Stream come true Illustration: Sam Bennett We have come down with a bad case of "smart" envy. You know what we mean: these days, every new television boasts that it is smart, meaning it has Wi-Fi built in for connecting to all sorts of inputs, such as ABC iview and SBS OnDemand, social media and your own photo, video and audio productions. Our TV's dumb, so to display photos or videos on the high-definition TV, we load them on to a USB stick in the computer and then transfer them to the telly by sneaker-net. A pal tells us the time has come to look into media streaming devices, so we bought a no-name box, running on the Android operating system, on eBay for about $80. It worked well until it met a video file it didn't like and it froze. We contacted the eBay vendor and were told we would need to load the latest firmware. All did not go smoothly and so, losing patience, we shopped locally for a WD TV Live Streaming Media Player (about $135). We had the WD up and running just about the same time we had restored the Android box to full operation. We bought a 360-gigabyte portable hard drive for $39, which both boxes need for storage. Both have two USB ports, HDMI video and audio out and optical digital audio for multichannel sound. Both play most photo, video and audio file formats, including FLAC for audio. Both boxes have a tendency to freeze when they get a file they don't like. Neither is brilliant for navigating through a folder of photos. The Android unit gives access to the Google Play Store and installs apps, just like a phone. This gives a choice of browsers, players and internet services, such as Dropbox. The WD box is more of a closed system. Even the web browser is hard to find and is not mentioned in the 230-page manual. However, the WDTV Live attaches itself to your local area network, either wirelessly or through ethernet. It is the easiest network connection we have encountered. Our Windows and Mac computers see the WDTV box and the hard drive. File transfers are fast and direct. With the Android box we have restricted file streaming from computers on the LAN. With the WDTV, any smartphone or tablet can be used as a remote control. Using a phone app as the remote is more functional than the remote that comes in the box because it is easier to use the keyboard on the phone. A wireless mouse is essential for the Android unit. Android wins for access to apps. WDTV has better networking and phone/tablet remote. WDTV Live is the way to go.