Is there any functional difference between a WDTV live HUB and a new WDTV live gen 3 with a 1 TB external drive attached? In particular I am wondering about the media library feature. Will the informat ion be cached on the external drive the same way the hub caches it on the intern al drive? I don’t want the network and everything to have to be rescanned ever y time I turn it on. I have 2 older generation wdtv players, and a friend just bought the hub and was telling me how much better the media libray is now… I don’t really want to buy the hub with the HD since I have a number of external HD’s around.
The only functional difference the SMP has in that configuration is that the SMP doesn’t support Mobile Access (WD Photos) or Twonky Media Server.
I think everything else is pretty much the same.
excellent thanks. Now I just need to decide if I want/need twonky.
Hub seems to have a lot more themes if you care about stuff like that…
It has the nicest looking user-created theme out of the two. But I suppose that’s subjective.
Still, that one theme makes me wish I had gone for a hub over SMP.
Buy a unit that does not have an internal HD. When the HD dies, you likely need to toss the whole unit, as it costs $100 or more to buy a replacement for the 1TB drive and then you gotta replace it yourself to save money. Also, WD’s slowest laptop drive is in the Hub. 5200 rpm. There is a video on YouTube where someone opens the HUB to fix the power switch and you can see the drive model number. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9l22j94EeY.
So, take the money difference beween the HUB and WDTV Live Streaming and buy a decent 1TB external drive that won’t cost $100 and just get the Live Streaming and hook your drive to it.
