Western Digital WD TV Live Plus HD Media Player

When my secondary Xbox 360 went all RROD on me, I had to move on and figure something else out.  Shelling out a couple hundred dollars to watch TV an hour or so a day wasn't really worth it to me.  Besides, I'm not gaming in my bedroom, so it seemed pointless to me to fork over dough for something I wasn't going to be using for its true purpose.  

In comes the deal I got for the Western Digital WD TV Live Plus HD Media Player.  Best Buy regularly had it for $129 but was running a special on it for $99.  Throw in the gift card I got for my birthday for Best Buy and the deal was on!  

Hooking it up to my TV was a breeze.  The only thing I didn't have was an HDMI cable, so I went the Component cable route instead.  720p vs 1080p isn't a huge deal in the bedroom... especially since the videos I wanted to stream from my home server weren't in 1080p anyways.  

The interface was easy to navigate through for the most part.  When booting it up, I was notified immediately of a new firmware that was found.  Prior to downloading this, I wanted to cruise around it and see if it was something that I wanted to keep.  It found my home shares on the network without issue, which was nice.  It also found my Media Center PC's recorded TV drive.  I decided to play a recorded show... no dice.  The picture came up nice and clear, but within 5 seconds, the audio started getting choppy and the video started slowing down frame by frame.  Not good.  

I decided to look for my PlayOn media streamer.  It found this without issue - even though the WD TV isn't on PlayOn's list of supported devices!  I was actually VERY pleased when I started playing a show.  It actually queued up MUCH quicker than I had ever experienced through the Xbox 360!  This alone was a huge benefit!

Next, I decided to try to play a ripped AVI movie I had on my Home Server.  It found these folders without issue and played video back quite nicely.  What was left?  Upgrade the firmware, of course and take advantage of other new features!  Besides - maybe the firmware added support for Windows Recorded TV Media (WTV files).

Well - the upgrade went off without a hitch.  Only problem was that it didn't seem to fix the playback of WTV files.  OK - let's look around and see what other new features were included with the new firmware.  Facebook?  Nice!  Twitter?  Nice!  Plus, there were many other Internet based sites available natively on the box now!  

OK - enough playing around - time to watch Conan through PlayOn... What?  No media found in the PlayOn folder?  You're kidding me?  It was working before!  Let me go to my Media Center PC and restart the PlayOn service... still no dice!?!?  Let me look for an updated PlayOn server file... nope.  How about rebooting the computer.  Something surely isn't right here.  Still no dice...

Well - I decided to let Google be my friend.  Here it is - some firmwares released by WD disable some features people find useful - particularly PlayOn!  This is not acceptable!  

So, I found a nice forum online that lets me download previous versions of WD Firmware.  I downloaded it easy enough, modified a version file to trick the box into thinking there was a new firmware and I was on my way.  

Rebooting after downgrading the firmware resulted in PlayOn being restored!!!  Yahoo!!!  But, now I don't have Facebook... not a huge loss, but it is a loss nonetheless...  

Now - I've got to figure out if I want to keep this $100 box to watch ripped movies and PlayOn streaming content or if I really want to take advantage of something that will play WTV files to watch the shows we typically watch in bed - recorded shows and fast forward through the commercials.  

Now all I have to do is find something that will do that for the same budget I've been looking at.  A Blu-ray player may do it, but those aren't at the price point I'm looking at...  Google TV is supposed to be really cool, but those are up at the Xbox price level...  

Back to Google to do some more research and see if I can find something else that will work for me... I guess I could always convert the WTV files to something a little more friendly, but that takes time and resources and more hard drive space... Back to the drawing board before my return window runs out...

Google 1, Me 0

Well... Google decided I wasn't important enough to reinstate my AdSense account... oh well.  I'm not too heartbroken over it anyways.  It would have been nice to get a personal email explaining their reasoning, but I trust them - there is a reason that they are so popular and successful.

On to the rest of my life, I guess!

I'm a Bad Boy!

So...  I just got back into posting blogs a couple of weeks ago after returning from a 10 day Hawaiian vacation.  In my excitement to go back, I noticed while reading my own blog, that I had little "Google ads" on the side of my blog with links to places in Hawaii and other vacation destinations.  I figured - Hey - I'm ready to start planning my next trip!  Why not click and see what deals there are?!?  Well... I guess that violates Google's AdSense terms of service.  You are not allowed to click on your own ads on your own blog or website.  Without any warning, I received a notification from Google that my AdSense account is suspended.  What?  After ready why - invalid clicks, I realized I had violated their terms of service.

I explained myself in my appeals form, so hopefully I'll get it back.  Not like I have a ton of traffic to my site or anything, but I thought it would be a nice little chunk of spending money...  Oh well - time will only tell if my appeal is accepted...

