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

There’s a lot we already know about Logitech’s Revue with Google TV, and after our walkthrough on Saturday’s Engadget Show, we also know just how NSFW the search results can be. All jesting aside, we did notice some amount of stuttering during our testing, and now we know why: for all intents and purposes, it’s a netbook. The knife wielding gurus over at iFixit tore into the Revue in order to see what kind of internals were powering it, and sure enough, a 1.2GHz Atom CPU was at the core. That’s marginally faster than the 1GHz A4 housed in the newest Apple TV, but there’s a lot more to process here than on Cupertino’s darling. There’s also 1GB of DDR3 memory as well as a grand total of 5GB NAND Flash (split between a Samsung and Hynix chip). Essentially, the hardware here is on par with netbooks from fall 2008 (the Dell Mini 9 is accurately mentioned), with “tons of open space” allowing the box to stay cool under pressure. So, you down with paying $300 for hardware you could’ve scored two years ago, or are you just now realizing that a basic HTPC isn’t that hard to setup.

Logitech Revue with Google TV torn down, netbook specs found within originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Oct 2010 08:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Attention all humans and empathetic robots: The Engadget Show is back in a big way today, October 23rd at 6:30pm! To get things started, Josh and the gang will be taking a first-hand look at a plethora of Windows Phone 7 devices with Microsoft’s Aaron Woodman, then we’ll be demoing Google TV, and Engadget’s own Darren Murph will be joining Josh, Nilay, and Paul on stage, Guinness World Record in hand. What’s more, we’re hosting our first ever Halloween costume contest! There will be giveaways at the show for the best costumes (as voted on by you, the audience), so get to work on your winning masterpiece now! We’ll also have the usual random giveaways, but why leave it to chance when you could win stuff with a little creativity and a black turtleneck? There will also be music from Kris Keyser and visuals from noteNdo and plenty of other giveaways at the live show only, so make the trek and join us at The Times Center in person. We have a new ticketing policy, so if you’re coming to the live show, be sure to read about it below. If you’re geographically incapable of joining us in New York City laster this evening just tune into the stream right here on Engadget.

Update: Due to a technical issue, we won’t be livestreaming the show tonight.

Update 2: Or maybe we will! We appear to have worked out some of the issues, so head on down!

The Engadget Show is sponsored by Sprint, and will take place at the Times Center, part of The New York Times Building in the heart of New York City at 41st St. between 7th and 8th Avenues (see map after the break). Tickets are — as always — free to anyone who would like to attend, but seating is limited, and tickets will be first come, first served… so get there early! Here’s the updated info on our new ticketing policy that you need to know:

• There is no admission fee — tickets are completely free
• The event is all ages
• Ticketing will begin at the Times Center at 2:00PM today, Saturday October 23rd, doors will open for seating at 5:45PM, and the show begins at 6:30PM
• We now have assigned seating, so the first people to get their tickets — and the Sprint text-to-win winners (see below) — will get priority seating. This also means that once you get a ticket, your seat is guaranteed — you won’t have to get back in line to get a good seat.
• We still had plenty of tickets left over at the last taping, so just because it’s 5:00pm and you finally finished Halo: Reach doesn’t mean you won’t get a seat at the show — so get your butt up to the Times Center this evening!
• Ticketing will continue until all tickets are given away
• You cannot collect tickets for friends or family — anyone who would like to come must be present to get a ticket
• Seating capacity in the Times Center is about 340, and once we’re full, we’re full
• The venue is located at 41st St. between 7th and 8th Avenues in New York City (map after the break)
• The show length is around an hour

If you’re a member of the media who wishes to attend, please contact us at: engadgetshowmedia [at] engadget [dot] com, and we’ll try to accommodate you. All other non-media questions can be sent to: engadgetshow [at] engadget [dot] com.

Subscribe to the Show:

[iTunes] Subscribe to the Show directly in iTunes (M4V).
[Zune] Subscribe to the Show directly in the Zune Marketplace (M4V).
[RSS M4V] Add the Engadget Show feed (M4V) to your RSS aggregator and have it delivered automatically.

The Engadget Show returns today! With Windows Phone 7, Aaron Woodman, Google TV devices, and our first Halloween costume contest! (update: no livestream) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 23 Oct 2010 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If it’s running Android it has a root, and if it has a root some modder will find it. The Sony Google TV is most certainly running a flavor of Google’s little OS and so it too is just waiting to be cracked open. While that hasn’t happened yet, Android Forums and xda-developers member Apeman has managed to get us one step closer. He’s enabled the recovery mode on his device by holding the power button down while plugging it in, presenting a tantalizing “System Update with USB” menu option. What lovely things will this unlock? You’ll have to wait to see — just like us.

Continue reading Sony Google TV booted into recovery mode, are we days away from a root? (video)

Sony Google TV booted into recovery mode, are we days away from a root? (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Oct 2010 08:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sony considers incorporating Android into more (as yet unnamed) products originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Oct 2010 15:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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