WD TV Live Hub Overview
The WD TV Live Hub is very small. I thought is was going to be larger, but there really is not that much to it at all. The official dimensions are 1.25” (H) x 7.80” (D) x 6.10” (W) and it only weighs 1.22 pounds! Being that it is so small there really is not much to it at all. The top of it has a nice brushed aluminum finish, which looks sleek, yet stylish. The front of the device is pretty much plain except for a small power button on the left and a USB port on the right. The USB port is great for easy file transfers.
Moving around to the back of the device you have all of your connections. Starting from left to right you have power, optical out, HDMI, USB, ethernet, RCA, and component. Flipping the unit over there are 4 small rubber feet that will keep the unit from moving around and you can also see a small cooling fan.
General Setup & Usage
Getting the WD TV Live Hub setup is actually pretty easy. Just plug in the power and connect it to your TV. It does not come with connection cables so you will need to purchase either RCA, component or an HDMI cable. Also many people do not have an available ethernet connection in their living room. Don’t worry you can just plug in an USB wireless dongle into the back USB port. Most should just work automatically.
Once you have everything connected go ahead and press the power button on the remote to turn the unit on. The first thing you will notice is a very beautiful interface. Many of the HD media players that we have reviewed have just plain ugly interface’s. Western Digital has done a great job at making this one look professional and like a real piece of software. At the top right you will have the time and current temperature. Along the bottom is all of your different options, you have videos, music, photos, files, games, services and setup.
Let’s go into setup and see what all we can configure. I am not going to to into every option but some of the more important ones. In audio / video you are able to change what video output you are using, the color mode, and aspect ratio and audio output. In appearance setting you can change the language, screen size, the theme, the background, and the screensaver delay.
Network settings allows you to setup your network. If you have installed a wireless dongle you are able to connect to your network here. You can also setup wireless favorites, check the connection, set the device name and turn the DLNA server to on or off.
The operation setup you can setup the remote, turn USB sync on or off, turn network sync on or off and turn auto play on or off.
In the system setup you can set the time, turn the media library on or off, setup device security, add additional encoding support, and go into the disk manager. The disk manager lets you know how much space you have on the internal 1TB drive and even allows you to format the drive. This is good if you are selling the unit or just want to clear everything off of it.
