Updates on WD TV Live and comparison to Google Chromecast usage in India (Bangalore)

I have been using WD TV Live on and off and also more recently got a Google Chromecast device also so thought of updating how WD TV Live and Chromecast experience have been for online applications, streaming from India.

For earlier usage reviews you can refer to my original post here.

WD Live TV 2011 model experience

WD has been updating firmware regularly and now there are many more applications available compared to what we had in 2011. There are changes within applications like YouTube, where now we can also control videos from mobile/tablets by pairing your device. This then becomes very similar to what we do with Chromecast for playing YouTube videos.

Good application additions to WD TV Live include Euro News (euronews), CinemaNow and also Red Bull TV.

Current list of active services on WD TV Live in Asia Pacific include -

1. Facebook
2. YouTube
3. AOL HD
4. SlingPlayer
5. Tweet by WD TV
6. Flixster
7. Euronews
8. Creepster.TV
9. PlayJam Games
10. TuneIn
11. RedBull TV
12. Shoutcast Radio
13. Vimeo
14. Picasa
15. Dailymotion
16. Live 265
17. Launchpad by Flingo
18. Accu Weather
19. Yupp TV
20. WSJ Live
21. Deezer
22. XOS College Sport
23. WatchMojo
24. Comedy Time
25. American Pop Classics
26. ADC
27. All Fitness TV
28. Asian Rush
29. Cook
30. CloudMe
31. Family TV
32. GoDigital
33. Great Movies
34. Manga
35. MBC America on Demand
36. Pop Flix Classic Movies
37. Pop Flix Classic TV
38. TG Toon Goggles
39. Vanguard
40. Snag Films
41. SEC Digital Network

One of the recent Firmware releases has been 1.16.13 and detailed release notes are available from WD support site .

Link to WD Support and Download page.

Current List of Applications on Chromecast from Wikipedia Chromecast Page.
Wikipedia Chromecast Page - list of Apps

Ebay India phone buying experience / review - ebay.in Seller sankyoelectronics

Being adventurous in online shopping does not go well always!

I placed an order for a cell phone from ebay India seller sankyoelectronics who is from Chennai.

http://cgi.ebay.in/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150835286131

As per seller listing it is
Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro SK17i Mobile + Warranty
Condition "New: A brand-new, unused and undamaged item."
http://myworld.ebay.in/sankyoelectronics


Shipper/Seller Address -
Gopalakrishnan M
Sankyo Electronics
14 Periyar Street , Kulasekarapuram
Virugambakkam Chennai - 600092 
Seller phone number 044-43518526

On packing there was also a from Sticker
K J Enterprises
#27 Kasim Street Royapettah
Chennai - 600014

Surprisingly as against claimed by seller that it is a brand new unused item it was a used one without proper packing.

The product received was not in new condition. See pictures

1. Box was not sealed.
2. Company packing was missing in the box
3. All items were packed in old plastic covers with cello tape attached.
4. Phone had a lot of finger prints and marks on the body. I cleaned there was no screen damage.
5. Charger also has marks and repacked. definitely old used charger.
6. The ear phone was also old piece not the one company gives with this model.
7. Clock was already set on the phone. some one had used it earlier.

Shipment

Seal on top only

No seal on bottom. clearly opened and closed from bottom of the box

Repackaged in old cover. not fresh piece

Lots of fingerprints and marks on screen

These were the contents packed in individual old plastic covers.
No other internal packing or documentation etc. One paper only

Charger is also used  with marks on it

This is an older model Sony Ericsson HPM-60/J  not the latest  earphone that comes with this model.

Clock was already set when turned on. Cleaned the screen, there was no damage to the screen.

Product was not in brand new condition as described by seller. It is otherwise working.

I have raised an ebay case for resolution with the seller.

Original Seller Listing

Although seller has 98% positive feedback, recently few people have complained against old / missing items. I went by the positive feedback and took a chance of ordering. It ended up a bad experience. Please be careful dealing with this and similar sellers on ebay.

