Reddit reviews WD TV Live Hub 1TB Media Center (Old Model)

WD live drives are about $90, I have all my movie/show folders on my computer shared wirelessily through the network. Every type of file format works flawlessly and the drive has netflix, hulu and other applications.

Or if you prefer you can attach a portable hd to the wd and it will work just fine.

• I have mine set up so it torrents my favourite shows after they are done on tv, extras them in my shared folder and I can watch them on the WD drive about 5 minutes after they are done on TV.
  
• 
  
• without Hard drive:
  
• http://www.amazon.ca/WD-Live-Streaming-Media-Player/dp/B005PLHF4S/ref=pd_cp_ce_0
  
• With 1 TB HD:
  
• http://www.amazon.ca/Live-Hub-Media-Center-1TB/dp/B004GK0GKO/ref=pd_cp_ce_3
  
• both have all the bonus' that you want, netflix, hulu, iphone/android app. etc.
  
  Don't bother with apple tv, or others. Jailbreaking them is a pain in the ass. Why not just get something that works right out of the box.
  
  Source: Have been doing media streaming for 10 years+

I just bought the WD TV Live Hub, which has Hulu Plus "coming soon". The wait is killing me though, I'm dying to be able to watch all of the Criterion films on my TV.

While the latest WD TV Live (WD TV Live Streaming, Released 2011) is less than $100 it doesn't have Composite inputs.

The one before the latest (WD TV Live Hub, Released 2010) does have component and composite inputs but currently costs more than $150 on amazon.

Edit: The latest one does have a composite input.

What's the point of media centers, htpc's, when they have standalone devices for that that probably use up much less electricity?
wd live hub with 1tb hd

wd tv live plus. can attach fat/ntfs hard drive to this, or stream off the network/internet

I can't really remember the plex differences off hand, but I remember liking it better. I'll try them both out tonight and let you know. WDTV definitely has more connection options. Such as Plex (DLNA), NFS, and SMB.

That isn't to say that the WDTV isn't without it's problems. The ideal way to hook up media is using the SMB option where it stores meta data in a .wdtv folder on the SMB/NFS share itself, but I couldn't get this to work reliably with the current firmware. Using a Windows server was unreliable. The share would disappear randomly and was unable to reconnect the share without deconfiguring the share, rebooting the device and trying again. And using Linux/Samba or NFS as the server wouldn't even work claiming it didn't have write access (it did). So I use Plex on Windows and it works well, although some movies might take 30 seconds or so to start up, but once they're playing it's fine. There is a newer firmware revision out that I haven't had a chance to check out yet. I'm sure other people have it working fine, but there's something about my network (possibly the Linux Samba server) that it doesn't like.

If I had to buy it again, I'd opt for the version with the hard drive as all the SMB/NFS/DLNA woes would not be an issue, and hopefully everything will just work as there's no other computers that need to be configured, turned on, etc. 1TB wouldn't store all my media, but at least all my home videos, pictures and music would have fit...


EDIT:

I have this:

http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Streaming-Media-Player/dp/B005KOZNBW/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1347034810&sr=1-1&keywords=wdtv+live

But would rather have this:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004GK0GKO

Oh, sorry. Of course. I had the link copied and apparently forgot to actually paste it into the comment:

Built-In Harddisk:
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Live-Media-Center/dp/B004GK0GKO/ref=sr_1_1?s=tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1343363604&sr=1-1&keywords=hard+disk+tv+out

Empty enclosure to put your own in:
http://www.amazon.com/Micca-Slim-Portable-Digital-2-5-Inch/dp/B002ABX29I/ref=sr_1_10?s=tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1343363604&sr=1-10&keywords=hard+disk+tv+out

I do not really think there is a good market for those, considering many new TV sets have USB ports, and even if someone has one without, they can just get one of these and basically add them for 25€.

Something like this? http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Live-Media-Center/dp/B004GK0GKO/ref=dp_ob_title_ce

I am unfamiliar with the exact setup you are looking at doing but WD has a 1TB live hub for around $200 or 126 pounds and it gets you more storage. Might not be able to skin it but I hear it has a very intuitive UI and is set up to stream all kinds of net services, free and otherwise. Doesn't require you to jail break anything and is also a Media server, and I believe you can expand your storage with networked drives or an usb external HD, it also reads full dvd menus. May not be the ultimate solution for you but definitely worth looking at maybe. Good luck :)

WD TV Live Hub Media centre with no hard drive... Worth $20?