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By 

A. Dent “Aragorn” (Minas Anor, GD) –

  

  

  

As in Jack of All Trades

I want to begin by saying the ‘I like’ (but I don’t yet fully ‘love’) WD’s TV Live Hub and this earns it 4 (but not 5) stars. And I like it in spite of it lacking a few almost ‘must have’ features for a device in its class such as some storage redundancy (RAID-1 = disk mirroring) or at least a built-in backup utility or any significant security or, to a lesser extent (I’ll explain) built-in Wi-Fi. And I like it even though bugs still exist such as the Hub’s occasional failure to maintain/update its ‘media library’. And I do like it even though the Hub’s supported Web ‘services’ are few at this time – because the some of the ‘major’ ones are there.

WHY I LIKE IT

Some of the shortcomings duly noted above, I like the Hub because:

The Hub turns out to be a well connected, relatively easy to use and operate, low-power, physically small, versatile video/music/still photos player with the built in ability to store the equivalent of almost 200 DVD-quality movies on its built-in 1TB drive, expandable to many times more than that via an attached USB drive and capable to sync and play content from any accessible media server such as PCs, Xboxes or PS3s, Microsoft Home Servers or NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices.

The Hub can also go out on the Net and report the local weather, play YouTube videos, Netflix, Hulu Plus and Blockbuster movies, Podcasts and Pandora music (I compiled a list of supported Web services below).

I was able to add the TV Live Hub to my Harmony universal remote control setup and I was able to address the lack of built-in backup (running a scheduled Robocopy task off a Home Server) because the Hub’s drive can be mapped and managed as any other computer drive through a PC.

The Hub plays content off existing media servers and it acts as a media server for other devices (PCs, PS3s, etc.) on the same network. It can be set to sync with whatever content it can discover on your home network and it supports iTunes (did not test iTunes support myself). And for the hard-core YouTube users, a USB-attached keyboard should allow for easy searching. Also, the Hub makes it easy to post content directly to Facebook and Flickr.

And, finally, the Hub is likely to do more and do it better tomorrow because WD is constantly updating the firmware and hopefully it will address some of the more annoying bugs soon and because there appears to be an active, lively, innovative, helpful and supportive user community. [Note: 2 firmware updates later, several new Web services were added and some bugs were fixed.]

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Here are the hub’s features in a more organized format.

MEDIA PLAYER

- Plays videos with full support for HD and multi-channel sound.
- Plays music with support for playlists.
- Plays movies/videos with filters for genre, rating and so on.
- Displays photos, has slideshow capabilities.
- Games section (added on 5/17/2011) has ‘mind games’ such as Sudoku, puzzles, memory games.

MEDIA HUB

- Acts as a media server for other devices (PCs, PS3s, Xboxes). My PS3 ‘saw’ the Hub and was able to play content off it as soon as it went online.
- Plays content from other media servers on the local network. It saw ‘everything’ we were sharing as soon as we turned it on.
- Plays content off NAS (Network Attached Storage).
- Syncs with media found on PCs and has support for iTunes.

ONLINE SERVICES

- Services availability is controlled by WD. As far as I know, you can’t add or remove a service but that may change in the future.
- Current selection is limited but ‘big names’ are supported: Netflix, Blockbuster, YouTube, Pandora, Flickr, Facebook, etc.
- Grabs metadata (title, description, cover graphics) for music and movies.
- Firmware is upgraded by WD remotely.

CUSTOMIZATION

- Users can download or create their own themes and backgrounds.
- Integrates with Harmony remotes.
- Several styles of menus.
- Additional storage can be attached directly through USB port(s).
- Supports USB keyboards.
- Supports certain Wi-Fi USB-connected devices (not tested by me).

SPECS

- I/O ports: Optical, HDMI, Composite, RCA, 2 USB, gigabit Ethernet
- Video (Full HD 1920×1080): AVI (Xvid, AVC, MPEG1/2/4), M2TS, MKV (h.264, x.264, AVC, MPEG1/2/4, VC-1), MP4/MOV (MPEG4, h.264), MPG/MPEG, TS/TP/M2T (MPEG1/2/4, AVC, VC-1), VOB, WMV9
- Audio: (multichannel up to 7.1) AAC, AIF/AIFF, Dolby Digital, DTS, FLAC, MKA, MP3, OGG, WAV/PCM/LPCM, WMA,
- Photo: BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIF/TIFF

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 Comments (11)

This thing does what it suppose to do in addition having 1TB HD it’s a big plus. I can honestly say this is the best $200 that I’ve spent in a long time. It plays every possible movie format that I have and that’s the main reason I bought it. Couple of things that I’m not really thrilled about (that’s why I’m giving 4 stars)…first no built-in WI-FI, you have to get one of those USB Wi-Fi adapters….. and the second online content is very limited but I hope this will change with future firmware update

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