The Western Digital WD TV Live HD Media Player (Model # WDBAAN0000NBK-NESN) is truly a great value for your money, especially if you have a lower budget for a media streamer, and has some of the most popular capabilities and features out on the market today. Highly rated by its owners because it is easy to use and for the functionality it provides, the WD TV Live is an extremely popular media player. Released late in the fall 2009, Western Digital added some upgrades to the Western Digital WD TV, the previous version. The WD TV Live HD Media Player plays video up to TrueHD 1080p and has digital sound with Dolby Digital. The biggest improvement was to the menu system making it easier to select your media.

WD TV Live Network Ready HD Media Player

Priced at: $119.99 USD

The Western Digital WD TV Live gives you the ability to stream your media files like video, music, and photos from your digital media player to your home theater entertainment system. The WD TV Live unfortunately does not come with an internal hard drive from the manufacturer, so you will have to connect it to an external USB mass storage device (UMD) or your existing wireless home network. There is a recommended external hard drive from the manufacturer, the Western Digital My Book Essential 1 terabyte model, which will give you loads of space for your media files. So your WD TV must be hard wired to your home network, or there is also a wireless adapter, the Linksys Range Plus Wireless USB Compact Adapter is recommended by Western Digital, that will give you the ability to go wireless and stream your media anywhere in your house.

Either wired or wireless this digital media player has it's competition cut out for it. It is very similar to the Patriot Box Office HD and the HDX1000 Network Media Tank, but it doesn't offer the feature of adding your own internal hard drive to the media player itself. If this isn't a concern then the WD TV Live is really a fantastic media player. It offers the latest and greatest including 1080p true high definition through HDMI and Dolby Digital and DTS Encoders. Here are the goods, on the WD TV Live:

* HDMI 1.3 port (Supports 1080p TrueHD)

* External hard drives can be connected directly via USB

* USB port for USB drives

* Audio Supported: WMA, WAV/PCM/LPCM, MP3, FLAC, AIF/AIFF, AAC, MKA, OGG, Dolby Digital, and DTS

* Videos Formats: MP4/MOV (MPEG4, h.264), WMV9, M2TS, MPG/MPEG, VOB AVI (Xvid, AVC, MPEG 1/2/4) MKV (h.264, x.264, AVC, MPEG1/2/4, VC-1) TS/TP/M2T (MPEG1/2/4, AVC, VC-1)

Photo formats: GIF, TIF/TIFF, JPEG, BMP, PNG

* Connections: Audio: S/PDIF Optical Digital Audio; Video: HDMI v1.3 (up to 1080p), Composite Video Out; Other: 10/100 Ethernet.

* Remote Control.