Seller cheated - despite his promise that he will ship new accessories like charger and earphone he did not ship. He requested that he has a review with Ebay and his business gets hurt by negative feedback and so his feedback should be changed from negative to positive. I trusted him and changed feedback. After that he stopped responding to my emails and phone calls. Never trust such seller and give them any business.

Don't trust sellers and change feedback until they fix your problem.  After you change feedback like I did for Sankyo Electronics, even Ebay does not care.

Update Nov 2012- Based on comments to my post I see that many buyers faced issues with products and quality of service from this seller. Now while browing ebay I just noted that this seller SankyoElectronics is no longer registered on ebay and his ID is deactivated.

Ebay page showing that seller is no longer registered. 

Blackberry Curve Series Phone - BB Curve 8520 after a year plus of ownership. Poor Product and Service from Blackberry India.

My first mobile phone was a Philips phone in 1998 which were followed through the years by many phones from Nokia, Sony Ericson, LG, Samsung and then around 1.5 year back a Blackberry. Blackberry usage experience has been good but the handset itself is a bad experience in terms of reliability and usable life. Never seen a phone or its parts falling apart the way this Blackberry handset did.

Blackberry was out of compulsion to access corporate emails and I settled for the modest BB Curve 8520 which was purchased through the service provider Airtel. The phone felt robust in hand had a good keyboard, dedicated music buttons, rubberized grip around the phone, couple of buttons which can be customized and had decent features and easy to use.

After around 8 months of use the rubber parts on the body started feeling rough and grainy and I thought this is regular wear and tear. After few months I started seeing few cracks on it and eventually over next few months there were more of these. After a year or so the rubber material buttons started cracking and one fine day when I tried to press a button on side to turn on the data connection there was no button. The button (which is actually just part of the molded rubber part of the body) had just cracked and fallen some where. Over next week one by one all the buttons even the ones rarely used and rubber around the buttons had just vanished.

To my surprise in my office when I looked at BB curve phones used by others many of them had faced same problem and any one having a phone for more than a year typically had buttons on their phone missing. Many even had the buttons on top (three music/mute buttons) missing. Problem with missing button, you can not control volume and many other features of the phone and also water and dust can easily go inside and phone looks ugly.

See 2 buttons of right side gone and upper volume button in process of cracking and next one shows button gone.Left side one button also gone missing.

And now the Blackberry Service in India. 

When I called service center in Bangalore I was told body etc are not covered specially when it is one year old and out of warranty. I posted a message to BB India through twitter and then said they can look into it. I also posted few pictures for them to look at and informed the fact that it is not only me and many other users who have problem and it is a design issue with the kind of material and button design being used in the Curve series of phones. BB India informed that their service partner Redington will get in touch and fix problem for me.

Redington after few followups informed me they will cosmetic upgrade (change the body) on my phone in coming days but after few days informed that phone is not sold through their channel and they can not do any thing about it and will tell BB India the same. On reminding BB again they mentioned contact the service provider. They communicate through Twitter direct message and never have really looked into the issue seriously. Curve has been one of the best sellers for Blackberry but so many users have this problem due to bad design and poor choice of material. They continue to sell Curve series of phones with this design and even the newly launched model Curve 9220 uses similar rubberized button design.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-LS5 Point & Shoot 14.1MP Digital Camera, 5x Lens

Got Panasonic Lumix DMC-LS5 Point & Shoot camera recently for not so tech savvy family members who are not comfortable with bigger cameras with many settings including my Sony HX100V. 


Key features that attracted me to this one were specifications like AA batteries, 720P video at 30 frames per second and optical image stabilization at sub Rs4000 (USD80) price point.


Panasonic DMC-LS5 Product Page


Images courtesy Panasonic product website

Due to a smaller CCD sensor (1/2.33-inch) with 14.5 Total Megapixels cramped in the image quality is not that great and with cheaper electronics response in terms of focusing is also slow. It is a very basic camera and for the price paid it is fine.


