Those are good, especially for file support without transcoding. My problem was the lack of support for any metadata outside of Cover Art and Title and as my library grew, the WDTV seemed to get slower and more sluggish. Eventually it became annoying enough that I started looking for alternatives.
XBMC looked interesting so I ended up picking up a $35 RaspPi, $22 FLIRC (remote control receiver) and paid for the VC-1 and MPEG-2 license for an add'l ~$4.
I installed OpenELEC (
www.openelec.tv) to it and almost immediately knew XBMC was the route for me. Once I overclocked the RaspPi to 800MHz, it was at least as fast as the WDTV Live when browsing the library. Plus, it supports much more metadata than the WDTV Live, like Duration and Plot so you're not stuck with all of the fields being "N/A". Makes browsing an overall better experience.
Once I was satisfied that XBMC via OpenELEC was my answer I picked up an Asus Chromebox+FLIRC for my living room (about $170). It's a dual-core Celeron based CPU (x86) so it has a ton more Horespower than any standard media player or Android box out there. Everything is silky smooth and I don't regret the extra cash outlay at all. Everything is hardware decoded but if something had issues, you can turn off hardware decoding and let the CPU handle it.
Incidentally, I like the Pi enough that I tinkered/modded it a bit. I added a cheap $7 case from Amazon and some $5 heat sinks. Then I stole a 40mm case fan from an old external HDD enclosure and then just screwed it into the case after cutting a 40mm hole with a hole saw. The fan just plugged right into the top two GPIO pins on the RaspPi. I've been able to overclock to 1100MHz but I don't see any real improvement for HTPC use after 950MHz so that's where I run it. I keep it as the bedroom HTPC and if I needed another location I would absolutely spring for the Pi over the WDTV live, again.
Basically, if you want something out of the box, a WDTV Live will be the most cost effective. Popcorn Hour has/had some nice boxes, too, but cost and availability can be issues there. If you're not afraid to tinker and customize a bit then XBMC/OpenELEC is clearly superior in every way. As an alternative, you could even pick up an Amazon FireTV for less than $100 and install XBMC there. The Quad Core ARM CPU is pretty good for a small box and everything runs really well from there.
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