Sorry for this type of post. I heard about this hub the other day and it sounded perfect but then I started reading this forum and I cant find very much positive about it at all, same with AVS Forum. The make-pretend gigabit was dissapointing.
I have a pc and wife has a mac, we have a 9 month old son, lots of movies, music and pictures. I have been looking for a solution to not only back up but to stream to our plasma also.
Am I better off saving my money and looking at something else? I have a ps3 already, I know that can do streaming but the format compatability is less.
Any input or insight is appreciated (sorry for the spaces, that was the baby )
If you don’t mind being a consumer beta tester while all the kinks get worked out, then yes.
I’ve had it for a couple of weeks now & find it to be quite buggy. HDMI issues exist, which, for me, affect the picture quality of JPEG photos (which are limited to 2048x2048 resolution). Ripped DVDs …actually straight backups…sometimes crash the HUB while opening. The lack of aspect ratio control for DVDs is bothersome. Using the You Tube feature, often I’ve encountered “file type not supported”. WMA Pro audio is not supported, which effectively rules out a lot of my WMV files. I’ve had trouble with some DTS .wav files (yes, it says in the playing music portion of the manual they are supported). The inability to edit metadata manually irks me & others.
To be honest, I don’t use a lot of the online services features yet.
It make for a good solid MP3 player at this time though.
The software seems rushed to market & not ready for prime time IMHO.
Still, I like the idea of it & am hoping the software stability & other issues get worked out in a timely fashion.
I was also looking at getting a WD Live Hub, because in theory it’s perfect for what I want in a media player.
But like the original poster, I’ve also been reading a lot of frustrating problems people are having with the Hub (read problems here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1283694)..) So now I’m waiting for something else to come along, or by some miracle, WD gets their firmware right and people can use the Hub with it crashing or not turning on properly.
Crashing is pretty rare. However, the HDMI issues are well known. My theory was that WD was planning on launching a new firmware last week or the week before, but due to the new issues it caused on the Live / Live +, they held off. I’m betting we’ll see one within a week or two…
YES it is worth getting. It by far beats out the roku, popcornhour, and Apple TV. That being said it does still need some work (as all devices of this type still do) and WD has been doing a fantastic job (on its older versions) of providing continious updates. I have a WD TV (gen 2), WD TV Live, WD TV Live Plus, and now a WD TV Live Hub and have only run into minor issues. Keep in mind that I don’t use HDMI so those issues don’t affect me.
All WD can offer is haphazard Dolby TrueHD in M2TS containers and NO support at all for DTS-HD.
All the other major media streamers offer bitstreaming and / or downmixing of TrueHD and DTS-HD from multiple containers.
WD has provided the weak excuse (in the Ideas forum) of there being no suitable DTS license for media players, which is blatantly not true given that PCH, Xtreamer and Boxee Box all have DTS-HD support.
If, like me, you don’t have an HD-capable AVR, the Hub is a decent enough media player / Netflix streamer. It plays all my anime AVIs / MKVs as well as my HD films. The Netflix UI is basic and works well enough but lags behind the Roku / Wii / PS3 interfaces (no Search facility).
The NAS functionality is useful but transfer speeds are awful; despite having GbE, the rest of the hardware simply can’t handle more than 12MB/s.
It’s a mixed bag.
If you don’t really need the internal HDD, consider the cheaper Live Plus and a proper NAS with greater capacity.
I consider myself fairly computer saavy, I have filled the entire 1TB with approximately 500 movies of every file type imaginable and have yet to have any problem whatsoever… It has played every file i’ve thrown at it, It has a beautifully nice and clean interface with multiple options of how to browse thru your files .
I give this player a 90/100 ONLY because it still has alot of upgrading possible, but the possiblites of upgrades are endless as it has options for user created themes backgrounds, album/cover art.
So far the online services i’ve played around with WORK fine, haven’t had any issues, they’re a little simple and plain with limited abilites, but what is available works good.
Furthmore 99.9% of the complaints i read seem to be from VERY technical people that seem to have a large knowledge of programminga and linux based knowledge… And most of their complaints are beyond the average users needs.
I have had the WD TV live Hub for about 3 weeks now and I have had very little issues with it. For my situation its a all in one perfect solution. I just got a new HDTV and I didnt want to buy a blu ray player and dvds, or hook up a laptop to my tv and stream movies from my pc. This unit has 1tb and a media player. MKV support is all I need thats my blu ray files right there. The online stuff is glichy at times. like youtube and facebook… but thats just an add on I didnt buy it for that. Its brand new just came out and firmwares are on the way for sure. For the regular consumer I think its the best product on the market in its class. Bottom line its worth it for my needs I guess it depends on yours.
Another thing to consider is that it can use a My Book World (WL), ShareSpace, and My Book Live (as well as many other NAS’s) drives to provide you with nearly endless ammounts of space if you can afford it. I currently have about 5TB of content (not including 2 backups on external drives of each file) and have plenty of room for growth. The ShareSpace comes up to 8TB, and only uses a single port on your router!
It is also always worth rememberin gthat forums for any device tend to be filled with people who have issues rather than people who are happy alonmg with a small bunch of tech geeks who like to solve said issues. Donm’t jsut base your decision on forum feedback only.
Personally I find the device fairly solid and funcitonal. It plays most stuff I throw at it. It streams from my NAS fine. Thankfully I have never experiecned any HDMI issues. But clearly trhere is a lot more this box could do if WD were willing to expand and support it rather than move on to the next device asap. I think given teh price it does the job aok.
Youtube is fine. yes some content is unplaytable but that is due to the Youtube API rather than WD.
This device is like anything else, it has its positives and negatives. I bought the first WD TV unit and used it connected to a USB 500GB drive. I was trying to get away from having scores of DVD’s around but the system worked well, I just had to keep my drive updated as I archived movies (I have about 2000 last count). When the WDTV Live unit came out and had the cat 5 connection I was really excited and noted that a USB wireless access point was available. After purchase I found that I did not do my homework and the two USB wireless access point devices I had were not on the approved list and were not recognized by the WDTV unit. I thought to my self, no problem, I will just hard wire (I have structured wiring throughout my house) but then much to my chagrin, I found that the video playback was jerky over the cat 5 connection I assume due to SAMBA. The unit works great with the hard drive connected directly to the USB port and I certainly did not want to have to restructure all of my video files so I am back to the USB hard drive direct connected method. I can steam video from my desktop to my laptop wirelessly but can’t get good results out of the WDTV unit over my network (jerky video) which is the major reason I purchased it,
I think the promise of this device is that you get the impression that you’ll be able to play all your media back as simple as popping toast in a toaster.
If you’re expecting this player to just “play” and you don’t have patience for those instances where “life is what happens when you had other plans” … you might skip it.
I also have an Apple iPad – actually it’s for my wife. It’s a lot closer to the toaster concept than this device. I own the WD TV and now the Hub. I spent less for these two devices plus external hard drives than on the iPad.
A lot of the times the hub works like you want it to. A lot of the times, it does the unexpected. Personally, I love both players over the iPad.
