Western Digital WDTV Live Hub Review
by Ganesh T S on October 26, 2010 7:38 AM EST- Posted in
- Home Theater
- Media Streamer
- Gadgets
A couple of weeks back, I had the opportunity to visit the Sigma Designs office at Milpitas for a demonstration session. The main purpose of the visit was to understand Sigma's home convergence strategy, and in particular, how their powerline networking products fit into the puzzle. I had a very informative discussion with Keith Jack (Sr. Dir. of Product Marketing, Sigma Designs) and Michael Weissman (VP, Corporate Marketing, Sigma Designs). But, surely, powerline networking has nothing to do with the WDTV Live Hub? If that is your line of thinking, you are partially right. The powerline networking strategy is indeed a story for another day. In this section, I will cover the media processing solutions that Sigma Designs had on display.
The first demo I saw after our initial talk was that of a development board decoding 3D video onto a 3D TV. Excitedly, I peeked into the board, expecting to see the new SMP 8646 in action. However, I was surprised to see that it was the SMP 8654 on it. Upon inquiry, I found that a recent SDK had enabled decode of certain 3D formats with that chip (similar to how PS3's HDMI 1.3 port was 'fimrware upgraded' to partially support HDMI 1.4). Realizing that it was the same chip that powered the WDTV Live Plus, I was left wondering when a firmware update with the new SDK would reach the WDTV Live Plus owners.
Before moving on to the teardown section, I will wrap up this small section with what we can look forward to from Sigma Designs in the next year or so. A couple of years back, Sigma Designs bought video processing semiconductor firm Gennum. The IP from that company led to the VXP line of products, a part of many high end video processors. I saw a demo of the latest VXP chip in action, and the results looked really impressive. Keith indicated that the VXP IP would be eventually integrated with their decoder IP to yield a single chip decoder / video processing solution. In light of the demo, such a product has the ability to redefine picture quality on media streamers. It is a well known fact that Sigma Designs is one of the licensees for ImgTec's PowerVR GPU IP. Their latest chip integrates the PowerVR SGX 535, and an OpenGL demo (with 1080p video being decoded in the background) was on display. Eye candy user interfaces are sure to receive a face lift when given access to the powerful graphics capabilities of the PowerVR GPU.
By the time I decided to open up the Live Hub, it was quite obvious that the Live Hub was powered by the SMP 8654. The only remaining part of the puzzle was the GbE port.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
53 Comments
View All Comments
ganeshts - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
I know these aren't in the piece yet. I will try to get those figures in as soon as possible.casteve - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
Ganesh, when you do have a chance to add the power and noise levels...be sure to include power used when off/sleeping/idle. Thanks!ganeshts - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
Sorry for the delay, but the power consumption numbers are as below:1. Power off, adapter connected to the mains (WDTVLiveHub visible on the network) : 7.7W
2. Power off, transferring files to WDTVLiveHub drive over the network: 9.4W
3. Power on, running 1080p video / playing Netflix: 10.7W
4. Power on, running 1080p video, transferring file to internal drive at the same time: 11.3W
dman - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
I'd be interested if it had recording capabilities at this price point. Well, I'm sure a lot of people would be... I just say it because I really don't need the built in HDD on this device since it's not recording anything.It's nice that they've updated the interface, something the previous generation of WD devices have been asking for, however, with Google and Apple getting serious in this space I think WD has been moving a little to slowly here.
Lastly, did they finally include a 30s skip function or is it still just FF/RR while watching shows and the huge 10 or 20 minute (I think) skip?
ganeshts - Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - link
The LiveHub has the ability to navigate to any time instant in the video file. There is an option for a x16 forward / rewind too. No explicit 30s skip as far as I can seeblckgrffn - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
Really? That's getting up into well-connected blu-ray player pricing - not to mention the nettops you can put together for nearly that much...dandar - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
I have an Iomega Home Media NAS. It has gigabit port and it's also limited to an average of 10.6 MB/s. I was getting slightly above 8 MB/s on 100 megabit router so it's a slight upgrade, but a far cry from what I expected (ie 50+ MB/s). They both must have similar bottleneck between the HDD and the network interface.Aikouka - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
If I'm understanding your setup properly, you have a computer and the Iomega Home Media NAS plugged into a 100 Base-T router. Regardless of your NIC's capable speed, you'll never transfer faster than the hardware **between the two points** allows.A 100 Base-T system is theoretically capable of up to 12.5 MB/s (100 / 8).
dandar - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
No, I had it hooked up to 100 megabit router, then I hooked up a gigabit switch in preparation to wiring my house up for nas serving a PS3 and Cinematube. To transfer the files I hooked up my laptop to the switch as well. I haven't tested read speeds yet, but write speeds increased from 8+ MB/s with both my laptop and NAS on my 100 megabit router to 10.6 MB/s with both on the gigabit switch, which incidentally meets what Anandtech got with this box and what other websites got when testing WD Mybook World.Ps. The switch shows both devices connected with gigabit protocols so getting write speeds equivalent to what you could get on a good 100mbps connection is pretty disappointing. Having said that, read speeds should be around 27-30 MBps. Anand or should I say Ganesh should test that and update this review.
Samus - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
That shitty 25mm (sleeve bearing?) fan is going to get really loud, really soon. It's too bad they didn't keep it passively cooled.