Someone must have gotten their paperwork mixed up because I usually review films for WRS but I for some odd reason I was sent to check out a piece of technology. Not that I’m complaining because, well… Hey, free food and drink… Why not? Plus I do have a rather large amount of technojoy coursing through my veins to really enjoy what was being presented. Western Digital is releasing a new media center called the WD TV Live Hub.

Here’s what it does:

• Centralize your media collection: Store all your media in one place on the integrated 1 Terabyte drive. Enjoy your home movies, share vacation slideshows and play your music on your big screen and through the sound system in your living room.

• Access media anywhere on your home network: The Ethernet port located on rear of the media center lets you share all the media stored in the WD TV to anyone else connected on your home network including iPads, iPhones and Android phones. You can also access media stored on other computers on the home network, whether it be a Mac or a PC and play them on your television.

What it does, it does well. The interface was easy to navigate and customizable to your own particular style by changing the background photo, the colors, and having a specific song play when you fire it up. Plus the source code is open so people from anywhere can make changes and modifications to their WD TV. That’s pretty cool. However, I don’t understand what is taking technology so long to get to its inevitable outcome – making our TVs into big computer monitors.

I want to be able to do anything I can do on my little laptop on my TV. And then I want it to do more. I want it to consolidate my TiVo capabilities, my cell phone capabilities, my game console capabilities, etc. I want to be able to do everything through one box. I want the Wal-Mart of media players. When’s it gonna get here?!?!? We’re getting there with this box, slowly but surely, and that’s what I’m most excited about.

I know that the studios and distribution companies don’t want me to be able to do what I want to do and they’ve put up many roadblocks to try and stop me but seriously, screw them. I bought all the DVDs in my own personal collection with my own money, I’m not sharing them with anyone besides the people that come into my house, I should be able to view them in whatever way I please. What I want is the ability to have all 450 of my movies on a hard drive, being able to call any of them up by a simple search engine, and play them, or any of the other special features included, back on my 52” plasma. This brings me to the downsides of this storage unit.

Here’s what it doesn’t do:

• Proper searching: Having even 100 films on 1 Terabyte of space will be a slog to have to sort through in order to watch Zombieland. Even with 100 albums, which the media center IS designed to legally stream, it may take a long time to find what you’re looking for.

• iTunes purchases/downloads: There are apparently some problems with Apple that did not allow them to incorporate this onto their system.

• Surf the web: This one should be on the next iteration – WD TV2. At least that’s what I think should happen.

• Play live TV: So I don’t have to change my input when I want to go from watching “So you think you can d…” I mean “National League Football” to listening to that new Muse album I just bought.

That all said, for $199, this little box is a really good deal, not just for the space but for all the interface software that comes along with it. I remember when media storage used to cost about $1 per Gigabyte. And when I say little box, I mean this thing is tiny. Its dimensions are 1.25” high, 7.8” deep, 6.1” wide and it weighs 1.22 lbs. To think that you can store about 100 full quality films in something that would fit in the palm of your hand is pretty awesome.