By Alexander Villafania
MAKATI CITY, METRO MANILA - Western Digital (WD) has been in the multimedia business of late. After going into the mobile hard disk market, the company then got into the multimedia player with its WD TV series, a concept that isn't entirely new but held a lot of promise for the multimedia enthusiast.
Now, WD has about five models, including the original WD TV. Its latest is the WD TV Live Hub, its top-of-the-line model that incorporates media player and network attached storage (NAS) capabilities. It is also the biggest of all the WD TV series though it is still definitely smaller than most DVD players.
As media player, it has an internal 1 terabyte drive capable of playing just about any type of video, audio and images. In front of the device is a single USB 2.0 port that can connect to up to a 2 Tb external drive. It can already connect to a device with the more updated USB 3.0 standard.
The back of the device has the standard video component ports (YPbrPr), composite port s, and stereo ports for legacy TVs. Thankfully, the device has been integrated with an HDMI port for wide screen TVs, as well as an optical S/PDIF audio port for old or new audio/video receivers.
Just like its predecessor, the WD TV Live HD can play most of the latest video file formats. Just about anything between AVI to XVID are playable. It could even play full high definition MKV videos with sizes of around 4 gigabytes (one of the biggest files that could be played is an 11 gigabyte download of the film “Avatar” though an available hard disk to hold the video was unavailable at the time of the test).
For those who use subtitles, the Live Hub could also play subtitles in SRT, ASS, SSA, SUB, and SMI formats. These do not necessarily have to be in the same folder of the corresponding video but it does reduce the need of having to search for the right subtitles.
All of the popular audio formats can be played such as MP3, WAV, PCM, AAC, FLAC, Dolby Digital, and even OGG. As for photos, all formats can be viewed, from JPEG, GIF, TIF/TIFF, BMP, and PNG.
The TV interface of the Live Hub also follows the same ease-of-use of the previous WD TV models. However, it has been integrated with a much cleaner layout, with the main menus located at the bottom part of the screen a la taskbar in a Windows or MacOS.
When new files are moved to the hard disk, the interface would allow for automatic scanning, then consolidation to the right file categories (video, music, photos).
Other than the sizeable hard disk space, the Live Hub also boasts of an integrated media server storage function that can be accessible via wired and wireless connections. It uses an Ethernet port for the wired connection while the wireless network can be accessed only through a WiFi-enabled antenna (sold separately), which is plugged in either the USB port in front or the secondary port at the back.
The Live Hub does come with compatibility issues with the WiFi USB antennas though WD has a list of those that can with this device.
Once setup, the device can be used as it is intended for: a hub for multimedia content. Instead of having multiple removable hard disk drives to transfer files from one device to another, users can just have all their files in a single device.
The Live Hub incorporates DLNA (digital living network alliance) standards and UPnP (universal plug and play) allowing multiple users to have direct access to its contents. The files can be streamed to any user within the house and does not require direct line-of-sight for uninterrupted stream.
The Live Hub can also access limited online services. It can access services such as Facebook and Flickr. Uploading videos and photos is also enabled in Facebook while others are only for viewing. This is unfortunate as the Live Hub also has a YouTube client, which does not offer video uploading.
While the WD TV Live Hub is not without its few glitches, it is still a functional device that can do more than just being a multimedia player. The integrated multimedia player and network-attached technology that it uses is already present in a few branded device manufacturers but the WD TV Live Hub is among the very few ones that incorporates both technologies in a single device.
That said, the WD Live Hub should be a good indicator of what the future would be for networked multimedia storage devices.
