WD TV Live Hub official, packs 1TB of media
updated 08:25 am EDT, Tue October 26, 2010
WD TV Live Hub launches at Best Buy
Western Digital has quickly followed up on recent leaks by launching the WD TV Live Hub. Unlike the company's earlier media streamers, it's designed to be fully self-contained and has a full 1TB of space that can hold large amounts of 1080p video and is enough to become a media server for the home. While built to play media directly to a TV, it can share its content to other devices on the local network over DLNA or UPnP and even to Android and iOS hardware.
As a media player of its own, the WD TV Live Hub can handle most common file formats and takes in media from both Macs and Windows PCs. Blockbuster and Netflix provide built-in movie streaming, and owners can get free video from CNN, ESPN, MTV and NBC through podcasts as well as YouTube videos. Facebook updates, Flickr photos and Pandora radio fill out the online content.
The box has HDMI 1.4, component and RCA for video output and a pair of USB ports to take media directly from outside storage. Only Ethernet is built-in, but a USB adapter can add Wi-Fi. Best Buy has an exclusive on the WD TV Live Hub in the US, where it sells for $200, though it should be available at other stores worldwide.
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iPod, iPhone, digital imaging, Blockbuster, networking, Android, audio, Western Digital, Best Buy, Facebook, Netflix, WD, mobile phones, Pandora, iPad
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Mar 2009
Hope it's finished
I wanted a media streamer with Netflix. It came down to the WDTV Live Plus and the Viewsonic. I wanted the WDTV to work, it had a much nicer interface and added channels like Amazon VOD and Pandora. But it wouldn't play my movie files consistently, even though they were pretty normal MP4/h.264 files that WDTV said it supported. It was supposed to recognize HFS+ discs, but didn't; from a FAT32 disc, it would sometimes see my movies, sometimes not; sometimes I'd see a play progress indicator, but have no picture or sound. It just seemed like the software wasn't finished yet.