Hasta La Gadget!

If you’ve ever complained about a certain set-top box’s dearth of local storage or support of exotic media files, you now have a clear alternative. Western Digital’s TV Live Hub doesn’t actually have much to do with live TV, but it will store and stream the stuffing out of whatever you’ve been keeping on your computer.

You want local storage for your movies, music, pictures and TV shows? How does 1 TB sound? Western Digital makes some of the biggest and best hard drives around, and this one packs a wallop. And for $200, the TV Live Hub only costs $70 more than WD’s entry-level 1-TB external hard drive, the MyBook.

You want support for every file format you’ve ever dreamed about and video all the way up to 1080p? Here’s the list:

Video – AVI (Xvid, AVC, MPEG1/2/4), MPG/MPEG, VOB, MKV (h.264, x.264, AVC, MPEG1/2/4, VC-1), TS/TP/M2T (MPEG1/2/4, AVC, VC-1), MP4/MOV (MPEG4, h.264), M2TS, WMV9
Photo – JPEG, GIF, TIF/TIFF, BMP, PNG
Audio – MP3, WAV/PCM/LPCM, WMA, AAC, FLAC, MKA, AIF/AIFF, OGG, Dolby Digital, DTS
Playlist – PLS, M3U, WPL
Subtitle – SRT, ASS, SSA, SUB, SMI

I don’t even know what some of those are, but OMG, I am furious at any device that doesn’t support all of them now.

Wait — so far, it sounds like I’m just connecting a big-ass net-connected hard drive to my TV. Can it do anything cool with that internet connection?

Sure. The Live Hub is a fully-fledged media server, WD claims. Once it’s on your network, you can stream its content to pretty much any device with a screen on your network: net-connected TVs, Blu-ray players, Xbox 360, PS3 — even iOS or Android devices using third-party applications. It can also share and sync media folders with PCs or Macs.

And the network isn’t just local: You can also stream content from Netflix, Pandora, Flickr and YouTube, and upload content to Facebook.

The open question here — which I can’t really speak to without getting a chance to try it out — is the quality of the user interface. Unlike Apple or Google, Western Digital isn’t really a software company.

Wired recently reviewed the previous version, the Western Digital TV Live Plus, and found it was riddled with problems: Videos often played without their audio tracks, file-format support was not nearly as complete as the above spec list suggests, and video quality was hit-or-miss.

What it does offer is a different — and I think compelling — model for how you configure your hardware throughout your home network, how you store and share content that ultimately will be displayed primarily on the biggest screen in your house.

Here are the positions each player’s taken on the board so far:

• TiVo wants to record live TV.
• Google wants to help you find it and give you apps for it.
• Apple wants to rent you streaming TV and movies and bounce it between your other Apple devices.
• WD wants to give you a big hard drive and share it around the house.
• Everybody wants to let you stream Netflix.
• Meanwhile, Microsoft wants to do most of those things and play videogames, too.

On the one hand, both Apple and WD are avoiding TiVo’s and Google’s attempts to bring software to bear on live TV. On the other hand, their approaches couldn’t be more different.

Apple’s world is all cloud: a box with a tiny footprint that makes as little noise as possible, offering lightweight, streaming rentals that disappear. If you’re storing a library of data, you’re doing it somewhere else.

WD’s approach might seem more conservative, because it’s still about building and storing a digital library of files in lots of different formats. But you could say it’s actually much more radical.

It suggests that your entertainment media won’t be pumped into your house through a box or live on the computer you use to make spreadsheets. The digital hub isn’t your PC, and it definitely isn’t a server somewhere sitting lonely in your office or basement.

The digital hub is your television — the one screen in your house that always stays in one place. And now, your television can talk to every other screen that comes into your house.

WD TV Live Hub Media Center [WD Press Release]

See Also:

• Battle of the Boxes: Apple TV vs. Western Digital and Seagate …
• WD’s New 3TB Drive Packs More Storage Than 32-Bit Can Handle …
• Apple Redefines Remote Control — Now, It’s Your Cellphone
• Google TV Announces Network and App Partners, New Website
• Sony Announces Details, Prices of Google TV Lineup
• Our Remote Controls Are Amazing, Yet Nobody’s Happy
• How Google Instant Could Reinvent Channel Flipping

It’s not quite “take this job and shove it,” but Microsoft’s soon to be former chief software Ray Ozzie had some strong words about the future of the PC and Microsoft in a new memo titled “Dawn of a New Day.”

