Western Digital WDTV Live Hub Review

As evident from the box art, the UI of the WDTV Live Hub is a sea change from what used to exist on the previous generation products. WD has tagged the UI engine of the WDTV Live Hub as Mochi. An XML based engine, WD claims that it is very customisable. There are also plans to officially host a collection of user created themes down the road. The responsiveness of the menu was no cause for concern, and overall, the interaction was much better compared to what I had with the earlier WDTVs. A sampling of the user interface screenshots from the official user guide are provided in the gallery below.

Consumers who are used to interacting with their media collection using XBMC and other such software often lament the lack of proper media library / cover art / scraping support on media streamers. The WDTV Live Hub has a media library feature which scans and consolidates all accessible media content into a library with a comprehensive database. This enables users to easily browse and locate media based on metadata such as title / genre etc. One of the interesting aspects of the WDTV Live Hub is the fact that the metadata need not be generated on a computer (as is done with YAMJ and other such software). It is unclear as to where the unit downloads the metadata from. In case of multiple matches (or an unclear filename), a prompt appears upon accessing the file presenting the various options. There is also an option to rescan the metadata in case of a faulty inference by the resident software. This feature merits more investigation. For our review purpose, suffice to say that it is a big leap over what used to be supported in the previous WDTVs.

An interesting aspect of the hardware is that some of the remote keys can be programmed for particular operations from within the menu. In addition, a USB keyboard can also be attached to one of the USB ports. Specific key combinations act as shortcuts for the WDTV Live Hub menu, and text entry is also made very easy through this. Another interesting development over the previous WDTVs is the appearance of a Web UI. This enables control of the Live Hub even in the absence of the remote (assuming it is connected to the network). Simply entering the IP address of the Live Hub on a web browser opens up the sign-in page for the Web UI (the default password being 'admin'). 'Remote' is one of the menu options, and selecting it presents a picture of the remote in which the buttons can be clicked and various options navigated using the mouse on the computer.

The Web UI remote is definitely a welcome addition, and should enable easy creation of iPhone / Android apps for controlling the Live Hub. That said, the WebRemote feature on media streamers such as the TViX Slim S1 offer more functionality over the web interface with respect to media playback on the streamer itself. This is probably something the WD engineers should look into for the future. The 'Media' menu option is another interesting aspect which we will touch upon in the next section.