[quote=stockstradr]My media center requirements are pretty low…But, I’ve been pretty happy with this thing.
Now we’re talking. That’s good advice. A lot of my co-workers buying these also. They mentioned buying is ASUS (O!Play)…but now I read the reviews for the WD Media Player which is your recommendation it has stronger reviews in the forum, looks better.
I will probably buy the WD Media Player[/quote]
Whoops: provided the wrong link. I meant to link to the first generation. I have the generation 1 (which doesn’t have direct network capabilities. But mine’s running a custom linux kernel that uses a USB->wifi dongle. But generation 2 live should be even better.
I think the biggest benefit is I can switch it around from tv to tv, bring it with me if I’m visiting my parents in L.A. or ideally when/if I get around to it. There are a lot of drawbacks, a lot of the formats aren’t supported out of the box (unless you hack it).
WD pretty much has a pretty good policy on folks that want to customize. I think the source code is completely available.
I really like this company, both from their storage solutions to their now media play. I just wish they were as leader in *affordable* SSD. Some of the WDTV developers use to help out on the other hacked projects. Some of the hacked version came up with some cool features too.
The official firmware in the WD TV is based on Linux. Due to the GPL license on Linux, Western Digital is legally required to provide the source code of their modified Linux. A download package is available on the WD support site.
Based on this information, a group of technically skilled WD TV owners started working in Jan 2009 on ways to modify the firmware, and add useful features. Discussion is happening on the AVSForum thread and (more recently) in a wdtvforum.com sub-forum, and they are sharing info and firmware releases on their own WDTV hacking wiki. (Wiki is currently moving)
Not all of the official firmware is open source though. Especially the modules related to the Sigma Designs SMP8634/5 chipset, with the audio/video signal processing, is closed source and only distributed as a compiled binary. As such, it’s currently not expected that audio/video features (e.g. codec support) can be modified. But anything related to the Linux OS itself, may be modifiable.
Some of the features already added:
* connect to wired network via a Ethernet-to-USB device
* connect to wireless network (experimental)
* mount network attached storage (Samba, NFS, SMB) and stream video (reported speeds around 20-60Mbit/s, fastest with NFS)
* run a light webserver and execute PHP pages, e.g. to mount network drives
* run SSH, telnet, ftp servers
* run other software which can be added as separate (not part of firmware) “app.bin” packages
* support additional file systems, especially ext2, ext3
* support for attaching external USB-connected optical drives (i.e. CD/DVD players)
* modifications of the theme (background images, etc)
Currently, 3 different “branches” exist:
* WDLXTV and DVDMOD (maintainer b-rad) are permanently flashed to the WDTV. As such, they are limited by the ROM size of the WDTV. The core features are easily extended using add-on packages (“app.bin”). More info: b-rad.cc (>> dvdmod & wdlxtv) & hacking wiki.
* ext3-boot (maintainer Zorander) writes a modified boot manager to the WDTV. During bootup this will read the main (custom) firmware file from a connected memory stick or disk. As such, it doesn’t have the memory limitations of permanently flashed firmware, and contains more add-on packages included in the release. You need to keep the storage with the firmware file permanently inserted in the WDTV though (to be confirmed – at least you need it inserted on every reboot). Most upgrades can be done by updating the firmware file on external storage, without needing to re-flash the WDTV. More info: hacking wiki.
Roughly speaking, WDLXTV and ext3-boot enable about the same features. DVDMOD has no network connectivity.
These unofficial firmwares are under active development. This page will be updated when there are major milestones to report. For day to day updates, you can follow their discussion thread or wiki.
