Western Digital WD TV Live Hub Media Center
WDBABZ0010BBK-NESN
"WD TV Live Hub Media Center (WDBABZ0010BBK) - Bring your digital life to your big screen. Whether it's your own videos, music, and photos or Internet entertainment, you can play it all in the comfort of your living room in brilliant high-definition. Put your personal media on the high-capacity built-in hard drive and stream it to any screen in the house."
Review Nice as central media
"station",
This review is from: Western Digital WD TV Live Hub 1 TB
Media Center (Electronics)
I read up on this device to understand what it does, but until I
plugged it in and went through setup I wasn't 100% sure. It's basically
a hard drive you connect to your TV and internet modem--with access to
Netflix, Pandora, Mediafly, Blockbuster videos and a few others. Set up: The Live Hub box is pretty compact and comes with a remote, 2 AAA batteries, power cable and a basic, visual set-up manual and another informational packet with fine print in different languages. It DOES NOT come with the cable needed to connect the Live hub to a television (can be old school TV or a newer flatscreen TV). You have several connector cable options that will work to connect the Live Hub to the TV: HDMI, Component video or Standard Video Cables.
Because my cable modem is in another room, I used a Cisco-Linksys Range Plus Wireless USB Compact Adapter I had to connect the Live Hub to the Internet via wireless. The basic set up manual sheet did not show the option of using a wireless adapter (it shows connecting Live Hub to the modem with a Cat-5 cable), but it will work. BTW, Live Hub's support area has a list of wireless adapters that are compatible with this box.
Once connected and powered on, the Homepage came up, and I went to "Settings" then to Network Settings, and walked through the set-up,I selected "Wireless" and it automatically found my wireless network. I entered the password and worked fine.
Once on the network, my laptop displayed a message that it found the Live Hub device and wanted to share files wirelessly. However, my firewall interfered with the current settings, so I will have to change sharing settings to move media files over to the Live Hub box for this to work.
UPDATE(Jan 30): I moved over 1GB of music files, plus photos and a TV show over to the Media Hub and it worked very easily and smoothly. I just clicked on the WD Live Media icon in my networks and it opens as its own drive (folder). Then I moved the files from folders on the computer side to the WD Live Media side. Turned on the Media Hub and everything is there and easy to navigate to.
This made me think...I have some Amazon On Demand videos I got cheap, that I can move to the Media Hub to watch on TV and keep those huge files off the laptop (and maybe burn to a DVd later too). It's getting better and better as I learn to use this product!
Next, the Live Hub displayed a message that it found a firmware update and I clicked on "OK" to update its software. I played around in the various menus and went to Netflix and got that activated. With the wireless adapter, Netflix movies streamed just fine.
I have not tested streaming media from the Live Hub to other TVs in the house, so I will have to update this review when I get to that.
All in all it's a nice device. Easy set-up and I think I'll like the file sharing, streaming to other TVs and connecting the digital cameras when I get to use those features.
What I wish it had:
A better get-started manual, even though this one is easy to understand and mostly pictures.
A way to record TV shows to the HD (DVR feature)
Hulu and Amazon Video on Demand beside Netflix and Blockbuster. Maybe that'll happen in a future update.
I was going to get a Roku box for Netflix, but this WD Live Hub does so much MORE with many types of files. I recommend it.
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