One issue I am having is that it is only working with Alkaline batteries and not with any of my NiMH rechargeable batteries. I have tried all 5-6 sets I have from various brands including Duracell and Energizer after charging fully as well. Measured voltage also and all if fine with batteries. I have report this issue to Panasonic support through an email and waiting for their response. I have not seen any one other reporting the issue yet online so may be a problem with specific unit.


Update - 
Based on voltage measurements on batteries, it does not operate if battery voltage is less than 1.5V. NiMH which has a standard voltage of 1.2V each cell should also work as per product specifications. Even some other Alkaline batteries including another set of Panasonic batteries with voltage of 1.47 volt are not able to power the camera. It appears to be a manufacturing/component defect in the power circuit of the camera.


Update - I had given camera to Panasonic service center and they claimed to have changed the power circuit and returned the camera to me after couple of days. Now it is working fine. Another thing I noticed is that camera power circuit is quite sensitive to internal resistance of the batteries. My older NiMH batteries which work in Canon cameras and other electronics do not work in this Panasonic camera. I have bought some new Sanyo Eneloop and Sony NiMH batteries which are working fine in this camera. 



Summary Review - 


Good things
- AA batteries (standard pencil cells)
- SD Card (cheap cards available these days)
- 720P video recording
- Easy to use modes and options
- Outdoor picture reasonable quality
- Image stabilization works reasonably well (not perfect but one can see the difference)


Flaws 
- Very sensitive to type of AA batteries. Takes only best quality batteries (fresh NiMH) and Duracell / Sony high drain batteries). With some of the Panasonic, Eveready, Energizer Alkalines did not even turn on or with fresh batteries says batteries low. Batteries which work fine in a Canon are simply rejected by this camera. This may be my unit’s problem but Panasonic service is not able to fix it even after they claimed that they have changed the power circuit.
- Slow focus
- Slow recharge of flash (shot to shot)
- Significant lag from button press to shot.
- Big annoyance – Can not replay HD recorded video in camera. It can only play back VGA or lower resolution.
- Indoor and low light pictures are very noisy.
- Lens motor is little bit noisy (focusing lens motor can be heard when putting camera near your face)

WD Live TV 2011 model experience

Have been using WD Live TV 2011 for couple of months now. Here is a brief review.


Box and product views showing various ports and also included remote are as below (courtesy WD product website)

List of various ports 


Ethernet, USB 2.0, HDMI, Composite A/V, Wi-Fi, Optical audio out



File Formats Supported
Video - AVI (Xvid, AVC, MPEG1/2/4), MPG/MPEG, VOB, MKV (h.264, x.264, AVC, MPEG1/2/4, VC-1), TS/TP/M2T (MPEG1/2/4, AVC, VC-1), MP4/MOV (MPEG4, h.264), M2TS, WMV9, FLV (h.264)
Photo - JPEG, GIF, TIF/TIFF, BMP, PNG
Audio - MP3, WAV/PCM/LPCM, WMA, AAC, FLAC, MKA, AIF/AIFF, OGG, Dolby Digital, DTS
Playlist - PLS, M3U, WPL
Subtitle - SRT, ASS, SSA, SUB, SMI





Key points/ feedback -

a) Plays almost all formats of videos and pictures including mkv files. 

b) Full HD output works well through HDMI (note - HDMI cable is not included in the box)

c)Internet services works well with inbuilt WiFi or wired Ethernet (will depend on quality and speed of your connection of course). 

d) There is no full browser for generic internet browsing. 

e) You can connect any USB keyboard for entering data/selection etc. 

f) You can use as network storage device by hooking up an external storage through USB ports. 

g) Some of the Applications/Services like facebook, youtube, picasa, Flickr and many Internet radio services work well but some are blocked in India as they are country specific e.g. Netflix does not work with Indian IP addresses.

h) Power adaptor included is 110-220V so can be used in any country.


i) There is also an iOS (Apple iPhone/Ipod) app that can be used as a remote control through your WiFi network. I have it installed on my iPod touch and it works really well including search etc. for which you can make entries through onscreen keyboard.

Overall a good, well built product.

Here are pictures of Internet services applications which are there in firmware 1.06.04