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.
Result for: test version
According to figures published by Enterbrain, Nintendo’s DSi handheld console has sold more than 3 million units in Japan since its launch in November 2008. The latest version in the DS series was marked as having moved 3,062,920 units as of August 2, showing that the sales milestone for the device was achieved in nine months on the market.
In Nintendo’s quarterly results published last week, the company noted that 3.65 million DSi units had been sold in the three months ending June 30th, part of the total 6.68 million units sold to date.
In the NPD figures for June 2009, a particularly bad month for the industry, Nintendo noted that 424,000 units of the total 766,000 DS units sold (representing more unit sales than all other consoles combined) were of the new DSi model.
Several days ago, Nintendo also announced the integration of Facebook into the DSi console via a firmware update, allowing users to upload pictures taken on the handheld gadget to a Facebook profile.
Result for: test version
Microsoft has come out in defense of the much-anticipated Windows 7 operating system after a number of blogs and other sources flaunted a discovered bug as a potential “show-stopper”. Some had reported that a bug with the operating system’s CHKDSK utility could delay the planned rollout, which is being watched closely as hopes are high of Windows 7 providing a much needed jab in the arm for the PC industry.
Screenshots of the Windows Task Manager depicting the CHKDSK process eating up several gigabytes of memory (apparently leading to a BSOD in cases) have circulated around the blogosphere, but Microsoft is denying that the bug is in the Windows software. Instead, Microsoft is pointing at a chipset controller issue as the culprit and advising customers to update their chipset drivers to the latest versions providing by the motherboard manufacturer.
Microsoft’s Windows division President Steven Sinofsky said that the company has not reproduced the crash or experienced any crashes with CHKDSK in any measurable number. “While we appreciate the drama of ‘critical bug’ and then the pickup of ’showstopper’ that I’ve seen, we might take a step back and realize that this might not have that defcon level,” he said.
He continued: “Bugs that are so severe as to require immediate patches and attention would have to have no workarounds and would generally be such that a large set of people would run across them in the normal course of using their PC.” Sinofsky went on to say that this is not a big issue but that Microsoft will continue to pursue and investigate any issues with Windows 7 if/as they arise.
