The demand for media players are increasing,
as they are now highly affordable and moreover are capable of playing
full HD 1080p videos. But what you get from any media player is just
basic playback of 5.1-channel audio, HD video and photos. If they are
network-enabled, you can stream media content from the Internet, too.
These include YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, Flickr, Weather, Radio and a few
more. What you did not know is that some of these media players have
the ability to do much more than conventional HD media players by
installing a third-party firmware. It is a similar environment when you
install DDWRT firmware on a regular wireless router and tap additional
features and functions, such as high wireless power boost, bridge modes,
repeater modes, Bittorrent, FTP service and much more.
At present, Western Digital WDTV series of media players can be
flashed with open-source firmware called WDLXTV to tap a lot of features
and enable the media player to do more than what it is supposed to do.
In this workshop, we shall show you how to flash the firmware of the
WDTV live HD media player with WDLXTV and enable additional features
that you can use.
Here are some features that can be enabled using WDLXTV:
Here are some features that can be enabled using WDLXTV:
- Bittorrent client (rtorrent + rutorrent)
- Usenet download client (nzbget)
- DAAP/Roku server (through mt-daapd)
- NFS sharing (client and server)
- User-generated movie sheets
- Apache web server
- FTP server
- SSH server
- Streaming from online sources through third-party plugins, allows you access to services such as Picasa, Grooveshark, Apple Trailers, and much more - over 30 plugins available at this time
- Shoutcast
- YoutubeHD
- Custom applications through app.bin or Optware, adding applications such as Asterisk, Mediatomb, etc...
- WDTVExt, allowing custom plugins that can alter the functionality of the Third party OSD themes
- Custom wallpaper and screen saver image
- Customizable IR remote functions+
Requirements:
- A WDTV Live HD media player
- A 512 MB USB pen drive (minimum)
- A desktop PC An internet connection
You first need to download the latest firmware for your WDTV live. You may choose to flash it or update your WDTV from the Internet, but we shall not need it as we are going to install the WDLXTV firmware on it. You might need the original firmware, in case you plan to re-flash it to the original firmware. You can download the firmware from ‘forum.wdlxtv.com’ and it is available under the thread ‘Board index - General Information - Firmware Releases - WDTV Live’. The latest firmware, as of today is the ‘1.05.04_V-WDLXTV-Live-0.5.1.1’ version. Those who have another version of the WDTV live can also try out this workshop, but will have to find the right firmware from the forum website and check if it is compatible with your model type. There are two types of firmware for each player and each version. The one which mentions 'Flash' will flash the firmware permanently, while the one which states 'Non-flash' will boot from the USB pen drive and will not affect the original firmware in the player. You may try any one you wish. We shall show you the flash version. Download the flash version from the link on the forum or simply click here. The file is around 106 MB and is a zip file. Once you have downloaded the file, extract the contents on your desktop in a new folder.