WD TV Live

As you know, I’ve been playing around with media players, dvr, etc. for a while now. Started with TiVo series 2, 2wire 2040 (AT&T uVerse), VUDU… and this xmas, I picked up WD TV box.

Originally bought the WD TV (USB only) box as it was onsale for $70 at local BB. But then I found out about the Live model, which just came out. The Live model has builtin wired Ethernet (RJ-45 port), save me time, and besides which I hate USB-to-Ethernet or wireless adapters.

Side note: Most people don’t realize or understand that USB adapters are slow. Doesn’t matter if you use USB2. USB depends on your system CPU (it’s a _SERIAL PORT_ for godsake!). If you have a slow CPU, then you will never get the full bandwidth of your link.  Not only that, but it will kill your system performance.

I put the hacked WDLXTV-LIVE firmware from b-rad (http://b-rad.cc/) on my box.  Nice.  Didn’t really have time to exercise everything (family visits during the holiday season), but works as expected.

How to setup development environment for hacking WDTV Live is here:

http://wiki.wdtv.org/doku.php?id=setting_up_the_environment_for_compiling