This is a great little box that does everything it claims to do quite well. User interface is simplistic (read - very basic/primitive), but on the plus side it makes it usable by anyone including my 3 year old.
It got on to my wired network, found my NAS disk, all three of my PC's (running Vista and Windows 7), and displayed all relevant folders and was ready to play the media files in about 4 minutes flat from the time I cut open the box in which it came. Quite impressive. Of which one minute was just to install the batteries in the remote as without the remote the box cannot even be switched on or off. There are no switches of kind on the box -- the well hidden, recessed, reset switch being the only exception.
Navigating Youtube was quite excruciating as the on screen keyboard is the only option for search, and you don't have the befit of the auto-fill. But it is quite impressive that you can watch the many millions(?) of youtube videos on demand without requiring any computer. Once I set up my favorites list on Youtube the frustration level was greatly mitigated. Also, after each selection you can navigate to make use of the suggestions youtube makes to branch out from the preselected favorites.
Not sure why we are forced to pick audio or video so high up in the menu tree. I would have preferred the menu to allow navigating to the location of the media file first and then decide whether we are playing audio or video files.
When you are configuring to view the display on component inputs, you have to operate "blind" as the default output is only the regular video-out and possibly HDMI. So you have to connect the TV on video out first, and then configure it for component out. I don't know if this is mentioned in the manual.
The three major drawbacks (lacking features) that I see are as follows:
a) No Netflix support. This would make it incredibly more powerful and useful.
b) Cannot be configured as a Windows Mediacenter extender. I don't know if this is a technical limitation or they just haven't got the marketing alliances in place. This too would make it quite a bit more useful.
c)Instead of letting the customers fend for themselves by installing other 3rd party software like Tversity, Playon and the like to support streaming media content, they should provide an integrated software or point to an preferred alliance for this functionality.
d) No volume control on the remote. This is a rather stupid mistake on WD's part. They don't have to control the volume on the TV/audio system, but they can control the audio signal level going through their pipe. There are plenty of boxes which do this quite successfully. The good news is this can be fixed with a firmware update as the remote control's up and down arrows are not used at this time while playing media files. They can have the box recognize this keystrokes and use that to adjust the volume. Having to reach another remote just to change the volume (depending on the source) is a royal pain.Get more detail about Western Digital WD TV Live Network-ready HD Media Player WDBAAN0000NBK-NESN.
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