WESTERN DIGITAL TV LIVEPrice: Rs 7,999
If you are stuck with an old colour television which you do not want to get rid of, or just bought a flat screen TV which you later discovered was not that smart, the Western Digital TV Live might be the gadget for you. For us the best feature of this device was its composite AV cable which lets it connect to a pre-digital era television, the proverbial idiot box. But our attempts to make the old TV into a smart one just did not work, for the composite cable seemed as confused as the television.
However, when plugged into an LCD via the HDMI cable, the unit worked fine. It can play most file types-along with subtitles-from an external storage device or pen drive through the USB, but sadly has no storage of its own. The unit can also link to a Wi-Fi network to access the Net through on-board apps like Facebook and YouTube. You can also link it to the home network using Ethernet. The interface is easy to use and navigate, but for all typing you have just the remote, which is not QWERTY.
However, there are long pauses when you are trying to do stuff with the unit and strangely, the files in the pen drive we used showed up only in the files section and not in photos, music or videos. There is also an RSS reader among the tabs, though we are not sure people will actually use it. The WD Live TV is a good product, but maybe a year behind schedule.
BAG IT OR JUNK IT? Pricey and old fashioned.
Courtesy: Gadgets and Gizmos
