LG Smart Upgrade

[OilKiller]

Has anyone bought one of these? I saw it at FS on the weekend and it looked pretty cool:

http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/produ...18a030ac43en02

I've read some reviews and all say it streams very well and plays every format they have thrown at it. I might replace my WDTV player with this, as I have one of the first models that requires things be copied to a flash drive and then played back from there.

[Rathji]

Before reading the description, I was going to suggest a jail broken Apple TV, but that doesn't seem that bad.

Turns your TV into a Web PC essentially.

[OilKiller]

Yeah, it seems pretty cool and like I said, it would appear to play just about anything. If I had the money right now I would pick one up. Today is the last day of the sale, then it goes up $50. I'm sure it will go on sale again though.

[OilKiller]

Well, we bought one of these yesterday. It's going back today. It is a POS.

There really was no help whatsoever on getting this thing setup. After finally figuring it out, I got it online and it said there was an update for the firmware. Tried the update 5 times, it failed each time. Finally did a little searching online and found the firmware that I could download and instructions for updating via USB. That worked.

Tried over and over again to create an LG sign in account. Kept failing to create the new account. Finally got that to happen. This is so you could download apps, etc. I set it up to use wireless since our TV is on a different level from our router and comps. I have other wireless devices in our place that work great. This thing was useless via wireless, which is one of the reasons why I bought it. You had better get used to seeing it spin it's wheels while it thinks about the action you just told it to do. Sometimes the media server would be there, other times not. When I finally got to browse the media server (Nero software that came with the unit), I chose a video file to play back. It would barely play and was so choppy that it was unwatchable.

So we decided we would copy some of the media files to a USB and playback that way. We copied about 10 episodes of this one show I had downloaded. It skipped over the first two episodes (guess it didn't like them or something) with no warning whatsoever. When the playback of the show was done I hit stop (because this thing just keeps playing whatever is on the USB without stopping between media files - which I found annoying as well) and went back to the menu. I saw that the third episode was highlighted, which seemed strange. I scrolled up to the first episode and hit play and it was the same episode as what we had just watched. Tried the second episode, same thing. Basically it was skipping those first two (without any warning or anything) and started to play the third episode. I went to my comp to double check and indeed, the first two episodes were different from the third, so that's exactly what this media player was doing. When you are playing back the media file, it does not display the name on the information either, so there was no way to know this until I did the above steps.

The software is extremely glitchy. I had to unplug the unit numerous times just to get it back to a state that I could use it. Also, whoever wrote the dialogs and the information within the unit, well, English was not their language of choice. The wording and grammar is atrocious.

So long story short, it is going back to FS for a refund today. My wife wouldn't even use this thing. It is simply a POS. Thought anyone who was looking at purchasing this unit might want to know how it is. We are headed to Memory Express today to buy the WDTV Live Plus Media Player with an ASUS USB Wireless Adapter. Already placed my order and will pick it up in store. It turns out to be about $30 more, but I'm sure it will be worth it as we have a first generation WDTV Media Player and have always liked it. I just don't like the fact that it won't playback some media occasionally. I'm also curious if the Wireless will be any better on this one. Sure hope so.

[FireInTheHole]

Originally Posted by OilKiller

Well, we bought one of these yesterday. It's going back today. It is a POS.

There really was no help whatsoever on getting this thing setup. After finally figuring it out, I got it online and it said there was an update for the firmware. Tried the update 5 times, it failed each time. Finally did a little searching online and found the firmware that I could download and instructions for updating via USB. That worked.

Tried over and over again to create an LG sign in account. Kept failing to create the new account. Finally got that to happen. This is so you could download apps, etc. I set it up to use wireless since our TV is on a different level from our router and comps. I have other wireless devices in our place that work great. This thing was useless via wireless, which is one of the reasons why I bought it. You had better get used to seeing it spin it's wheels while it thinks about the action you just told it to do. Sometimes the media server would be there, other times not. When I finally got to browse the media server (Nero software that came with the unit), I chose a video file to play back. It would barely play and was so choppy that it was unwatchable.

So we decided we would copy some of the media files to a USB and playback that way. We copied about 10 episodes of this one show I had downloaded. It skipped over the first two episodes (guess it didn't like them or something) with no warning whatsoever. When the playback of the show was done I hit stop (because this thing just keeps playing whatever is on the USB without stopping between media files - which I found annoying as well) and went back to the menu. I saw that the third episode was highlighted, which seemed strange. I scrolled up to the first episode and hit play and it was the same episode as what we had just watched. Tried the second episode, same thing. Basically it was skipping those first two (without any warning or anything) and started to play the third episode. I went to my comp to double check and indeed, the first two episodes were different from the third, so that's exactly what this media player was doing. When you are playing back the media file, it does not display the name on the information either, so there was no way to know this until I did the above steps.

The software is extremely glitchy. I had to unplug the unit numerous times just to get it back to a state that I could use it. Also, whoever wrote the dialogs and the information within the unit, well, English was not their language of choice. The wording and grammar is atrocious.

So long story short, it is going back to FS for a refund today. My wife wouldn't even use this thing. It is simply a POS. Thought anyone who was looking at purchasing this unit might want to know how it is. We are headed to Memory Express today to buy the WDTV Live Plus Media Player with an ASUS USB Wireless Adapter. Already placed my order and will pick it up in store. It turns out to be about $30 more, but I'm sure it will be worth it as we have a first generation WDTV Media Player and have always liked it. I just don't like the fact that it won't playback some media occasionally. I'm also curious if the Wireless will be any better on this one. Sure hope so.

I was looking at one of the LG Smart boxes... glad I didn't get one now. I would love to hear how the new WDTV works for you.

[OilKiller]

Originally Posted by FireInTheHole

I was looking at one of the LG Smart boxes... glad I didn't get one now. I would love to hear how the new WDTV works for you.

Bought the new one. Decided not to buy the wireless add-on because everything I have read says HD content simply can't be streamed wireless.

It went back as well. It couldn't play the content that we can already play on the first generation WDTV media player that we have. I downloaded some episodes of Pawn Stars as well as the current season of Weeds. The Pawn Stars would play on the LG. Would not play on the new WDTV and will not play on the first generation WDTV. I didn't try the Weeds episodes on the LG, but they would not play on the new WDTV player, while they playback just fine on our first generation one.

Seems to be hit or miss. These are all MKV files. Didn't seem like a smart upgrade for us though to pay $99 for the new WDTV when our current one played back more content than it would, so we are sticking with our current model for now.