The WD TV is a discontinued series of consumer

digital media players A digital media player (also known as a streaming device or streaming box) is a type of consumer electronics device designed for the storage, playback, or viewing of digital media content. They are typically designed to be integrated into a h ...

produced by

Western Digital Western Digital Corporation is an American data storage company headquartered in San Jose, California. Established in 1970, the company is one of the world's largest manufacturers of hard disk drives (HDDs). History 1970s Western Digital ...

designed to play videos, images, and music from USB drives, internal drives or network locations. The WD TV line was introduced in 2008 and could play

high-definition video High-definition video (HD video) is video of higher resolution and quality than standard-definition. While there is no standardized meaning for ''high-definition'', generally any video image with considerably more than 480 vertical scan lines ( ...

through an

HDMI High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is a proprietary digital interface used to transmit high-quality video and audio signals between devices. It is commonly used to connect devices such as televisions, computer monitors, projectors, gam ...

port and standard video through

composite video Composite video, also known as CVBS (composite video baseband signal or color, video, blanking and sync), is an analog video format that combines image information—such as brightness (luminance), color (chrominance), and synchronization, int ...

cables. The device had support for most common video and audio formats. The WD TV was discontinued as of August 2016.

Models

WD TV (1st Gen)

In November 2008 Western Digital introduced the WD TV. with full HD 1080p multimedia player with DTS pass-through only. The hardware starts with a 300 MHz TangoX MIPS 4KEc from Sigma Designs, which has 100 MB of memory.

WD TV (2nd Gen)

Updated device with 2-channel DTS support. Uses the same Sigma SMP8655 Secure Media Processor as the Live.

WD TV Mini

Released in Fall 2009, it was a Media Player with DVD quality, upscales to 1080i, Plays back

RealVideo RealVideo, also spelled as Real Video, is a suite of proprietary format, proprietary video compression formats developed by RealNetworks — the specific format changes with the version. It was first released in 1997 and was at version 15. RealV ...

and many other popular file formats with no need for transcoding, but lacks the ability to play H.264 encoded video. It is the only WD TV device without HDMI, providing only analog video output.

WD TV Live

Released in Fall 2009 with Full HD 1080p resolution. An updated device with 2-channel DTS, streaming and network support, which comes in the form of an

Ethernet Ethernet ( ) is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

port on the back. Also compatible with certain wireless USB adapters. Connects to Internet sites:

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

(until 2017),

Flickr Flickr ( ) is an image hosting service, image and Online video platform, video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was previously a co ...

Live365 LIVE365 is an Internet radio network which enables users to create their own online radio stations and listen to thousands of human curated stations. Online radio stations on the Live365 network were created and managed by music and talk enthus ...

, myTV,

Pandora In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first human woman created by Hephaestus on the instructions of Zeus. As Hesiod related it, each god cooperated by giving her unique gifts. Her other name—inscribed against her figure on a white-ground '' ky ...

, Mediafly, Flingo,

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Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

stream A stream is a continuous body of water, body of surface water Current (stream), flowing within the stream bed, bed and bank (geography), banks of a channel (geography), channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a strea ...

content from a home network. Supports a wide variety of the most popular file formats. No need for transcoding. Mediafly and DVD menu support added in firmware update. The device supports three playlist formats. The Sigma Designs SMP8655 SoC inside the WD TV Live features a 500 MHz CPU, a 333 MHz coprocessor, a 333 MHz DSP, 512 MB of DRAM, and 256 MB of NAND flash memory. Western Digital has tweaked the original Sigma SMP8600 Family design slightly by including 6 video Digital to Analog Converters (DACs) which should give it the ability to handle high-def content with ease. (Model number WDBAAN0000NBK).

WD TV Live Plus (WD TV Live 2nd Gen)

Released early in 2010 and having all the features of the WD TV Live along with

Netflix Netflix is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service. The service primarily distributes original and acquired films and television shows from various genres, and it is available internationally in multiple lang ...

streaming support. In order to support Netflix, a macrovision enabled SoC was required ( Sigma Designs SMP8654) and the Linux system is also now encrypted. However, actual user experience has lagged for some. As of April 12, 2011, Netflix Canada works on a WD Live TV Plus as long as the firmware has been upgraded to version 1.04.31_B or newer. It is also known as WDTV Live Plus (Model number WDBABX0000NBK, WDBREC0000NBK, WDBG3A0000NBK). Reviews: WD TV Live Plus was met with generally positive reviews. Review Horizon names it a worthy successor of WD TV Live.

WD TV Live Hub

Released in fall 2010, this is a WD TV Live device with an internal 1 TB storage disk. It uses the same Sigma Designs SMP8654 found in the WD TV Live Plus with four 64 MB Nanya NT5TU64M16GG DDR2 667/800 MHz modules (256 MB total), and a 2 GB Samsung K9F2G080UB flash chip.

WD TV Live Streaming (WD TV Live 3rd Gen)

Released in October 2011. It has customizable themes, a larger remote control, can get content information from the internet, plays DRM-protected services, has a built-in wireless adapter, a 10/100 Mbit/s RJ45 Ethernet port and is the first WD TV model to include the Spotify service. The WD TV Live has WiFi and a Sigma Designs SMP8670AD 700 MHz processor with 512 MB of DDR2 memory from Nanya. It is also known as WD TV Live Gen 3 (NTSC model number WDBHG70000NBK, PAL model number WDBGXT0000NBK).

WD TV Play (WD TV 4th Gen)

According to the WD Site, it was released in early 2013. (NTSC model number WDBMBA0000NBK). Their exact words are: The software does not support DTS or MPEG2, as these features were removed.

WD TV Media Player (WD TV 2nd Gen)

Released in July 2014. (NTSC model number WDBYMN0000NBK, PAL model number WDBPUF0000NBK). Identical hardware to the WDTV Live Streaming but missing Netflix. This last version of the WDTV was finally discontinued by Western digital in June 2016 and is no longer available for sale through the manufacturer.

Hacking

The WD TV has been hacked to enable further options, including using external optical drives, Ethernet connection via USB to Ethernet adapters,

bittorrent BitTorrent is a Protocol (computing), communication protocol for peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P), which enables users to distribute data and electronic files over the Internet in a Decentralised system, decentralized manner. The protocol is d ...

downloading and improved thumbnail preview images. The newest versions of the WD TV (Streaming Media) have encrypted firmware and there are efforts to continue hacking them.

References

External links

* {{Western Digital Linux-based devices Western Digital products