Another WDTV Live Plus Update

Since Western Digital just updated the WDTV Live Plus Firmware the other day, it is time for me to give an update on the WDTV Live Plus.

First, I will mention the good news about the latest firmware update to the WDTV Live Plus. Text which was messed up or nearly unreadable in the previous firmware appear to be back to normal. And the arrow keyboard keys seem to work in most of the WDTV's Internet applications now.

But those problems mentioned in the above paragraph were problems that you shouldn't expect to have in the first place. They were the result of shoddy beta testing. Hopefully Western Digital will take more preventive steps to keep those kinds of problems from reoccurring in the future.

Now the bad news: Western Digital did little in the new firmware to increase the machine's functionality. There is the ability now to use hard drives that are greater than 2TB with the WDTV, but that is about it in terms of new features. There is no support for any other types of USB devices this time around.

Even worse is the lack of any new Internet applications, which means you still have only the 13 that Western Digital has included while Sony and Roku's media players have so many more to choose from.

Hulu Plus is already announced as coming to the WDTV, but not until "later this year" which means it might be Christmas before we ever see Hulu Plus added to the WDTV machines. That is way, way too long in a rapidly changing market. Also a problem with the WDTV right now is that some media outlets are quitting their existing services. Examples include CBS pulling content from the Flingo app and ABC News eliminating a couple of their shows from the Mediafly app. How many other organizations will pull content from the only 13 WDTV Internet apps before Western Digital actually adds some more useful Internet apps to the WDTV?

The bottom line is that Western Digital needs to start adding some more free Internet apps to the WDTV series, and they need to add them very soon (like within the next few weeks) or the WDTV machines will likely go the way of the Flip cameras in my opinion.