THE #1 AV NEWS PUBLICATION. PERIOD.

Western Digital Releases Latest Addition to its Streaming Media family, with Spotify to Boot

Western Digital ’s latest edition to its WD TV Live series is ready for your streaming media fix. This latest version comes with their latest UI and Spotify! If you’re not familiar with the most popular Streaming Audio service in the world, follow the link above and give it a whirl. It’s completely free (on your desktop), and you find out that the desktop format isn’t enough Spotify for you and your friends, you can always give the good people over at Spotify exactly one Disco Hamilton a month and go mobile, not be bothered by adds, get higher quality music, etc. The only thing I see that may or may not be a downside to using Spotify is that you must have a Facebook account to use their service. And most people (that I know anyway) already have an account, but not everyone does, nor do they care to.

WD’s latest set top box will run you twenty of your hard earned Ninja Lincoln ’s, which isn’t that bad for what this little black box is capable of accomplishing. I personally don’t have this version of the box, but have many friends with their predecessors. The most common thing I have noticed  with all of them, is that, not only do they sell like hot cakes, they also burn as hot (I burned my hand on one, yep, true story). Other than that, they are great for a slew of streaming media services. I just hope that these don’t run as hot as their siblings do.

The new UI is easy to navigate, and easy on the eyes, two of the most important things (IMO) to any system.

Like many other streaming media players for the creative currency price I mentioned above, it lacks a hard drive, and that makes me a sad panda. Luckily, WD just so happens to make some external hard drives for you to use and this would be a great reason to get one. So if you’re going to buy a WD TV Live, you might as well buy one of their drives too. Now you don’t have to buy WD’s drive (because this isn’t highlander, and there are clearly more than one manufacturer for external hard drives), but I am going to go out on a limb here a say, an external hard drive is much like a moving buddy, if you don’t have one, get one.

Top