Many consumers think of Western Digital as a hard drive company. And that's true - they do make hard drives. However, they're also doing a whole lot more with products reaching far beyond the home office. For proof, look no further than the WD TV Live Hub media center, Western Digital's newest offering which gives you access to a plethora of Internet streaming services coupled with content found on your local home network.

WD was kind enough to invite yours truly to a small gathering held during CES, where G4's "Attack of the Show" host Kevin Pereira joined WD execs to talk about the TV Live Hub and Western Digital's internet contest/web series entitled "Digital Ambush," which, not coincidentally, is also hosted by one Kevin Pereira. Mr. Pereira showed us the pilot episode/proof-of-concept video for the Digital Ambush series, and what we saw was quite amusing. It's not unlike DIY Network's "Yard Crashers," except here they're using flat panel TVs instead of paving stones.

As for the WD TV Live Hub, it's a relatively small black box playing home to a whopping one terabyte (1 TB) internal hard disk drive. In addition to providing integrated streaming services such as Netflix, Blockbuster On Demand, Pandora, Facebook, and YouTube, the bigger story is the Live Hub's support for practically any media file it finds on your home network. The Live Hub is also a DLNA client device.

The WD TV Live Hub is now shipping with a list price of $229, but it's now under $200 at Amazon. You can read more about the TV Live Hub's capabilities at its WD product page.

Finally, although normally I'd paraphrase detailed product specifications, any of my fellow propeller heads reading this and getting excited about the Live Hub are probably going to want to see this:

VIDEO Formats Supported: 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 Formats Supported: JPEG, GIF, TIF/TIFF, BMP, PNG

AUDIO Formats Supported: MP3, WAV/PCM/LPCM, WMA, AAC, FLAC, MKA, AIF/AIFF, OGG, Dolby Digital, DTS

PLAYLIST Formats Supported: PLS, M3U, WPL

SUBTITLE Formats Supported: SRT, ASS, SSA, SUB, SMI

NOTES:

• MPEG2 MP@HL up to 1920x1080p24, 1920x1080i30 or 1280x720p60 resolution.
• MPEG4.2 ASP@L5 up to 1280x720p30 resolution and no support for global motion compensation.
• WMV9/VC-1 MP@HL up to 1280x720p60 or 1920x1080p24 resolution. VC-1 AP@L3 up to 1920x1080i30, 1920x1080p24 or 1280x720p60 resolution.
• H.264 BP@L3 up to 720x480p30 or 720x576p25 resolution.
• H.264 MP@L4.1 and HP@4.1 up to 1920x1080p24, 1920x1080i30, or 1280x720p60 resolution.
• An audio receiver is required for multi-channel surround sound digital output.
• Compressed RGB JPEG formats only and progressive JPEG up to 2048x2048.
• Single layer TIFF files only.
• Uncompressed BMP only.

Whew.  Not bad, eh?

Where to Buy:

• Buy the WD TV Live Hub media center from Amazon.com