Just ordered one. Cant wait till it gets here!
This really looks like what the Live+ should have been. It is tempting… I could see putting three of these in the house… but I’m really disappointed that it doesn’t come in a version without the hard drive at about the same price point the Live+ occupies now. I’ve GOT hard drives and network storage and don’t need another 3TB at this point – and when I do need more I’ll add another RAID5 array instead of stand-alone drives that aren’t user servicable.
Then again, if the Hub does well in reviews and sales, maybe a driveless version will come along eventually. Fingers crossed.
The drive is integral to most of what the thing does:
UI Themes
Downloaded PPV content
XML Metadata
Media Library
…
All of that requires the internal drive.
WIthout those features, you’ve got, well, a Live. :)
I must’ve missed the deal about downloading pay content. I can see where having a built-in HD could be useful for that, but really… is it required? Could it not be stored on an attached drive or NAS? I suppose it’s possibe that whatever DRM scheme is involved could be compromised by storing it externally… But if that PPV content downloaded on one Hub could be shared with another physical Hub, even that might not apply.
As for the other items listed, a reasonably-sized SD card should easily be able to save and serve up metadata and cover art, which usually don’t take up much space. That might even allow users to upgrade their SD card for especially large collections without the expense (and possible service issues) of an internal HD.
I agree that for what it appears to be the price is pretty reasonable, and if it functions well it will be a relative bargain. I’m just saying that if there were a driveless option, I’d be far more likely (and able) to populate the house with them. 
Perhaps you forget WD is a storage device company not an SD card company. All of these Media streamers have one thing in common…they access things you store (WD is hoping) on WD storage products. Yes they work with other storage device vendors, but that’s not the point. Their main line of business is storage devices.
And this Mike Kelley already has the Hub and likes his Live better (oops, I’m talking about myself in the third person again – got to stop that, as I’m no LeBron).
But let’s hope the “other” Mike Kelley likes his better (for me the only thing that really excites me nowadays is the Boxee – that may well be the ulimate media player, if it really works as advertised).
Hey Mike,
What is it you like about the Live better? Please elaborate on the differences for us please. I’m not familiar with the Boxee product but I’ll google.
For the Ex-Genius:
You say you like the Live+ better? I’d be interested in hearing your take on why that is, especially if it has any bearing on how the decidedly non-Geek LOML would perceive the Hub and its interface.
Navy: Sure, it COULD be done, but now they’re going to have two forks of code.
For one, I open up my Hub and pull the drive, it’s not going to function as designed.
If they did this on the Live+/Live, what would IT do if there was no external storage? Disable all the features?
That means they’d need a fork of code for people WITHOUT external drives attached, and another for people WITH drives attached.
Managing two wholly different hardware configs is pretty tricky…
First of all, the Hub has some bugs in HDMI and net share behavior that the Live/Plus does not. If you are not affected then it’s a null factor, but if you are (and I am one of those who is) it becomes a deal breaker (as a result my Hub is only used as an NAS, and a very poor one at that).
Secondly, the interface, while very pretty, is like a lot of pretty women – nice to look at, not very functional (ooo, better not let my wife read this. Believe it or not, I actually LIKE women and think they are superior to us guys). The Live’s UI is much more functional and straightforward (my own wife can’t find her way around the Hub interface, while the Live is a piece of cake). But it’s very pretty (did I mention it looks pretty?).
As for the Boxee, it’s been around for quite some time as a (free) PC media server which always gets tremendous reviews. For the last year or so they’ve been working on porting the code to a standalone box, and it will debut in less than a week. People who have used the software say there is nothing better anywhere, and from the screenshots it looks to blow away anything currently on the market. But it’s more money (just under $200) and is not an NAS.
Indeed, that’s another of my peeves about the Hub – it’s neither fish nor fowl. A poor NAS (due both to size limitations as well as to the far greater issue of hard drive replacement, which is ALWAYS a problem as drives fail sooner or later) and so-so media player, it’s not the best of both worlds but a compromise. You’d be better served buying a real NAS and a Live, but you’ll spend more money. The Hub is best positioned for those folks who don’t want to think much (much like buying a TV/VCR combo so you don’t have to worry about hooking things up, rather than buying the best VCR and best TV separately).
But – YMMV. If you get one make sure you also get return privledges and make sure that if it doesn’t work you don’t assume they’ll fix it (as I’m pretty sure they won’t).
Thanks for the info, Mike . As I already have two 8tb WD Sharespace NAS’ I wouldn’t need it for that. I was more interested in the interface, gigabit NIC, and menu options. I also like that it does Netflix AND Blockbuster as I use them both but a little dissapointed it doesn’t handle Amazon or iTunes. Bugs in HDMI is a negative also, but the Live Plus’ HDMI was a nightmare until the Beta fw.
I looked up Boxee. Not for me. The entire point of this exercise was to replace Media Center PCs. I just placed the D-Link verson of the Boxee on order from my channel rep so I’ll take a look at it.
Well, based on this review I went ahead and pulled the trigger on a Hub from Best Buy. I think the UI is going to be easier for the non-Geek demographic in the house and I find some of the potential of some features interesting, such as the built-in iTunes server and Twonky Server (Ex-G, can you tell us what version of Twonky Server it uses?).
I have a HUGE music collection and have been scratching my head over the best way to serve them up to multiple and various media players and computers. I did some in-depth Twonky Server testing a few months ago for my company and know that as of the early versions of 6.x it had some serious problems dealing with very large collections and iTunes playlists; maybe the Hub has a better version and/or its iTunes server will help fill a few voids. If so, I can copy the collection to that 1TB drive, keep my main storage as a backup and let the Hub do the serving.
The review seems to indicate that media scraping is pretty impressive with the exception of some music files. But they didn’t include any screen shots of how the metadata is displayed. I’m really curious as to whether it’s displayed as something like moviesheets, or more like what one sees in the Media Browser or My Movies plugins for Windows Media Center, or…?
Anywho, I think it’s nice of WD to give us something else to talk about.
