WD TV Live Packs Netflix, CinemaNow Into Recent Update

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Streaming is shaping up to be a great way to get your hands on your favorite movies and TV shows, assuming of course you’ve got the bandwidth to keep up with the resultant strain on your connection. And the folks out at Western Digital are stepping up their streaming game with an update to their lineup of WD TV Live Now media players, throwing Netflix version 3.0 and CinemaNow into the mix.

There’s no doubt we’re all familiar with Netflix, and version 3.0 is all the same things you loved about earlier Netflix, and now adding on the ability to search for what you want without having to set up a queue on PCs first. You’ll also get support for movies that play in Dolby Digital Plus.

CinemaNow, however, is something a little different. This is Best Buy’s streaming service, and offers up over 10,000 movies and TV shows. Users can rent them or purchase them outright.

I’m personally torn by all the wider implications of such a move, frankly. This is pretty much setting up the pieces for a streaming vs. physical media war later on, and frankly, I have a hard time imagining how the physical media can win out, except, of course, in places where bandwidth is insufficient to really make anything out of streaming. And I’m personally hopeful that something can be done for those people. Streaming video is a great idea–how can it not be? Having all your video in one place when you want it and never having to leave the house to get it is terrific!–but it assumes an infrastructure that is hardly universal, and is even somewhat imperiled. More and more ISPs are capping their access, so how do you get the streaming content to people when the primary delivery media are shrinking the amount of access?

But still, if you’ve got a Western Digital TV Live Now system, you’re probably a whole lot happier with it today. Here’s hoping you’ll still be happy with it in a few years.