Live Hub is getting long in the tooth

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live Hub Discussions
1

…or said differently, I’m struggling to maintain temperment as I deal with continued let downs from WD…That said, I don’t see much else out there that provides as much as this little box does.

Anyone else try other boxes with any better luck? I suspect they all will have shortcomings and firmware issues. So how bad do we really have it compared to other products?

J.

2

i guess it depends on what your complaints with the Hub are.

Personally I really like the Hub.  It plays everything i want it to, the only service it’s lacking is Amazon, and its a very easy interface for the rest of the family to use. 

I have also built HTPC’s that work along side the hub, mostly for DVR capture. - but they aren’t as user friendly for family members to use. 

If you mostly stream from the internet, the Roku is good.

if you have your own media library, ( backed up movies, and albums) the WD is one of the best for the $$.  check out the review here.   http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/wd_tv_live_vs_netgear_neotv_streamer_showdown

Roku only does 720p

others have limitations too.  

What are you looking for from the Hub that it’s not doing? 

d

3

Not to be too “Rah Rah” about the Hub, but have to agree with ddayton that the product works very well IMHO. I guess it depends on what you want to do with the device. I have an enormous ammount of local data (Music + Video) in many formats and the HUB handles them all, in fact that was the reason I chose WD, the sheer amount of file formats. In fact fr that reason I am still completely happy with my LivePlus as well. As far as online apps everyone wants something different so I guess it depends on if it has what you need. I am fine with Pandora, TuneIn, netflix and youtube.

So what are you looking for? Something that works well with local media or an Internet appliance? To me that is the deciding factor on all of these devices, which of those two things is more important to you. Seems the WD stuff melds the two pretty well, but for me the local media part was the most important. Wanted my music in FLAC and WD could do it. Of course there are things that i dont like and are annoying, but in general Im pretty impressed.

18 months ago I was sitting amid several thousand CDs and DVDs, flipping them in an out of players. Now I have my CDs ripped to FLAC and DVDs to ISO / VIDEO_TS and and I can easily search, find what I want and hit play.  Add that it reads my home movies that are in various formats from different cameras over the years. How can you not be happy wth that for a few hundred bucks?

-P

4

Just getting tired of odd reboots, occasional hangs, and continued media library workarounds - let’s just be honest, it’s slowly getting better, but this thing is far from polished. I’ve had this box since it was first launched and I simply feel like I’ve been a beta customer.

Sure, I have some “would like to haves” like simultaneous 5.1 pass on opitcal and 2 ch stereo on RCA, but I am happy with quality of image and general support for numerous files. The firmware imperfections hold this back from 5 stars in my book.

That said, it’s good - but it could be better. The question was simply, are there any other boxes that work as well and dont suffer from beta firmware?

5

I do hear ya JS, I guess after being a heavy computer user for so long you get used to rebooting, troubleshooting, apps that don’t work as advertised etc. Perhaps the entire industry has lowered my expectations and I always feel like a beta tester with everything :smileyvery-happy:

That said, this is the only device I have used, and after a lot of research it seemed the best fit for me. Hope you find what you are looking for.

-P

6

Still using, and still happy enough, but that said…

I guess this forum isn’t as open to this type of discussion - I thought for sure there would be some conjecture and interesting dialogue on the topic, especially given the number of people that complain about the unit.

Odd.

7

OP: Your Stereo and MultiChannel Problem will not be solved in this version. I also agree with your Hangs and Glitches with the unit. It is a good attempt but WD doesn’t have it smacked down proper. 

Also, this is not just WDTV. It is also in other competitor’s products. The features are made for general public that will blindly purchase a product and not even realize they are getting short ended. Western Digital is a big company and they cannot break rules, one of being the limitation of Passing stereo when connected to the HDMI to TV setup AND passing DTS/DD to its Optical Port for when you want the AVR to be On. I have posted on this issue and I was told it is a limitation by design. 

There are other annoying issues, such as the speed with which you can FF and FR through content. You have Multiple speeds, and a Time Skip feature, but no option to simply hold down the FF or FR button and make it skip Very fast through the Content.  
Also entering values to an Exact time in the movie is a daunting painful procedure via its own remote control. I have no intention of having a keyboard/mouse when I am sitting on the couch with my family watching something. The Remote should be able to do it. 

Also Comedy time or comedy central, and some other Apps, Crash and Reboot the media player.

The media player is great, ALMOST perfect. But I agree with you. For $200 its not worth it imho. WD needs to provide the biggest fix of them all, with the Audio that is.

8

I’m a new user, only 5 months so i don’t know if what I have to say matters much.

I bought my hub for two reasons.

  1. I got tired of dealing with dvds and cases and losing things and scratching media.

  2. I wanted to be able to take all of my movies everywhere I went. Vacations, holidays, friends, blah blah blah.

For my $165 (on sale) I find this box, with my 3tb external MyBook, everything I wanted when I took 4 months to slowly convert all of my movies and tv shows. WONDERFUL!!!

Then files started disappearing completely from the HUB, over and over so I left my movies only in the external.

Then  to get files to show up I constantly had to restart until what I wanted to watch showed up.

All spoken, these headaches are basically what you get when you deal with technology. Sometimes things just happen and its certainly frustrated, very frustrating, but overall the massive hair-pulling frustations are getting more and more infrequent.

I still love this box. I’m looking for another one for my upstairs television. 

9

Yep, just one very pricey object which is playing DivX material till it gets returned unless someone can talk me out of it or WD gives me some sort of assurance they will fix the Audio issues.

10

Sure, The Hub is not Perfect…

I have used software media centers, another brand device, and then onto a gen 1 WDTV.

I now use 2 hubs and am quite happy with the product.  They are still putting out new firmware and support!

Way to go WD! :smileyvery-happy:

The best bang for the buck. (IMHO):laughing:

11

UnhappyCamper wrote:

…till it gets returned unless someone can talk me out of it or WD gives me some sort of assurance they will fix the Audio issues.

 

UC, I think you have found your own answer. No one want’s to talk you out of returning a product you are not happy with, and you are not going to get any assurances from WD, certainly none that are worth relying on. I love the product. I have two of them and they do what I want them to, at a cost that I find reasonable. If I didn’t feel that way, I wouldn’t use them and have moved onto something else.

In all seriousness, I hope you find a product that does what you would like it to. Not worth sweating this one as it clearly is not going to make you a “Happy Camper”.

good luck

-P