Western Digital (WD) TV series is the best in the hard-drive based media players available in India today. The WD TV was a top notch product and the WD TV Live a better one. With the TV Live Hub, Western Digital has gone a step ahead and incorporated a hard-drive into the multimedia player and added some interesting new features.

The WD TV?s have always impressed us on account of build quality, and the TV Live Hub is no different. The player has a slim design with a black matte finish. As it incorporates a hard-drive, the player can only be kept in horizontal mode and not vertical like its predecessor. It has composite and component out ports on the back alongside an HDMI 1.4 out, optical audio out, an Ethernet port as well as a USB port. On the front is a WD logo lit up in white that adds to the overall design of the player. On the left front corner is the power button and on the right corner is another USB port for connectivity. Although the player incorporates a hard-drive it is still surprisingly lightweight. The player has a dedicated cooling fan at the base that keeps the player and the hard-drive from heating up too much.

The Hub boots up in under a minute and shows the main user interface. We immediately fell in love with the new user interface that WD calls as ?Mochi?. All the Menu options are placed neatly at the bottom with large text labels on them. The rest of the display shows a lively image. WD has also provided the new user interface with various themes to make the visual experience richer. Overall, the user interface is quick to response and provides zippy navigation and quick read times.

The player comes with a 2.5 inch hard-drive with a capacity of 1TB. The only way to transfer data onto the hard-drive is via a connected USB drive or through the network. All the files are automatically placed in their categories once the player has cached them. An interesting feature on the Hub is that the user can mark files and folders as favourites, which can be accessed at anytime on the single press of the blue coloured button on the remote control.

Similar to the WD TV Live, the TV Live Hub played each and every format we tried. From high definition files in .mkv, .m2ts format to standard files in divX, Xvid formats, the Live Hub played everything and up-scaled content wherever required. The performance is top notch and makes the WD TV variant one of the best performers we have seen. Even with an internal hard-drive in the box and a cooling fan at the bottom, we were impressed by the fact that the TV Live Hub ran extremely quite.

It?s not only the player that has got a change in its shape this time. Even the remote control of the Live Hub is larger and has more buttons than the predecessors. The remote fits comfortably in hand due to its ergonomic shape and the keys are soft to press. The increased number of buttons provides quick access to a host of features for ease in overall usage of the device.

Priced at Rs 11,990 with 1TB storage, the WD TV Live Hub is very aggressively priced. With the only competitor being the bulky Asus O! Play HD2 that features a 3.5-inch hard-drive at a slightly less price point, the TV Live is one of the best players available today in the market and is ideal for home as well as commercial usage.

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