Western Digital WDTV Live Hub Review
by Ganesh T S on October 26, 2010 7:38 AM EST- Posted in
- Home Theater
- Media Streamer
- Gadgets
The Western Digital Live Plus enabled a range of online services including Netflix, YouTube, Pandora, MediaFly and Live365. The addition of 1 TB of internal storage enables a new service in the US market, namely, Blockbuster On Demand. With this service, users can rent or purchase movies. Rented movies need to be watched within 24 hours of starting playback. Purchased movies, on the other hand, can be viewed using the Live Hub at any time. Unfortunately, the purchased movies are also infested with DRM. So, there is a limitation with respect to the 'watch on any device' aspect.
In the limited time between the unit reaching our hands and the posting of the review, we only had an opportunity to test out Netflix streaming. Initial activation required logging onto the account using a PC and entering the activation code presented by the Live Hub. Once activated, the experience was the same as the PC Netflix experience. Movies could be added to the 'Instant Queue' and watched instantly as well. Modifications to the 'Instant Queue' were also possible. In short, a much needed improvement compared to the experience that we had with the WDTV Live Plus.
In the previous section, we had noted the 'Media' menu option in the Web UI. Accessing it enables the launching of the Twonky Media Server as well as the iTunes server. Both of these work as expected. In particular, the Twonky Media Server allows users to play back media on the local hard disk through the Web UI on any computer in the network. Files can also be uploaded to the internal hard disk using this interface.
In addition to the above described online services, the Live Hub also connects to AccuWeather, Facebook and Flickr.
One of the most attractive features of the Live Hub is the GbE port. When connected to an appropriate wired network, it should supposedly provide quite a bit of bandwidth. In fact, we spent quite a bit of time trying to get our NAS testbed to work with this device. Running NASPT and IOZone gave dismal bandwidth results. In NASPT, HD Video Playback at 1x, 2x and 4x consistenly delivered between 6.6 and 7 MB/s only. Transferring a 4 GB MKV file from the host computer to the Live Hub internal drive over the network was at a rate of around 10.6 MB/s. IOZone gave similar results, and never once did we cross 12 MB/s.
We contacted WD with our findings, and they got back to us indicating that the Live Hub is not a true NAS. Performance typical of NAS devices such as the My Book Live were not to be expected. They also indicated that the bandwidth characteristics of the Live Hub are sufficient for media playback / sharing. Usually NAS devices provide higher transfer rates for video streaming compared to file copying. However, in the case of the Live Hub, there is only one host CPU which handles both playback and transfer, resulting in even lesser bandwidth for video streaming. In this context, the GbE port ends up being only a minor performance booster.
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ganeshts - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
Exactly what I felt too :)odedia - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
I have the first gen product and WD does nothing to support its previous users. A simple firmware upgrade to enable Hebrew/Arabic fonts would be great service. Yet they refuse. I don't need all the rest of the mumbo-jumbo (Although WI-FI seems like a must).At this price - Just buy the new Boxee Box, it looks 10 times like a better investment at the same price point.
ganeshts - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
True. Gave feedback to WD regarding a host of issues in previous generation products which haven't been fixed yet. Not sure if they will act on it.gigahertz20 - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
I wish Anandtech would do a review of the Popcorn Hour A-200 and compare it to the WDTV lineup. I was looking the other day and saw that Amazon now carries it for $180. Anyways, I own a Popcorn Hour A-110 and a WD TV Live, and from my experiences playing back hundreds of different movies in several formats, the Popcorn Hour has better support.There were several movies that would not play back correctly on my WD TV Live but played fine on the Popcorn Hour, and the last firmware Western Digital issued for it was in March. They clearly do not care about fixing bugs when the last firmware they released was almost 7 months ago...I mean come on.
ganeshts - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
gigahertz20,We would love to evaluate the PCH / Dune / Xtreamer series, but we can only request the manufacturer for a review unit. If the manufacturer is unwilling, we can't do much. Yes, we can purchase a unit ourselves, but when we have a backlog of items sent by other manufacturers, it is quite difficult :)
That said, we are constantly in touch with various companies making innovative products and you should see them appearing in the review section soon. The Nixeus Fusion HD appears to be a likely candidate for getting reviewed sometime next month, but no guarantees.
gigahertz20 - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
Thanks for the update :)rogress - Sunday, October 31, 2010 - link
Ditto on this. I really like these reviews of media players. Would also like to see the PCH units reviewed so we can compare.I wish these WD models had a web browser like the PCH units - so we can use our own "movie jukebox" like YAMJ. Thats the only thing missing for me.
EddyKilowatt - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
I've been eagerly awaiting a refresh of the WDTV before the holidays, hoping they'd fix the many reported bugs and video artifacts. My heart sank with each item on the feature list, and somewhere around 'supports Blockbuster' I lost hope. Looks like I'll have to widen the search again...Homerboy - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
Does it provide video shuffle? Can I queue up a directory of my choosing and have it play those contained videos randomly? I am having a heck of a time finding a setop box that can do this like my XBMC units can.Chillin1248 - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
I have recently purchased the Argosy 335T, and they have a shipping version that includes a 2TB HDD for $180. I would love for you to compare the WDTV against it.---------
Chillin