WD Live TV Hub: A must have Electronic Device

by Sanjeev Jaiswal
Review on an awesome electronic gadget: WD Live TV Hub
WD TV Live Hub Overview
“Bring your digital life to high definition big screen or any old screen at your home”. This sounds interesting. Isn’t it? Being from 21st century, where a 5 years old kid plays with mobile and computers, we need something unique apart from saving our bigger files for future use by using external hard disk.

I still remember when my friend bough computer, I simply asked what you will do with so much space (80 GB). Now 1 Terabyte (1 TB is equivalent to 1024 GB or simply say approx… 1000 GB) does not sufficient for future use. Whosoever is buying laptop, desktop etc.  looking for 500 GB internal hard disk at least (purely my assumption).


Hard disk either internal or external is meant for data storage from a doc file (merely in a KB) to Blu-ray quality movie of 8 GB size approx… But If I need to watch movies, video songs, serials on bigger screen like 40 inch television or 5 feet white screen using projector. By that time using laptop or computer system will not be a better idea! (Of course we can do all these but there must some awesome way to do it.)
Even simple external hard disk can’t suffice our needs, although it can store thousands of high quality movies in its 1 TB space but to access any of its file we need to connect it through our system anyway. How about an electronic gadget that:
  • Can be used to watch stored data directly at bigger screen like TV without using computer?
  • Can be used to surf internet on TV
  • Can be shared across other computer using LAN/WAN
  • Can be treated as multimedia player which can play any format even mkv,m2ts without any hassle
Yes, I know you can’t read any more boring lines. Let come to the point. I bought an electronic device solve my problem of storing extra files into an external hard disk and the same device can be used to watch/access those files using a remote on TV or any bigger screen. Here comes, Western Digit’s Live TV Hub which has lots of features that will compel to you have one in your home.

Features that I liked:

  • Easy to operate
  • 1 TB or 2 TB storage capacity
  • Can access internet using LAN wire
  • One can access its data using a switch or by directly connecting through LAN wire
  • One can operate this device using smartphone app (available in android and iphone )
  • One can access it using LAN wire, through HDMI port, through old 3 pin socket (used in older TV)
  • Transfers/uploads  files easily across the network
  • One can use usb keyboard to surf net on TV instead of laptop screen 😀
  • It support full HD video playback(1080p)
  • You can directly see video camera’s content through this device
  • The player automatically synchronizes with watched folders so new content from any PC, Mac, or USB storage will be added to the WD TV Live Hub.
  • It supports usb v2.0, HDMI v1.4
  • It has 2 usb ports, one HDMI port, one optical audio output port, composite and component socket for TV and TFT monitors. (But I faced problem while accessign files using USB. I need to experiment more on it. )
WD TV Live Hub
File Format supported:
  • 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, FLV (h.264) 
  • 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 
Note: It doesn’t support amazon store, iTunes store
  • It supports many languages like English, French, Dutch, Korean, Russian etc.
  • It costs around $180 (9000 INR approx. ) It may vary at present.
  • My Rating 4.5 out of 5

Here is much more detail about it. http://wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=570
 

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Samsung Galaxy SII and SIII: Prone to a New Security Vulnerability

  • admin
  • December 3, 2012
  • 15
Samsung Galaxy SII and SIII: Prone to a New Security Vulnerability
Samsung Galaxy SII and SIIIIn a recent demonstration by a security researcher, it was found out that Samsung Galaxy SII and SIII smart phones were vulnerable to being remotely wiped off their memory. In this regard, for the owners of these devices the precursor is here, you may want to watch your ways, especially when opening internet links that you receive through QR, NFC or Push messages.

A researcher in the Security in Communications department at Technical University Berlin, Ravi Borgaonkar, manifested this particular vulnerability at the Ekoparty security conference, Argentina. According to him, the manner in which the devices make use of Unstructured Supplementary Service Data leaves them conveniently open to exploitation through a single line of malicious code embedded in a web page. The Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (also USSD) is basically what is used to transmit messages between an application server and a phone.

How does that work?
The malicious code as discussed above can be made use of in order to trigger the factory reset for the Galaxy SIII device. If the code is embedded in a single frame it will automatically lead a factory reset that does not have to be initiated by the user. Nonetheless, merely browsing a website with the embedded code does not result in triggering the reset, rather opening it through NFC, WAP Push SMS or QR does. As soon as the website link in the message opens, the wipe is started.

