Humax vs WDTVlive

[swamprat96]

I've struggled with the media capabilities of the Humax now for 2 years. Whilst the TV guide is excellent of course and its Free to air TV capability is also very good I will be keeping it for these capabilities only

I have been trialling a WD TV live. A $100 box that plays anything- right up to 1080p no pause no lag. All the formats that the Humax can't play it does. It doesn't have any local storage- because it doesn't need it. It connects to anything- NAS, PC Mac seamlessly. It has multiple network protocols. Its menu is not as slick as the Humax- but with a Harmony remote totally family friendly. It can handle  3000 track playlists without crashing

My point is- that media capabilities are obviously not that hard to do. The WD price indicates that it's not that expensive to deliver either. Humax should be able to deliver decent media capability for the price the Humax units are.

Ah to have one box that does it all eh Ice :) (and no - two HTPC's have proven that option not viable too)

[carlprowse]

We also like our Humax for its basic PVR capabilities. We used to use it for iView, but there was one firmware version where iView was dodgy (high tech term). Its ability to play files from other sources was patchy at best. So I did ponder purchase of the WD TV live.

Further investigations found that our Sony BluRay player could cope with most file types I threw at it via the USB port.  so I delayed the purchase. Them we purchased a new Samsung TV. It plays almost any file type, and provided a robust version of iView. We also have an AppleTV that allows most media types to be airplayed via apps on the iPhone or iPad

All these devices do part of the overall task. No one item is a complete solution. There is massive duplication. (YouTube everywhere). All the device are underpowered. (Eg. Just try copying  files from the Humax to an external drive. Moving large media files is not a trivial exercise)

Every device requires time periodically to sort out updates, bugs, communication issues etc. it is like there is a device tax on your time. So, it is hard to justify yet another media playing gadget. Hopefully next time we need to replace what we have, then a good, powerful, flexible, all-in-one solution is available.

[swamprat96]

Yeh I have a smart TV but it's a pig to use and slow.  Can't be bothered with Apple TV as it's too proprietary and locked with Drm.
The wd live is now integrated and working well.  It has one issue so far in that it seems to only queue 64 music tracks. (resolved) But apart from that flawless.