions are DTS capable