Introduction
Western Digital has a series of digital media receivers in the form of the WD TV Live lineup. First, we had the TV Live. Next came the TV Live Plus, which is exclusively a US product, simply because it is the TV Live plus the addition of Netflix and Blockbuster streaming options.
The addition of the TV Live Hub to the mix brings us a new look,
an internal 1TB hard drive, HDMI 1.4 support, and is available worldwide. This is one slick looking device. The question, of course, is whether this Digital Media Receiver will find a spot in your Home Entertainment system?
What’s In The Box?
The latest in the WD TV product line comes in the normal eye-catching consumer style packaging.
The packaging design from WD is unique in the way it opens up to reveal the contents.
When I reviewed the WD Livewire powerline network kit last year, the packaging for this item opened the same way. It is quite nice in that it very easy to extract the contents when the outer packaging opens this way. The packaging engineer at Western Digital came up with a very good idea here!
Inside the outer package, you will find an inner shell similar to the shells that hard drives come in. This shell is quite strong and keeps the contents very secure in that trip from the factory to your home.
Upon removal from this inner packing, we finally come to the contents, which contains just the basic documentation above, the basic hardware to power up the device, and the prerequisite remote control.
On the front the WD TV Live Hub, you will find a power button and USB port
while on the back, you find the normal array of I/O ports that you find on most any media device
which are (from left to right):
- power input
- optical audio output
- HDMI output
- Ethernet input
- analog outputs
- YPbPr outputs
What won’t you find?
- Installation CD/DVD
- I/O cables
To get the Installation program and related documentation, go to the following URLs.
To get any cable you might need, go to your favorite retailer, etailer, or personal parts bin. I chose an HDMI and Ethernet cable using the last option. You may think that WD is going cheap. Perhaps, but it does keep the retail cost down, and quite often I find those included cables are just more stuff that goes into my personal parts bin. Which gets quite full at times…
