I've been thinking about replacing my HTPCs with WD TV Lives. I think these little boxes will require no maintance where as PCs always do. Also, i've been having problems with my player software. For example, one box all of a sudden won't play files whose audio DTS-HD Master Audio when I use my mkv player. I don't know why...it used to do it...now I have to gigger around with it to figure what is wrong. And then PowerDVD Ultra is always acting up and stuff, so I'm tired of it. And since I have two of these...and Windows wants to update all the time...and drivers want to update...Argh. Too much stuff to do.
So, I'm looking at streaming boxes and the WD TV live comes to mind. I see it can handle all the file formats I need, which are mainly MKV, ISO (blu-ray) and DVD into folders. I use MyMovies as a means to bring down all the cover art needed, so all the content is stored in folders that have the appropriate fan art. I have some 40TB of media ripped. I keep this on a windows PC with the drives shared on my network. The various drives contain nothing but the media arranged in folders with fanart.
So, first question is how do I get WDTV to see it?
Second question is does the WDTV live support high-resolution lossless audio formats like TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio? This is very important to me as I buy blu-rays for this reason. I could not find clear wording that says both are supported.
Third, and I will check Youtube for this, but how does the WDTV Live display your ripped content on screen? Does it have internal storage of some kind so it can remember what you have? I have a bunch of hard drives...once they fill up the content on them doesn't change. I'm currently using Windows Media Center to see my content. Big long menus with fancy backgrounds and such. TV shows pop up by season, then episode, etc. Very nice. MyMovies maintains the database behind Media Center to make all of this work. It runs on each of my HTPC and on the PC that serves up the media. I don't mind leaving it as long as I get something similar to replace it. Having to root through zillions of folders and drives is not my idea of fun.
Thanks for any info anyone can provide on these points.