OK I’m going to open this for anyone that wants to ask for a new feature on the HD TV Live HUB. Let’s hope that WD can hear our prays for future firmwares.
My requests for now would be:
- adding an option to select external subtitles for DVD ISO files;
- simple internet browser to check mail and webpages; we already have facebook, youtube etc, why not adding a browser? It would be handy.
- IMPROVE THE PLAYER PERFORMANCE WHEN BROWSING VIDEOS.
- AND PLEASE IMPROVE THE CONNECTIVITY PERFORMANCE! (I can’t get more that 1-1.2MB/s with the wireless adapter, and a maximum of 10MB/s with ethernet) It’s such a sluggish player…
1- Ain’t gonna happen. There’s no way to synchronise DVD ISO to external subs.
If you can only get 1.2 MB/s, then you have SERIOUS performance problems on your wireless network. 10MB on a wired is about the top end, and I agree, could stand to be improved.
Why there is no way to synchronize a DVD ISO with external subs?
Some media players for windows do it easily… It’s just a mater of getting the main movie start in the DVD structure and there you have the subtitle start point.
about the wireless performance, where can I start debugging? I have the ASUS USB-N10 wireless USB adaptor and a thomson ADSL router with with wireless b/g support.
Okay… This is seriously an epic fail in my opinion. Why for the love of all that is holy can’t they implement a search feature for netflix? What if I don’t own a computer? I don’t want to have to log into my computer to put something into the instant cue. This just seems silly. It’s sort of like the PS3 and how you had to have a stupid netflix disc in to make it work. Give us the full netflix experience please. There is no reason not to give us a search feature. And don’t give me that lame excuse that typing on the remote is a pain in the butt. It is a little bit… But not as big of a pain in the butt as having to grab my computer, search for the title I want to watch, put it into my instand que, and then watch it. Also… Anyone who owns one of these, you must absolutely go buy a wireless USB keyboard… it’s fricken awesome!!! I haven’t touched my remote since getting the wireless keyboard.
Also… give us a full web browser… There is no reason there shouldn’t be a full web browser. Epic fail…
Also… and this isn’t an epic fail, but given that Western Digital has long been known as being a hard drive company… why in the **bleep** would they only put a 5400RPM drive in this thing? Anyone that knows anything about professional audio/video knows that you really need to have a 7200RPM drive to get good performance. I should be able to watch an HD movie while copying files to and from the internal drive without a bunch of choppiness in the movie. I can’t… this bums me out. So I have to put all of my HD movies on an external USB drive with a 7200RPM drive in it to avoid this. This seems a bit redundant seeing as how there is a fricken 1TB drive already in the thing.
One more thing… the GUI is pretty nice actually… A lot better than I thought it was gonna be… But it may be nice to do a firmware update that would allow the use of a mouse as well. The other issues are far more important though…
Just a little recap here
#1 - Full Netflix searching capability - (I shouldn’t need a computer to use this product)
#2 - Full functioning web browsing - (I can do it on my 1G non-smart phone, why can’t I on here?)
#3 - Faster Hard drive (5400RPM is not fast enough for HD video and hi-res audio 24bit/96khz)
#4 - A slightly improved GUI woudl be nice
Any comments are welcomed… Be warned that I teach Audio/Video Engineering and am also an Avid computer geek… so know your stuff if you plan on flaming - because I will own you…
Just a correction here… The WD Live Hub has gigabit ethernet. So 10 MB/sec would be really really slow… Gigabit has the capability of doing over 100 MB/sec… Of course this depends on a whole slew of other factors, but if you are wired, you should have really fast transfer rates. It’s possible that you have an old 10/100 router… That may be slowing you down… but you should still be able to stream movies with no problem at those speeds.
Just a correction here… The WD Live Hub has gigabit ethernet. So 10 MB/sec would be really really slow… Gigabit has the capability of doing over 100 MB/sec… Of course this depends on a whole slew of other factors, but if you are wired, you should have really fast transfer rates. It’s possible that you have an old 10/100 router… That may be slowing you down… but you should still be able to stream movies with no problem at those speeds.
The hub has gigabit ethernet in name only. Its basically a marketing gimmick as the speed is reduced by internal factors.
#1 - Full Netflix searching capability - (I shouldn’t need a computer to use this product)
#2 - Full functioning web browsing - (I can do it on my 1G non-smart phone, why can’t I on here?)
