We all have a variety of multimedia content on our computers. From the photos you have clicked on your digital camera to your ever-expanding collection of MP3 songs to movies and television shows, wouldn’t it be nice if there was an easy way to send all this to your TV for easy viewing in your living rooms?
WD TV Live
Price: Rs 10,500
That’s where Western Digital (WD), better remembered for its family of devices, comes into play with its latest media player that can turn your good old USB (pen) drive into a black box and help you stream high-definition content to your TV or home theatre. What’s more, it requires little technical know-how. All those who love to download TV shows and movies from the internet will be glad to have WD’s TV Live media player, which streams high-definition, downloaded content to any connected TV screen. It cannot store any data, though.
The two USB ports on the device can be connected to external hard drives, cameras or similar storage peripherals and WD TV Live reads files off these drives to play onto a connected television or a computer monitor. Primarily, WD TV Live’s purpose is to play back to your TV music, videos, and photos from USB hard drives, thumb drives, or any other storage device that can be connected by a USB port.
Don’t worry about wires as it needs simple wire connections to get going. Due to WD TV Live’s ability to connect to the internet or a home network, you can also watch content from YouTube and Flickr directly on TV. You can also stream music to your home theatre by just a simple connection that needs no technical expertise whatsoever.
User interface, once connected, is an easy-to-understand visual navigation system that allows easy selection between video, photo, music and system settings. What’s really a plus is the ability to copy, move or delete files between connected USB storage drives and networked storage or computers. Another handy feature in the interface is the preview feature that allows you to see a file’s info (such as size, type, etc) while also showing a clip of the video, the photo or the audio track, as the case may be. You can use the remote to work the menu system.
WD really should have a built-in Wi-Fi too, but instead you get an option to buy a USB wireless adaptor to get the device on your network. With a street price of around Rs 10,000, WD TV Live compares well to any competition in the market today. The device’s small profile and relatively less power usage makes it more ideal than the Xbox 360 or Sony PlayStation 3 for in-network media streaming.
