Western Digital® (NYSE: WDC), the world’s leader in external storage solutions and maker of the popular WD TV media player family, has introduced the WD TV Live Hub™ media center, a Full-HD 1080p media player with a 1 terabyte (TB) built-in network hard drive that gives users the freedom to play all their personal media on any screen in the home. The WD TV Live Hub media center brings new experiences to the WD TV family, which include interacting with personal Facebook communities.
WD TV Live Hub plays a wide variety of media file types, including popular Full-HD 1080p video formats such as .mkv, .mp4 and .mov. The integrated, compact and quiet 1 TB hard drive enables users to centralise their digital media from multiple sources for smooth, glitch-free playback of even the highest resolution videos. Digital media can be easily transferred to the internal drive from shared folders on PCs and Macs on the network or directly from external hard drives, thumb drives, camcorders or cameras connected via one of the two USB ports. Users also can stream videos from home network drives with a DLNA/UPnP™ server such as the recently announced My Book Live Home Network Drive.
WD TV Live Hub also is a media server: the HD video, music and photos can be streamed from the onboard hard drive to any DLNA/UPnP-compatible TV or multimedia device, anywhere in the connected home, including WD TV Live HD media player, connected TV’s, Blu-ray Disc™ players, Xbox 360®, and PlayStation® 3. Users also can stream content from their WD TV Live Hub to iPads, iPhones or Android smartphones using third-party applications.
The WD TV Live Hub offers unique Facebook integration, which lets users upload photos and videos, share their status, view their wall and get the latest news-feed from their network of friends – all on the big screen TV. In addition, WD TV Live Hub provides HD viewing of YouTube™ for user generated videos and Flickr® for photo sharing. Additional content includes local and international weather forecasts from AccuWeather.com®, and MediaFly® daily video podcasts from CNN®, NBC®, MTV® and ESPN®. The customisable WD TV Live Hub user interface enables personalization of screen backgrounds and user interface themes, as well as setting of favourites and content ratings. Standard wired or wireless USB keyboards can be used for simpler text input for activities such as searches of local content and YouTube and Facebook interaction.
“The WD TV Live Hub media center lets users create a personalised media jukebox that brings your entire personal content collection and the best of Internet content to the biggest screen in the house,” said Dale Pistilli, vice president of marketing for WD's branded products group. “With the WD TV Live Hub media center, consumers can take their home entertainment experience to the next level, streaming personal content to multiple rooms at the same time, so they can play a YouTube video on their HDTV screen in the family room, while sharing vacation slideshows on the computer in their home office.”
Other key features of WD TV Live Hub media center include:
- Compatibility with virtually all TV sets thanks to an HDMI 1.4, composite video and component video output;
- Automatic sync of shared digital media folders from PCs and Macs on the network with the internal hard drive to provide easy playback of new content.
- Customisable user interface and programmable remote;
- Ultra-compact design that easily fits into almost any entertainment center;
- Two USB ports that allow seamless media playback from USB drives, camcorders and digital cameras;
- WiFi-readiness (with adapter); and
- A 2-year limited warranty in EMEA.
The full set of features and list of file compatibility is available on WD’s web site.
Capacity and Compatibility
WD TV Live Hub media center is available in 1 TB (terabyte) storage capacity and supports a large variety of the most popular file formats, including HD camcorder video formats. It is also compatible with Windows 7, including the Windows 7 Play To feature, and any DLNA/UPnP-enabled device.
Price and Availability
WD TV Live Hub media center is available worldwide and online at www.shopwd.co.uk. MSRP for the WD TV Live Hub media center is £199.99.
About WD
WD, one of the storage industry's pioneers and long-time leaders, provides products and services for people and organisations that collect, manage and use digital information. The company designs and produces reliable, high-performance hard drives and solid state drives that keep users' data accessible and secure from loss. Its advanced technologies are configured into applications for client and enterprise computing, embedded systems and consumer electronics, as well as its own consumer storage and media products.
WD was founded in 1970. The company's storage products are marketed to leading OEMs, systems manufacturers, selected resellers and retailers under the Western Digital® and WD brand names. Visit the Investor section of the company's website (www.westerndigital.com) to access a variety of financial and investor information.
