Media Sharing
Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: westerndigital, mybook, worldedition | Themes: Digital Entertainment
7. Media Sharing
World Edition has a built in media server for sharing music over the network via iTunes, as well as sharing music, videos and photos over the network to any media sharing device that is already on that network—this includes PCs, but also media center extenders and game consoles (like Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3). WD’s very limited documentation says this also includes digital picture frames (we assume they must be networked frames), but we were unable to find any instructions for this and were unable to get this working on our own.
But to share media with another computer or with a device connected to our TV (like either our Xbox 360 or PS3) was very simple. All I had to do was place files in folders within the shared volume called “Public,” that are labeled “Shared Videos,” “Shared Music,” and “Shared Photos,” and the networked devices would see those files immediately as I navigated through their menus.
Pictures and music were shareable without incident, but videos were a little bit trickier. MPEG4 was just about the only video file type I could get to play over the Xbox 360, for instance. .AVI files did not work. Is this WD’s fault? Probably not. Mostly likely this is a shortcoming of the Xbox 360. But a device like the Xbox 360 is probably one of the most popular and exciting ways to use this feature of the World Edition—it creates an extremely easy method for sharing this media to your television screen.
But in some ways—and you may call me extremely lazy for this comment—it is too much work to search my computers for photos and videos and songs, and put them in their respective media sharing folders. Why can’t the World Edition just, sort of, do that heavy lifting for me? Why can’t there be a sorting or searching function on the Mirror Edition’s software interface that pulls all that shareable stuff out of the mess that is my computer?
We have been exploring methods for sharing media with your television set here on Tom’s Guide. We’ve already tried using a laptop and D-Link’s Media Center Extender. But today, we’re also trying out Western Digital’s own WD TV HD product.
It seems that WD HDTV, while it doesn’t contain any storage space itself—and uses attachable USB drives to bring media to the TV—is able to sort media by type in its menu navigation. Content can be filtered by date, file type, or artist, and searches through media can be conducted by genre, title, filename, partial filename, and most recently viewed. While our reviewer gave the WD HD TV good marks, I can’t help but think that a combination of these two products—World Edition and WD HD TV—is in the cards. Really, it seems that all WD would need to do would be to stick an Ethernet jack on the WD HD TV….but maybe more finagling would be involved.
- Previous page Web Access
- Next page Performance
I have an original MBWE and the interface and mionet are just terrible. I don't know if WD still restrict that file types you can share over the net (no media files etc.) but I was much happier after I had zapped the WD stuff and used the built-in linux--http://mybookworld.wikidot.com/start
I have an original MBWE and the interface and mionet are just terrible. I don't know if WD still restrict that file types you can share over the net (no media files etc.) but I was much happier after I had zapped the WD stuff and used the built-in linux--http://mybookworld.wikidot.com/start
hpp,
Streaming filetypes was a big problem on the old version of the World Edition, but from my tests, the only limiting factor when it came to file types was what your Xbox 360/PS3/PC/etc could handle.
Rachel Rosmarin
Editor of Tom's Guide
Don't judge the new MBWE by the old one. The file system has been completely re-written, from scratch. It is much, much faster, especially on a LAN. -- Steve Morgan
It would have been nice to see some independent tests performed on the ethernet speed of this device (read:not WDC's propaganda tests). As is witnessed from the customer reviews on newegg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6822136138
the "gigabit" ethernet speeds of the first version weren't anywhere close to even 100 megabit. So a verification of this problem being fixed would have been nice.
Also, I don't get the assumption that the average "home" user would use it via wireless. Being a NAS device, it doesn't matter where you put this device in your home and for most people it's even easier to plop it down next to your router and plug it in than to put it else where and have to configure the wireless encryption on it.
To me, the whole point of a 2TB NAS would be to store all of my media files and transferring a 4GB or 8GB movie file over 54Mb wireless would render having this thing pointless. And while we're on this subject, why was wireless N not included as an option??? That would have been a lot more useful than the older and much slower b/g.
What a crappy review! The new MBWE beats all other NAS boxes for the capacity ($/GB) and performance ($/MBit/s) but they don't mention that!
Why review a product that does not have native wireless support via a wireless connection? With no comparisons?
Ok,
To make this the perfect hub in my house I would also be able to connect my printer to the device and utilize it from any PC. My printer works great and I really don't want to replace it just to get a network-ready one. Anyone working on that?
Did you actually test this with a PS3 or just an XBOX360? I ask because I cannot see any files on my PS3.
Why review a product that does not have native wireless support via a wireless connection?
[color=#F5F5FF]pret auto[/color]
if anyone knows how to get the mbwe working with the wd tv...please share...i'm cracking my head open trying to figure it out
Hi , i agree with a1exh,
The price review is comparing storage prices from Nas devices and direct attached storage but does not compare the price of this NAS with other NAS !
The Mybook World WhiteLight is one of the cheapest NAS, can stream media over dlna, have correct performance when wired. ( it will probably go thru CPL instead of wifi when streaming to your console...)
Additionnally, you can even add more features to your Mybook if you want to apply some modifications (voiding your warranty) described on some sites.