Last October, Western Digital launched the WD TV Live HD media player, and saw strong sales.
Today, WD has introduced that latest version of the box, the WD TV Live Plus, which adds built-in support for Netflix and MediaFly. If you are a Netflix subscriber with a $8.99 or higher monthly package, they can stream over 12,000 “Watch Instantly” movie and TV titles.
MediaFly offers podcasts from CNN, NBC, MTV and ESPN.
Just like with past versions of the box, the Live Plus will allow for playback of mostly all formats of video and music and pictures. Also built-in is support for Internet radio such as Live365 and Pandora. You can connect the player to the Internet via Wi-Fi or ethernet, and even stream content from your computer via DLNA.
HD playback is available up to 1080p.
Twice lists the compatible file formats, and you would be hard pressed to find a file you cannot play via the Live Plus:
Compatible file formats include: AVI (Xvid, AVC, MPEG1/2/4), MPG/MPEG, VOB, MKV (h.264, x.264, AVC, MPEG1/2/4, VC-1), TS/TP/M2T (MPEG1/2/4, AVC, VC-1), MP4/MOV (MPEG4, h.264), M2TS and WMV9 video format; and JPEG, GIF, TIF/TIFF, BMP and PNG image formats.
For audio: MP3, WAV/PCM/LPCM, WMA, AAC, FLAC, MKA, AIF/AIFF, OGG, Dolby Digital and DTS music formats.
The unit allows users to create playlists such as PLS, M3U and WPL and subtitle format such as SRT, ASS, SSA, SUB and SMI.
The player is available for pre-order with a $150 MSRP.
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The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) has revealed the new logo for the Blu-ray 3D standard, which was ratified in December.
The specification allows for 1080p resolution delivery to each eye while wearing stereoscopic glasses, and will work on any compatible 3D display, including LCD, OLED and Plasma.
Blu-ray 3D also specifically calls for PlayStation 3 consoles to have full BD 3D content playback. Says CDRinfo: “Additionally, the specification supports playback of 2D discs in forthcoming 3D players and can enable 2D playback of Blu-ray 3D discs on the large installed base of Blu-ray Disc players currently in homes around the world. The Blu-ray 3D specification calls for encoding 3D video using the Multiview Video Coding (MVC) codec, an extension to the ITU-T H.264 Advanced Video Coding (AVC) codec currently supported by all Blu-ray Disc players. MPEG4-MVC compresses both left and right eye views with a typical 50% overhead compared to equivalent 2D content, and can provide full 1080p resolution backward compatibility with current 2D Blu-ray Disc players. The specification also incorporates enhanced graphic features for 3D. These features provide a new experience for users, enabling navigation using 3D graphic menus and displaying 3D subtitles positioned in 3D video.”
The new logo:
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An Israeli company, High Definition Israel or HDi, has introduced couple of interesting Blu-ray players. In addition to playing Blu-ray movies, the players support MKV and DivX files as well as BitTorrent downloads.
HDi has two product families, Dune HD Center and Dune BD Prime, both with four models for different network connection and external hard drive setups. With Dune BD Prime you can choose between the base model, one with WiFi 802.11n, one with Gigabit ethernet, and one with two eSATA ports. In addition to the same upgrade options the more expensive Dune HD Centers feature a rack for internal SATA drives as well.
All of the players have BD Live support, 1GB of internal flash memory, BD/DVD/CD playback, three USB ports for external USB drives, support for NFS and Samba file sharing as well as support for IPTV and Internet radio.
HDi’s players have also extensive file support, including support for AVI, MKV (Matroska), M2TS, TS, MOV, MP4 and WMV files.
MPEG2, MPEG4, DivX, XVID, WMV9, VC1 and H.264/AVC video codecs and AC3 (Dolby Digital), EAC3 (Dolby Digital+), DTS, MPEG 1/2/3, AAC, LPCM, WMA, WMAPro, Dolby True HD and DTS-HD Master Audio audio codecs are supported as well. Dune BD Prime players are able to display both SSA/ASS and SRT subtitles.
The players feature HDMI and component outputs that are able to pass 1080p resolution video. Audio outputs include digital Toslink and RCA and analogue 7.1 RCA.
To make it even more impressive, all the HDi Blu-ray players also feature a BitTorrent client and a Gecko-based web browser.
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