To do full justice to the Western Digital Live Hub, I set it up in an actual media center environment, complete with DLNA servers, routers, and multiple PCs, to roughly refl ect today’s multi-PC households with scattered digital media collections. The Live Hub performed admirably nearly all of the time, but a few frustrating quirks did surface.
WD released new fi rmware during the test period, which mitigated earlier problems such as interface lag and the inability to fi lter fi le types that get synced to the Hub’s internal drive. The menu system is still problematic though. Navigating down a list is easy enough, but going back up, the cursor jumps to the shortcut buttons in the title area, interrupting your fl ow. The ability to tag movie fi les with poster artwork and cast/crew data is wonderful, but you have to go through the process manually with each file. A folder-wide ‘Get info’ option would have been nice. Also, for some reason, the gorgeous background stills are pulled from the Internet each time, and not saved to the local drive. Even then, it’s a world of improvement over the older WDTV Live streamer. DLNA functions also worked without a hitch.
One thing to note is that even when the unit is turned of , the hard drive stays powered up, allowing it to be browsed by your other devices in order to stream on demand. It is therefore as good as any good NAS drive for scheduled backups and flexible access. On the downside, this will slightly increase power consumption, and all USB drives stay permanently powered up too.
I wish WD had included a compact QWERTY remote control. The number pad on the bundled remote is too mushy for extended use. When downloading movie information and using the Web features such as YouTube and Facebook, a USB keyboard made a world of difference. Even a Wi-Fi remote app for smartphone would be much appreciated.
At its price, the WDTV Live Hub is excellent value for money. It certainly wasn't easy sending it back when I was done!
WD released new fi rmware during the test period, which mitigated earlier problems such as interface lag and the inability to fi lter fi le types that get synced to the Hub’s internal drive. The menu system is still problematic though. Navigating down a list is easy enough, but going back up, the cursor jumps to the shortcut buttons in the title area, interrupting your fl ow. The ability to tag movie fi les with poster artwork and cast/crew data is wonderful, but you have to go through the process manually with each file. A folder-wide ‘Get info’ option would have been nice. Also, for some reason, the gorgeous background stills are pulled from the Internet each time, and not saved to the local drive. Even then, it’s a world of improvement over the older WDTV Live streamer. DLNA functions also worked without a hitch.One thing to note is that even when the unit is turned of , the hard drive stays powered up, allowing it to be browsed by your other devices in order to stream on demand. It is therefore as good as any good NAS drive for scheduled backups and flexible access. On the downside, this will slightly increase power consumption, and all USB drives stay permanently powered up too.
I wish WD had included a compact QWERTY remote control. The number pad on the bundled remote is too mushy for extended use. When downloading movie information and using the Web features such as YouTube and Facebook, a USB keyboard made a world of difference. Even a Wi-Fi remote app for smartphone would be much appreciated.
At its price, the WDTV Live Hub is excellent value for money. It certainly wasn't easy sending it back when I was done!
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