#3 - Faster Hard drive (5400RPM is not fast enough for HD video and hi-res audio 24bit/96khz)
#4 - A slightly improved GUI woudl be nice
Any comments are welcomed… Be warned that I teach Audio/Video Engineering and am also an Avid computer geek… so know your stuff if you plan on flaming - because I will own you…
Welcome to the forum…? :)
Just some comments and thoughts on your points, not trying to be a douche or anything:
Netflix search requires a newer Netflix API. I believe the “Canadian” issue can also be fixed with the new API, so hopefully we’ll get that sooner rather than later…
Your cellphone hardware and software was designed to allow web browsing. The Live and the Sigma chip inside it was designed to play videos and audio. I have seen a YouTube clip of a web browser running on Sigma hardware but it was embedded in a specialised OS (it used webkit for the actual OS UI too), so I doubt it could be ported to whatever the Live is running.
You should check out the reviews of the Scorpio Blue. It’s as fast / faster than quite a few 7200rpm drives, so it’s probably not going to be a bottleneck. A BD rip should have a max bitrate around 40Mbps, right? 5MB/sec steady is all you need from the HDD. WD went with a quieter, cooler drive that is more than fast enough (TomsHardware claim it reads at 40MB/sec, minimum).
There are a few Themes kicking around now, which tweak and in some cases improve the GUI. I particularly like the OsdModHub one. :)
Unless they create a web browser service, I doubt we’ll ever see (or need) mouse support.
There are two things that I would like our hub to have.
Download movies or tv shows through torrents directly in the hub. But I guess a web browser will also be need to search various torrent sites.
Force the aspect ratio in watching the movies. Some movies are in anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1) so in watching those in our hub, the screen is not filled and I don’t like watching movies when there are black bars on top and bottom of the screen.
Does the Live Hub allow you to set aspect ratio to 16x9 yet? That was a major deal breaker when I bought it a few months ago and returned it.
I hate black bars, give me ability to set video to 16x9!!!
Tell me is has this now…
16:9 is the normal widescreen which has the aspect ratio of 1.78:1 so if the resolution of the video is 1920x1080 for 1080p or 1280x720 for 720p, that will fill up the screen because that’s the normal widescreen but there are Blu-ray movies or DVDs that uses the anamorphic widescreen format which has the aspect ratio of 2.35:1 so when it is converted to a MKV file for example, the resolution of that is something like 1920x817 for 1080p which is a lot smaller so when you watch it, there will be black bars on top and bottom of the screen.
To have the ability to enable/disable services items. For anyone living outside USA (and Canada?), having Netflix and Blockbuster listed on the services is useless and frustrating…
To have the ability to enable/disable services items. For anyone living outside USA (and Canada?), having Netflix and Blockbuster listed on the services is useless and frustrating…
Thanks.
I agree - enable/disable service items! I living in switzerland and I can’t use Netflix or Blockbuster - and I don’t use Facebook and Flicr.
Also a big requests:
Possibilities to protect a folder with a pin - is very useful and needed when young childs also use the hub!
Getting movie info in german! At the moment only in english possible.
Subtitle positioning. It is fine when the characters take turns to talk, but when multiple characters are talking at once only one line appears. It would be nice if the Live Hub would actually take the position information from the subtitles. The font and colours would be nice as well, but they don’t bother me as much as the positioning.
The ability to skip chapters in MKVs with the press of a button on the remote.
Overall… the thing is really cool. You’re right about the bandwidth issues of the 5400RPM drive. It wouldn’t matter for any one task, but if I’m watching HD video on my TV off of the internal drive and trying to do some Ripping of Blue rays and transferring files over the network, then the faster drive is nice. It’s always nice to have bandwidth head room and not run on the edge of the capabilities of things. I’ve already noticed that I get much better performance running things off of an external USB 7200 RPM drive over the internal. I’m half thinking of returning this and getting the unit without the internal drive. Haven’t decided yet.
The web browser isn’t a major issue, but it would be nice to have that included with mouse capabilities.
But I stick to my statement that the “no-search” featrue in Netflix. This is just a complete and total epic failure. That needs to be priority number one for them. The whole reason I bought this thing was to be able to stream netflix and get rid of my cable TV. The rest of the stuff that this thing does is just icing on the cake.
