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WD TV Live Hub

WD TV Live Hub With 1TB Hard Drive

What is the WD TV Live Hub? It is a convenient and easy way to funnel all those media files into one central location and watch them directly from your TV. Not just the files on your computer, but it also streams directly from the internet. And when you have all of your files accessible to the WD TV Live Hub, you can then stream it to any other location in your house that's set up to handle the media stream. It even handles sending out several streams at one time. Think of it as a mini media server under your TV. But what really sets this apart from the rest of the streaming field is its onboard 1TB hard drive. Let's break down the features.

WD TV Live Hub File Support

When Western Digital set out to make a device of this kind they no doubt wanted to learn from the mistakes of some of the competition, namely Apple TV's lack of file support. So here are the files that the WD Hub can handle.

Video
AVI (Xvid, AVC, MPEG1/2/4), MPG/MPEG, VOB, MKV (h.264, x.264, AVC, MPEG1/2/4, VC-1), TS/TP/M2T (MPEG1/2/4, AVC, VC-1), MP4/MOV (MPEG4, h.264), M2TS, WMV9

Audio
MP3, WAV/PCM/LPCM, WMA, AAC, FLAC, MKA, AIF/AIFF, OGG, Dolby Digital, DTS

Photo
JPEG, GIF, TIF/TIFF, BMP, PNG

This is very convenient if you have collected a number of odd and different files from multiple locations lost in a sea of folders just sitting on your hard drive. (You know you do.) Well this can assist in sorting it all out very handily, and who knows, you may even rediscover some old videos you loved when you first saw them but simply forgot you had them.

Streaming
A computer is not necessarily needed in order to benefit from the WD Hub. It connects to directly to the internet and gives you access to online services. Here are some of them in no particular order.
Netflix, Blockbuster, YouTube, Pandora, Facebook, flickr, Live 360, Media Fly, AccuWeather.
Storage Capacity
There are several other devices on the market that are similar to this one. But as I said at the beginning what really sets the WD TV Live Hub apart from the rest is the onboard 1TB Hard Drive. How much can 1TB hold you may ask?
  • Up to 285,000 digital photos
  • Up to 250,000 songs (MP3)
  • Up to 25,000 songs (uncompressed CD quality)
  • Up to 76 hours of Digital Video (DV)
  • Up to 440 hours of DVD quality video
  • Up to 120 hours of HD video
Now that's a lot of time spent in front of the TV. And just how will you get all those files in and out of the WD Hub? On the Hub itself it has Gigabit Ethernet, front and back USB 2.0, HDMI 1.4 (that's the latest version), Composite A/V, Component video, Optical audio. The only thing you need to supply is the cables. All this for around $200.00.

Final Thoughts
Now this isn't to say that Western Digital has come out with the perfect device. While the navigation is fairly straight forward and easy to use it still takes a bit of navigation to find what you're looking for. All in all though it's a solid product with good support from Western Digital. After a little bit of set up you'll be watching movies, looking at photos and going through all those forgotten files on the big screen.

By Jason Craig

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