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On the Western Digital site, it says the following: “Supports a wireless network connection to your home network with an optional USB wireless adapter.” To clarify, does that mean that I have to use a wireless adapter to access Wifi? Or can I access my home network without one?
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Before I was looking at this product I was looking at the WD Elements Play. It’s cheaper and appears much more basic. It’s just a hard drive that plugs into a TV via HDMI correct? The thing that lead me to looking at WD TV Live Hub instead is that it doesn’t play files that use DTS audio.
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My main use for the product would be to play 1080p and 720p video files. I noticed that a lot of them use DTS audio, and since the WD TV Live Hub supports DTS, I assume they should work. What I want to know is: Does this device support pretty much any video I’m likely to watch? Before I started looking at this product I didn’t even know what DTS audio was.
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Is video playback good? Does it pause or lag a lot during playback? How does it compare to the PS3 at playing 1080p videos?
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How fast is navigation of the drive? Is it slower the more things you have on it? Also, how long would it take to transfer a 10gb 1080p mkv file over the network to this device?
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What additional items do I need to purchase along with this? Depending on the answer to question #1, I could need a Wifi adapter. I also need to purchase a HDMI lead and a USB lead, correct? Or do either of those things come with the product? Is there anything else that you think I’ll need that I may have forgotten?
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Finally, I know the WD forums probably aren’t the best place to ask this, but is there any other product that would suit my needs better? I’ve heard of Apple TV and also Roku. Also, when will a newer WD product be released? I don’t want to go spend £150 or so on this plus additional cables and a network adapter, just for a better model with built-in Wifi to be released in the coming months. So, is there any idea about when a newer model will be released?
Thx, I appreciate all answers given to any of these questions.
- you have to have a wireless adapter to get online to access ur network
2.i am not sure about the wd elements play, the hub is alot better or u can go with the wd live plus which does not have the hard drive if u r just gonna use an external
3 and 4… it plays 1080p great no lags and no issues, unless the file was encoded **bleep**ty, i rarely have any issues with HD mkv, avi, wmv and mpg files that i download and play
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its as good as ur internet connection, i have alot better stream and file transfer over network then i did with the PS3 or Xbox 360, conneciton is more solid
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i think it comes with USB cable, i would get a better HDMI cable,and a wireless adapater, i got the one from amazon.com Airlink 101 Wireless-N Mini Adapter only 11.95 right now, and works great. that is gonna be about it, the wireless adapter, USB and HDMI
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this has the best GUI overall and better themeing, i never tried the apple tv but with the apple tv u do not have external hdd unless u jailbreak, ROKU freakin **bleep** and GUI **bleep** so bad and does not support external HDD via USB aswell, the only other one u may want to look at is Sony SMP-N100 (has bulit-in wireless-n) has the sony style XMB. but i don’t know what the quality is, i am assuming the same as a PS3.
I Hope this helps, i would highly recommend getting the HUB, but if u don’t care about the internal 1TB HDD, get the SONY SMP-N100 b/c of Hulu + (hint hint WD…hurry and get f…king Hulu +) but really i would recommend the WD Live TV Plus, but like u said if u download alot of HD 720p or 1080p videos, u want the extra 1TB internal then another 2TB external due to 3TB is not supported right now by WD HUB.
I have mine hard-wired into my router… works a treet. (And it doesn’t eat a USB port, so that I have room for external storage AND a USB keyboard.
As for compatabilty, I had a WV TV box (Even before they went "live) and I only ever encountered a couple of files that wouldn’t play… SInce getting the WD TV Hub, I haven’t found ANYTHING it won’t play.
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There isn’t built-in wifi, so you have to buy a USB dongle, use PowerLine, or else use a physical cable to network.
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The Hub will play file formats / resolutions not available on the Elements, as well as provide access to a growing range of online services.
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The Hub is great at playing HD media with Dolby or DTS audio. I hook mine into a Pioneer receiver via HDMI to get surround sound but you can also down mix to stereo for playback on a TV. Best file container to use is MKV but MP4, AVI and others play great too. MKV just has the widest support for audio codecs and subtitles.
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PS3 is very powerful but it’s a closed system; last I checked, you can’t play MKV on PS3. For a lot of file formats you need to use a media server to transcode the media; the Hub plays pretty much anything, as long as it was encoded properly.
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Drive navigation seems pretty quick. Network navigation is also pretty quick.
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I think the unit comes with composite and component leads (no HDMI) but tbh I’m not 100% sure. The product page states no cables are included… maybe mine are from my Live and Plus!
There’s no USB cable, as there’s no need for one (you can’t hook it directly to a PC and I assume any external HDDs you might connect to it already have USB cables).
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If you have a surround sound system and are expecting DTS-HD support, be aware that WD do not, and for the foreseeable future will not, provide DTS-HD bit streaming. You get the DTS core instead, which still sounds great but it’s something to be aware of. Other players to investigate are the Boxee Box and Netgear NeoTV 550. AC Ryan Fluxx looks interesting.
I’m happy with my Hub since they updated to Netflix 3.0 but there are other players worth checking out.
Thanks for the responses. All very helpful.
This product does look like the best option. Like I said, the main thing I’d use it for would be to watch 720p and 1080p videos downloaded from the Internet, on my big TV.
However, I didn’t know that you couldn’t connect it directly to a PC. Downloads on my Internet have an upper limit of around 1MB/s. So how quickly do you think files would transfer over the network to the Hub? Would it be much faster to buy an external hard drive to use to transfer things over?
3. I download a lot of 720p and 1080p videos from the Internet, and my main use for the product would be to play these files.
Would not go around advertising on the Internet that you are doing this unless you are getting the files from legitimate and free sources. The MPAA and other agencies monitor forums like these.
i would not recommend transfering via online if the files are going to be around 4 - 10 gigs, i would get an external drive, u r looking at hours of just transfering 1 movie over network, u said its 1mbps is that so i assum u prob have 12 mbps connection, just figure it will take u as long as u download a move to transfer a movie over ur network, if not longer b/c when u do a transfer it may not use ur full speed, external drive is the way to go then transfer from the external to internal.