Oh - and if you are reading this, my dear friends at Google - please accept my sincere apology.  I know I have read the TOS in the past, but this was an honest mistake!!!  Thanks!!!

Being My Own Cable TV Provider

So, it all started about two and a half years ago. I was fed up with the idea of how much we were paying for our Dish Network Satellite TV Service, the crummy customer service we were receiving from them, and the fact that I had an Xbox 360 I was getting tired of playing that was supposed to be able to stream all sorts of media.

In fact, I kept seeing menu options on the Xbox 360 for videos and "Media Center." I was curious about this and decided I wanted to dive in a little bit more to see what I could do with those options. The most information out there pertained to the fact you could download videos to the Xbox 360's hard drive. But, back then, the biggest hard drive you could get for the Xbox 360 was a 20 gigabyte one - hardly enough for a video collection!

About the same time, I had also noticed that my Windows Vista PC had a Windows Media Center built into it, but I didn't really have a use for it. I did some Googling and found that Windows Media Center and "Media Center in the Xbox 360 were one in the same. While I didn't have a TV tuner in my Vista box, I solved this quickly by picking up a USB HDTV TV Tuner stick to bring in over the air television broadcasts from my local television stations.

Converting my desktop PC into my Media Center PC was a breeze. I set up a few programs to record with the TV Tuner and I was on my way. Connecting the Xbox 360 to my Media Center PC was easy as well.

Back then, everything was basic - I had my Media Center PC recording live tv and it was streaming that content, including live TV (who watches live TV anymore, anyways!?!?) to my TV in my living room. Comparing my experience to that of Dish Network's DVR was pretty much the same - except it didn't cost me a dime in monthly service fees.

So - over the next couple of months, I "beta tested" the whole setup in the living room while using our Dish Network DVR in the bedroom at night. Things kept getting better and better as time went on. I started to realize I could stream more than live and recorded TV to my living room, but I could also convert DVD's to either .ISO's or .AVI's and watch those over my home network as well.

As time went on, I became more and more sure that we were ready to cut the cord and decommission our Dish Network service. I actually had a pretty bad back injury and was scheduled for surgery and would be confined to bed for a couple of weeks. Knowing this, I didn't really want to move my Xbox 360 upstairs. I decided it was time to either find an inexpensive "Media Center Extender" or find a used Xbox 360 to put up in the bedroom. I found a refurbished one on the Internet and got it a few days before my surgery. Getting it set up was a breeze and I was in business. After only a few days of using this in the bedroom, did I realize it was in fact time to turn Dish Network off!!!

Fast forward a couple of years now and look where I am now! I've expanded my Media Center PC to be running on a Windows 7 Ultimate PC and now have two USB HDTV TV Tuners - allowing me to record two separate shows at the same time!

I've also expanded my PC setup. I now have a Windows Home Server hosting up 6 terabytes of storage across three external hard drives. This array is actually redundantly backing up all of my family pictures across the drives, as well as storing all of my music collection, movie collection, and backing up all of the computers connected to my home network! Connected directly to my Windows 7 Ultimate TV is a 2 terabyte hard drive dedicated solely to storing my recorded TV shows at 1080p resolution. I remember looking back to my Dish Network DVR and worrying with my wife on what shows we either had to delete or watch before we ran out of room on our DVR. Now - I've got storage that I am in no danger of running out of in the near future.

But wait! That's not all!!! Not only am I able to stream my own content, but I am also able to stream content that resides on the Internet. While Netflix and Amazon are both supported by the Xbox 360, I am choosing to go the most economic route. These are pay services. I found a service - Media Mall's PlayOn that streams not only Hulu content, but content from many other providers.

This is a service that runs in the background on your computer and is recognized on your network by your Xbox 360 (or Playstation 3, Wii, and more recently Google TV). PlayOn not only natively supports streams from many providers such as CBS, MTV, PBS, YouTube, CNN, Crackle, and others, but it also supports third party plugins allowing me to view content from the History Channel, Comedy Central, Spike TV, SyFy, Fox News, Nick TV, Discovery Channel, the CW, and more!!! I was lucky enough to get in on the bleeding edge of this software back when Hulu was about the only streaming option. Just several months ago, they even released an iPhone and iPad application, allowing me to watch all of this content from anywhere in the world! I have been able to see them grow like crazy and am a huge fan of them.

So... while I am probably by no means an expert in this area, I do think I'm a pioneer in my own right in the arena of becoming my own Cable TV provider. While we still do need to pay for Internet service, we have been able to cut out television service proper.

Coming up - My review of the Western Digital TV Live Plus media streamer. My refurbished Xbox 360 in the bedroom recently went all RROD on me resulting in me resorting to my iPad for streaming through PlayOn.. although this is great, it stands to reason that if you have a 46 inch TV in your bedroom, an iPad isn't going to cut it for long!!!