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WDLXTV

I am involved with the WDLXTV Custom Firmware project. This custom firmware, devloped by various members of the community, targets Western Digital's line of media players and adds numerous features to them.

I'm mostly responsible on the dev team of maintaining the web interface, but I also play with other parts of the code (for example I recently upgraded the Samba component used for network sharing).  My biggest contribution so far however is the new configuration interface called WEC (WebEnd Configurator), which provides other developpers with a pluggable framework allowing them to easily add new entries to the configuration webpage for their own add-ons.  WEC allowed end users to migrate from a somewhat error-prone configuration method involving editing a Linux shell script, to a simpler point and click web interface.  I also did a pretty good facelift to the main web interface, with the help of PsychoTHC who provided all new icon artwork (see before, and after the revamp).

 

About the WDTV

The WDTV is a line of media playing/streaming products from Western Digital.  Those products let you plug a USB disk to them, and play the video/audio/photo content on your TV.  The Live and Live Plus versions also feature an Ethernet port, and are able to stream your media from your PC or a NAS onto your TV screen.

While the WDTV can play a lot of popular formats, you can increase that even more by using a DLNA streaming server that has the ability to transcode your medias into a compatible format if the file is originally in an unsupported format.  Personally I use the Mezzmo media server.  There is also a free alternative known as Tversity, which I used for a while in the past.

 

About WDLXTV

WDLXTV is a custom firmware mainly developped by b-rad, with contributions from various members of the community.  This firmware is based on WD's code, adding a slew of new features, such as movie sheets that can display detailed info about your media, a Shoutcast radio client, a Bittorrent client, and a lot more.

 

For info about the WDTV, visit WD's official website, at http://www.wdtvlive.com/.
For info about Conceiva's Mezzmo DLNA server, visit http://www.mezzmo.com/.
For info about WDLXTV, visit its lead developer's website, at http://b-rad.cc/, or the official wiki, at http://wiki.wdlxtv.com/.
WDLXTV has a very active community, through the forum at http://forum.wdlxtv.com/.

 

My contributions to WDLXTV
 

  • WEC - WebEnd Configurator - built in the firmware since version 0.4.2.9.
  • Addons Manager - web interface that lets you download and manage external applications (app.bins) and UMSP plugins. (planned to appear with 0.5.0)
  • Updated Webend look and functionality.
  • Upgraded Samba from 3.0.28 to 3.5.6 (for better Win7 compatibility)
  • Lots of minor stuff here and there (updating the Shoutcast and YoutubeHD proxies, etc...)
  • Add-ons applications (see below).

 

A few add-ons that I created which you can download and install to your WDLXTV:

AttachmentDateSizeDL
[file] SVNUpdate v0.5
This DoSomething add-on (snippet) lets you easily update your firmware or PsychoTHC OSD from the OSD. Requires .rootFS, beta root.bin or SVN osd.bin versions of these.
13/10/10 9:38 pm5.31 KB1795
[file] RandomWallpaper 1.1
This add-on application lets you select a folder containing various images and have your WDTV randomly chose one every time you turn it on. Can also optionally resize the image so it fits your screen.
15/05/11 1:22 pm4.29 KB1918
[file] RapidLeech 2.42- 1.1
Multihost file downloader app.bin.
25/04/11 5:25 pm430.88 KB1277
[file] Mediatomb 0.12.1 - 1.0
DLNA server with various features such as customizable import process (through Javascript). Requires the ffmpeg app.bin.
24/06/11 11:32 pm1.56 MB1945
[file] ffmpeg 0.7.1 - 1.1
ffmpeg tools and libraries crosscompiled for WDLXTV.
06/07/11 10:00 am3.5 MB8115
[file] MiniDLNA 1.0.24 - 1.7
MiniDLNA is a basic DLNA server which will allow you to share your media content over the network with DLNA-compliant clients. This is a WDLXTV build that I compiled and packaged with a web configuration interface. **Requires ffmpeg to be installed
18/02/12 3:33 am492.28 KB2310