The techie take
Some techie responded rather optimistically to the news and thought that the weakness would not do much damage. The underlying argument was that many hackers will not go into frenzy over wiping a few phones, considering many consumers use Cloud Backups with their devices and it will be an exercise in futility as the users will simply be able to reverse the oh-so clever move. Still, the concern was that is there anything more that can come out from this exploit, because if there is than not opening a link that you didn’t call for would be a better idea.

The company’s response
Following the entire kerfuffle over the issue, Samsung finally responded and claimed that the issue was resolved. A spokesperson from the South Korean company explained that the vulnerability was now patched but failed to mention when exactly was it fixed and which version of the software was secure for now.

All that was given out was an assurance to the consumers that the recently discovered security weakness concerning Galaxy SIII was patched through a software update, recommending all the users of this device to download the latest software update. It can be done simply and rapidly using the over the air service, according to the company.

 While that might be a reason for Galaxy SIII owners to sleep well at nights, what about the ones with other smart phones, the SII inclusive. According to the rumors the problem stemmed out from the TouchWiz UI as opposed to merely the Galaxy SIII. Well, the company has not responded in this vein, so for now, the Galaxy SIII users who feel reassured can sleep well and others can, perhaps take pill or go on trying to dodge the bullets of this demon as they do Android spy apps, mobile spy software and the like.

Author Bio: James Clark has been in the business of providing quality information on cell phone monitoring for a while now. He's an expert at all things spyware, but his main forte is iPhone spyware which has captured the interest of many.
                                                                                                                                                   

How to make effective media sharing in home through broadband connection

Media Sharing In Your Home through Your Broadband Internet Connection – How to Make It More Effective
 
One of the concerns of people who perform different activities online like games, video streaming, VoIP, etc. is the bandwidth. Having a continuous internet service whether through expensive plans or cheap broadband, can enable you to perform these internet related activities, but there are ways where an internet user can do these with utmost convenience, depending on priority. This is with a downloadable custom Firmware, DD-WRT. Modifying the settings may take some time but if this is the trade-off for a better performance of your internet activities, then it should be worth it.

5 ways to socialize effectively through Google+

Google+Life is enriched by actively participating in the society. As you know, there are innumerable ways to maintain contacts, communicate and share information through social networking sites. Of late blows the whistle, Google+, being cooked by imaginative Google engineers who are testing and letting tasted by select few user invites, has already spread fumes out. Google+ can help you socialize in a better way.
If you are not sure about the how to’s of Google plus, this tutorial on Google+ will be of help.

Better contact management

The first step to socialize is maintaining contacts. You can easily maintain groups in different circles. Friend contacts can be placed under friends circle, family members can be placed under family circle and co-workers can be placed under employee circles and fans can be placed under fans circles.

You can name a circle as you want. Interactions will be made on a circle basis. What you post in one circle will not reflect in other circle. You can add your friend both in employee circle and friend circle in which case he gets information from both circles. Using circles you can bring friends from other networks like Facebook and Twitter also.

Sharing information

Sharing of information is vital to be social. Sparks is an interesting feature through which you can gather information on various topics of interest. In fact, the Google+ search engine will gather interesting links on its own just by opting the topics of your choice. You can share music, photos, videos and links with a single circle or all circles.

Google is planning to promote music in a big way including sharing, offering live music performance and group listening parties. If you post some interesting or useful piece of item which may be text or image or video, members from your circles can comment on it. By actively approving the comments or replying the comments, you can make it a live platform.

You can even write blogs on your own and start uploading them! Here lies the great opportunity to promote yourself or your products and services, although Google+ does not support business officially as of now.

Face to Face (F2F) Chat

Don’t you love talking with your loved ones, as if you are right in front of them? With ‘Hangouts’ you can gather yourself for video face to face chat. Multiple people can participate in this anytime and anywhere. With video chat, you can share and explain things in a better way, better understand the feelings of other people by closely watching them. If you are bored and no one is readily available, you can watch YouTube videos too while on hangout.

Instant Messaging

If you want to be in touch with your friends through simple text messages, you can do so through ‘Huddle’. You will be able to send short messages to individual or circle.

Of course, you and the one who receives need to use Android application to achieve this. When you invite a new person to the conference, he will be able to access the context from the time of his joining only.

Social gaming

Social gaming is going to be a big boon in the coming days. Google+ is on the way to create an altogether new platform to enthuse both young and old.

Have you tasted Google+? What is your experience?

About our guest author:
Dr. Jane H Sheeba is Research Scientist in Centre for Nonlinear Dynamics at Bharathidasan University.
She runs a self help blog Find All Answers. She is part of the team at Coupon Triumph, a site that features Bistro MD and Diet to go discount coupons among the others. Here are 2 coupons for you: bistro md coupons, diettogo discount 15%.

 

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