The WD TV Live Hub is a brilliant little media player which will test you to begin with but as long as you have the patience of a saint you will get there in the end. After unpacking I was pleased with the presentation of both the hub and control, thinking they would compliment my entertainment centre nicely. I was disappointed that for its premium, you get no connectivity cables of any kind. Luckily, I had spare network and HDMI leads to hand.
Setting up the hub was a simple task. The hub was instantly visible on my network and after a small firmware update, I could start filling it with films. This is the part you save your patience for. I have 400GB of films and with a network transfer rate of 9/10 MBps you can imagine this took a painfully long time, 4/5 hours to be exact. With the internal hard drive, I am left surprised WD did not allow for hub to PC transfer via USB 2.0. There is a feature which will allow you to sync an external hard drive via USB but this isn't much faster with a transfer rate of 13/15 MBps.
After leaving the hub all night to play some games, I returned once the transfer was complete. This is where all of the bad feeling just magically disappears and you get a warm fluffy, colourful feeling inside.
The menu system is smooth and responsive, my videos were instantly recognised. As long as the hub is connected to the internet, you can gather info for each of your movies which will give them the proper names, a small synopsis and the movies poster, a feature which really impressed me and left my catalogue looking very professional.
After selecting a film its playing within seconds. The picture quality is outstanding and movie play back is smooth as silk. I only had time to test a few minutes of film but am looking forward to giving it a good run in over the weekend.
There are a range of other funky features which I have yet to explore but after spending a slightly painful evening with the WD TV Live Hub and having a chance to reflect on my thoughts, I am more than satisfied with the purchase. I would recommend this product to anyone who is after a 1080p network media player.
9/10 from me.
pro's and con's to name a few;
Pro's.
Easy setup
Instantly discoverable over networks
Smooth and easy to use user interface
Smooth 1080p movie playback
The ability to display hardcoded subs with the feature to turn them on or off
Network ready meaning when you have a new film you can just dump it on there
Cons.
No cables included
No user manual
Slow transfer speeds