Ozzie posted the memo on his personal blog with the date October 28th. Clearly the Microsoft executive has been sent back from the near future to tell us all about the future of the industry.

Ozzie wrote of a disconnect between the software giant’s take on the computer and the views he believes average users hold,

For the most part, we’ve grown to perceive of ‘computing’ as being equated with specific familiar ‘artifacts’ such as the ‘computer’, the ‘program’ that’s installed on a computer, and the ‘files’ that are stored on that computer’s ‘desktop’. For the majority of users, the PC is largely indistinguishable even from the ‘browser’ or ‘Internet.’

Ozzie added that users have already “begun to move away” from concepts like PCs, CD software, and desktops.

“We’re moving toward a world of 1) cloud-based continuous services that connect us all and do our bidding, and 2) appliance-like connected devices enabling us to interact with those cloud-based services,” he wrote. “[T]hose who build and deploy application fabrics targeting connected devices understand how challenging it can be to simply & reliably just ‘sync’ or ‘stream’. To achieve these seemingly simple objectives will require dramatic innovation in human interface, hardware, software and services.”

Look, it’s not easy nor cheap to lay an entirely new network infrastructure — just ask Verizon. Regardless of how badly we all want a fiber optic cable ran directly into our closet, it’s probably in our best interest if companies like Nokia Siemens Networks continue to improve existing services. Since we’re on the topic, it’s probably prudent to point out a new discovery surrounding existing copper wires — one that involves data transmissions at up to 825Mbps. As the story goes, NSN is testing new technology (let’s call it Phantom DSL) that could dramatically increase capacity of conventional copper wires, with the aforesaid data point coming on a trial transfer across 400 meters of wire; when stretched to 500 meters, it still held steady at 750Mbps. We’re told that Phantom DSL promises a bandwidth increase of 50 to 75 percent over existing bonded copper lines, but mum’s the word on when ISPs will actually have access. Yesterday, please?

Continue reading Nokia Siemens Networks sees 825Mbps over traditional copper, Phantom DSL claims ‘the future’

Nokia Siemens Networks sees 825Mbps over traditional copper, Phantom DSL claims ‘the future’ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Oct 2010 09:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Halloween has its roots in the Celtic harvest holiday of Samhain, a time when the ancient pagans believed the dead can visit the land of the living. Today, the holiday still lives on, but instead of honoring deceased ancestors, we mostly celebrate by dressing as sexy nurses and throwing eggs at the houses of cranky retirees.

But more importantly, Halloween has become a holiday of self expression! Let the neighbors know that you have strong feelings on locally-sourced food by being that lady who hands out apples to trick-or-treaters. Make sure everyone at the party is aware of your poor taste by being that guy who dresses like a too-soon recently-deceased celebrity. Or let complete strangers in on the secret that you are not only a sexy person, but a brave one, with your completely weather-inappropriate skimpy outfit.

Or, demand that the whole world acknowledge the fact that gadgets have a very important role in your life. Like this guy.

Yes, this Halloween you can be an iPod touch: the affordable, half-breed lovechild of the iPhone and iPod. Now, the whole world will be privy to your love for wifi-enabled pocket-sized media (and the fact that you aren’t afraid of being obsolete in three years). Congratulations to you, iPod-face!

And just a bit of warning–if you dress like an iPod touch, you will very likely be touched and prodded all night long. But maybe you’re into that sort of thing.

So, you may or may not have noticed that this morning, Apple updated its own Apple Store app for the very first time, and version 1.1 has a little surprise. That’s right, in the ‘Reserve Products’ screen, the much delayed white iPhone 4 shows up as an option. Now, before you lose control of yourself, keep in mind that you can’t actually reserve one… yet. Of course, this could just be some sort of cruel glitch in the system, or it could be a tiny bit of evidence that the white iPhone is actually, finally on its way. At the very least, we know that Apple’s still thinking of it… just like us.

Update: Apple’s now removed the white iPhone 4 references, but don’t worry: we’ll always have that screen grab.

White iPhone 4 evidence shows up in Apple Store app’s update? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Oct 2010 09:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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