Question 1

is this unit wifi?

Accepted Answer

Yes its wifi. I was unsure when I bought it but it works like a charm. Plug it in, use the remote to enter the wifi password of your home network and that's it. It'll prompt for a firm where update which takes like 10mins but the device is awesome. You can use this on an old crt style tv with composite inputs or newer HD models. I plan to buy another.

Question 2

I am looking for a product that I will accept a thumb drive containing an mpeg 4 file that will connect directly to my Asus IPS monitor to play the video via an HDMI cable (so I do not have to tie up my laptop will this product be able to help me with this?

Accepted Answer

This player will play almost all types of mp4 files from a flash drive. It has a usb socket. It will play "plain mp4" and Advanced Video Codec (H.264) encoded MP4 files. I connected it to the network at my place of business and it can play from network shares. It isn't the fastest player when navigating between different shared folders, but it gets the job done.  I bought about five different media players for a project at work and this one was probably the best. Asus made an "OK" one but it wasn't quite as smooth playing a few HDTV MP4 AVC files. It does not have a TV tuner (no surprise). I don't use any of the streaming services, but it appears to support all the major ones. I wouldn't connect this or any player through WIFI if you want to stream HD movies. The ethernet jack is the way to go.

Question 3

does this player play .vob and .avi files?

Accepted Answer

Yes, but ensure that you have something that is able to decode DTS audio, or that you have the ability to reencode DTS audio into another audio format.

Question 4

Will this be able to pick up the stream sent Silicon Dusts HDHomerun Prime, so that I can play that stream on my TV?

Accepted Answer

If your HDHomerun Prime is like my HD Homerun, it doesn't technically "stream" the live TV channels. It simply makes the real-time HDTV broadcast available via a network for a player with broadcast HDTV tuner capabilities. No WD TV player can decode HDTV broadcasts. At least the three WD players I own can't, which includes this WDTV TV Play. The HDTV broadcast has to be saved to disc and converted to a file format the WE TV Play supports, like mp4 AVC.

Question 5

Does the built-in WiFi adapter use the 5 Ghz wireless band or only 2.4?

Accepted Answer

I do not know about the frequency that the wd media player uses but I will check. I plugged in the media player and it found my wi-fi and locked onto it without a problem.

Question 6

Can you use this to duplicate / extend your computer's display via wifi?

Thanks very much!

Accepted Answer

No but it can be used to stream files from your PC through the network. You can watch all your movies, music and photos on your PC from this box. It won't duplicate or extend your PC screen. You need something like Chromecast or a similar item to do that.

Question 7

Does it require or use WI DI ?

Accepted Answer

Spelling error? I presume you  mean wi-fi. Not required, but supposed to be usable. I have mine on an ethernet cable to the router. Works great for streaming all my movies on the laptop, on the hard drive connected through the USB port, and I can unplug the hard drive and sub a thumb drive.

Question 8

Can this stream FLAC audio files from a NAS into an AV receiver?

Accepted Answer

As this device has compatible with FLAC files, I think  that you  could down stream FLAC files into WD TV (home network) to play on AV receiver by connecting by HDMI or OPTICAL DIGITAL cable  (no RCA AV cable)
I did not stream music files yet but video clips, pictures ...yes. 
We could stream them from NAS (connected to router) or other computers in home network to play on WDTV and listen from TV or AV receiver

Question 9

does anybody have issues with videos freezing when playing off USB?

Accepted Answer

My only experience with the use of the usb port was was watching 2 bluray movies from the iso file. Had no freezes during either movie. I have used in primarily as a media streamer playing tv episodes from my computer.

Question 10

Is it Wi-Fi enabled? Does it stream movies through the network like WDTV Live?

Accepted Answer

The player can connect to either a wired (RJ45) or wireless (Wifi) network. I use mine to stream Netflix and Vudu, both over Wifi. There are a bunch of apps for other services, but I haven't tried any of them.

The player has composite video plus L and R audio (yellow, red and white RCA jacks) and an HDMI output to connect to your TV. There's also an optical audio output.

I get a lot of use out of mine and have no complaints.

Brand	Western Digital
Model	WDBMBA0000NBK-HESN

Type	Digital Media Streamer
Specifications	Interfaces: Ethernet USB 2.0 (input) HDMI (output) Composite A/V (output) Optical SPDIF (output) RoHS compliant: Yes AC input voltage: 100~240 V AC input frequency: 50~60 Hz, 0.5A Max Output power rating: 12VDC/1.5A Max Dimension: 4.17" x 4.13" x 1.07" Weight: 0.32 lbs. Playlist: PLS, M3U, WPL, M3U8, XML, CUE Subtitle: SRT, ASS, SSA, SUB, SMI, MKV (embedded sub) Languages Supported User Interface: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Russian, Turkish, Hebrew, Arabic, Polish, Czech, Dutch, Swedish, Hungarian Subtitles: English, Dutch, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Arabic, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Greek, Hebrew, Turkish, Czech, Slovakian, Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Ukrainian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Hindi, Malay/Bahasa Multi-Lingual Input: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Polish, Swedish, Norwegian, Hungarian

Video Format	AVI (Xvid, AVC, MPEG4, VC-1), MKV (h.264, x.264, AVC, MPEG4, VC-1) TS/TP/M2T/M2TS (MPEG4, AVC, VC-1),MP4/MOV (MPEG4, AVC), WMV9, FLV (AVC)
Audio	MP3, WAV/PCM/LPCM, WMA, AAC, FLAC, MKA, AIF/AIFF, OGG, Dolby TrueHD
Image Format	JPEG, GIF, TIF/TIFF, BMP, PNG

WD TV Play Media Player WDBMBA0000NBK-HESN

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Item#: N82E16815140004