Is WD TV Live required with WD Mybook World Edition for streaming?

[Bernara]

I have a WD MyBook World Edition NAS and have recently acquired a Panasonic P42G20 TV, connected to my router via Homeplug. Streaming seems to work although a number of files do not appear to be supported (eg .MOV from a Panasonic camera, some .AVI, etc) - this may be CODEC related and I will investigate further.

Since this NAS already has Twonky built in, is there any advantage to adding a WD TV Live box?

Thanks

 

[next010]

You can use any NAS that supports SMB (Samba) network shares with the WDTV Live so yeah not a problem. It can also read UPnP/DLNA servers like Twonky.

As to the TV Panasonic have one of the worst levels of media support in their DLNA equipped devices so basically thats why almost nothing plays on it. A WDTV Live will rectify the media compatibility problem.

 

[Bernara]

Thanks Next010 - the Panasonic has a great picture, but you are right, their media and Internet support leaves a lot to be desired. I'll stick with the music and the photos for now, and if video display becomes important, then maybe a WDTV Live will be the way to go

Cheers

 

[next010]

If you can live with all the media being on the PC you can use a DLNA transcoder like Mezzmo which converts the media in real time so it will work on the TV. But as I said the media cannot reside on the NAS it must be on the PC otherwise it cannot read the media fast enough to convert in real time properly.

 

[nacmacfeegle]

Bernara, you are not tied to using the WDTV Live with the Worldbook, you can use other devices from other makers.

 

[Bernara]

Thanks for the feed back. I have installed Mezzmo and the videos stored on my desktop play fine on the Panasonic TV, although Mezzmo seems to have hung a couple of times.

However, I understand that the WD Mybook NAS has a version of Twonky Manager built in, so I am a bit confused as to why videos stored there do not all play on the TV.

Cheers

 

[next010]

Mezzmo is a video transcoder, it converts the video in real time into MPEG-2 thereby making it work on the Panasonic TV. The DLNA server built into the NAS has no transcoding feature & also lacks the processing power required for it.

 

[Bernara]

Got it!

Thanks for that - it's appreciated. I now know how to display all my local media on the TV.

The next thing is for Panasonic to update their collection of widgets so there is more Internet capability - iPlayer and 4OD would be nice.