I’m a huge fan of gadgets and gizmos, as you may have guessed given that I run a tech blog. I’ve probably got more cables and wiring than the local ISP, some of the bits and pieces are so ancient they have brass fittings and the Bakelite insulation has rotted away; the gadgets to which they were originally hooked up are long gone. So, when Western Digital offer to lend me a bunch of wondrous geekery in return for reviewing the kit, how could I refuse?

The goodies arrived in a fairly compact box delivered by courier last week and I’ve had fun connecting and configuring the various components. At the heart of this box of tricks is the WD TV Live Hub. This gadget is a very compact, black set-top box with an internal 1 Terabyte hard drive. A RJ45 network port on the back and a USB 3.0 port on the front, and, of course, HDMI out (full 1080p) and also the standard sockets so that you can connect it to your high-definition television or any standard TV. So far, so fairly commonplace, apart from that massive storage space, you might say. However, where that RJ45 port connects is where things get interesting as the Hub comes with two much smaller network boxes each with its own RJ45 network ports. Both plug directly into mains power outlets and the RJ45 on one connects to the TV Hub and the RJ45 on the other connects to your network router. It also has SPDIF digital output, for optical sound connections.

Your network router, you say?

Indeed, for these little boxes are mains-supply network adapters…the WD LiveWire system. They carry the network packets (encrypted and at a theoretical maximum of 200 Mbp/s) between TV Hub and router without the worry about finding a good place to obtain a strong wireless signal between TV room and the place where your router sits. The manual says not to plug the adapters into plugboards but they seem to work fine for most functions (more on that later). Oh, but speaking of wireless, the Hub is wireless ready, you can add an optional wireless adapter and connect to your router that way if you wish. It also works with wireless USB and USB keyboards (makes using the services a lot easier, especially updating Facebook).

Once hooked up, you can then pick any of several “services” including Facebook, Deezer, Flickr, Youtube (Pandora and Netflix in the US only), TuneIn Radio, MediaFly, Flingo, Accuweather and a couple of other US-only media services. These services are apparently added to with each firmware update, which can be set to run automatically. I have my fingers crossed for them enabling BBC iPlayer at least for British licence payers and perhaps even embedding a web browser for a more complete internet access experience. There is lots of discussion on the WD forums and even a screengrab that seems to hint iPlayer is on its way.

Also in the box was a highly portable WD “My Passport” external USB 3.0 hard drive, which is very, very fast. Load it up with movies, music and photos from your PC and then plug it into the front of the TV Hub, within a short time the contents will be synced to the internal storage of the Hub given you access to all that media content without you having to be running a network at the time. Selecting media files is very straightforward and the Hub handles most formats: AVI, MPEG, VOB, MOV, WMV etc for movies, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, BMP and PNG for images, MP3, WAV, WMA, AAC (there is some connectivity with iTunes available), FLAC, OGG etc for music.

You don’t have to get your fix of media files in this way, as the bundle also comes with the My Book Live network-attached storage (NAS) device and media player known as the My Book Live. This is also a 1 Tb file server that connects to your router (via Gigabit Ethernet or standard networking) and gives you access to its contents from the TV Hub via the mains adapters. At this point you have to revert to the standard installation – no plugboards for the adapters – as that’s the only way the Hub can see the NAS. Do that and you have full access to all the media files you load up on to the My Book. In standard or “plugboard” configuration all drives NAS and TV Hub are accessible under Windows 7 (and presumably other operating systems) as standard network storage and files can be moved to and fro at will. WD tell me that there are no safety issues with using plugboards but that there might be problems with file transfers. I am yet to experience any problems in that regard (other than the plugboard precluding media server functionality, which I’ve asked WD to look into).

You can also set up the My Book Live to stream its contents over the web to any browser via a Mionet account free for owners of the system.

As a quick footnote, the equipment is all DNLA certified, which means it can be easily hooked up to Blu-Ray and DVD players, cameras etc.

Alternative view

• Western Digital WD TV Live Hub Media Center 1TB – review and practical tips