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Western Digital WD TV Live and Live Plus HD Media Player

171K views 400 replies 74 participants last post by  Jake 
#1 · (Edited by Moderator)
WDTV Live with networking. Thought I had my mind made up with the Asus O!Play...

Edit: This thread is for the following models

WDBAAN0000NBK WDTV Live (1st Gen)
WDBABX0000NBK WDTV Live Plus (2nd Gen)

For information on the WDBHG70000NBK WDTV Live (3rd Gen) model see this thread.
http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=149536
 
#83 ·
can't get video to display at all on older tv

I got a wd tv live and im trying to use it with an older Samsung hdtv that only does 480p/1080i. i have it plugged in thru component. It seems like it is stuck on 720p which my tv can't display. Is there a way to set it to 1080i. I cant kinda see the menu in the background (720p/1080p shows up squiggly lines on my tv). I just need to know what I have to press on the remote to get to those settings without being able to see it.
 
#84 ·
Can you temporarily hook it up with the composite cable, (yellow)? It should default to 480i and hopefully you can get into the menu and select a different setting. Not sure if 1080i would be selectible with the compostie but you could change it to 480p from auto and swap over to component then go to 1080i.
 
#85 ·
YouTube Problem

I have a new issue with my WDTV Live that has just started today. When I go to YouTube and try logging into my account, this causes the WDTV Live to re-boot. This is now happening every time. I can log into YouTube via PlayOn okay, but I prefer to use WDTV Live directly because there is always a delay with PlayOn. So I have no clue why I'm having this mysterious re-boot problem all of a sudden. Any ideas? (I have firmware 1.01.11, but it's the same firmware that was working properly for me up to the last time I used it before today.)
 
#88 ·
wdtv live and iso

I have made an iso of a dvd I made of a tv movie I captured. I used Imgburn I then tried to play it from my pc drive and it would not play, I then moved it over to the USB drive connected to my computer and it plays fine. I have many dvd's I need to put onto my drive and this is now great as I can access them and play them directly from the storage area. I will once all the dvd's are ripped to iso and placed on the drive use the WDTV Live USB port directly and have a direct feed to the unit. One draw back is that if there are multiple movies on the disc you will have to fast forward to the next movie as it is one file, they may make a proper interface where the menus may show up but till then this is good for me as only a few of my dvd's are multiple movies.
 
#90 ·
Got my WD today and I have a couple of questions. Works well with a USB flash drive and sees it with no problem. Got a Acomdata Samuari portable HD and the WD does not see it at all. Works fine on the home computer, is it because it is a 5400 RPM non powered device?

The second question here the WD program to see my files on the LAN network cannot get it to map anything. I installed TVersity and it works fine. I would like to try the WD program, any ideas as to what Iam doing wrong??????
Thanks pulling my hair out here and I don`t have much left these days...lol
 
#92 ·
I've had my WDTV-Live for almost a month and finally got it working as planned.

Like many others, I was bestowed with the "can't see WinXP shares" problem. As an EE, I'm quite comfortable in the networking space and fought this little box for hours, to no avail. The device was hard-wired over Ethernet and quite happily seeing my network laser printer and even my work laptop, but simply could not see my XP shared folders.

This issue is widely discussed on other forums. Heck, I even tried b-rad's firmware AND purchased/returned another unit after learning that it had the same flaw.

I've tested my unit on a 480i CRT and 1080p LCD, and it works great, but for the last month, I've been copying movies to a USB stick and viewing them on the LCD. All that changed on Boxing Day...

Having unwrapped some computer goodies received for Christmas, I finally built a new server, upgraded to Windows Home Server (WHS) and Voila!, the WD is quite happily seeing all the shared folders and content over the network. No more painfully copying multi-gigabyte movies to a USB stick.

WHS is my new friend, and with 8.0TB of storage, I should be good for a while and I'll have the security of RAID-equivalence and scheduled automatic backups of the other computers in the house :D

With this resolved, I'm seriously interested in picking up another WDTV-Live...
 
#93 ·
got a wdtv live for christmas and picked up a usb wireless stick. overall it's working alright, but just have 2 issues

1)if my computers are on, then it sees them, but once they sleep, i can't figure out how to wake them back up. so basically i think this would be 'wake up on lan wireless' on windows 7. anyone have any ideas on setting this up?

2)for some reason it doesn't see the mkv files on my computers. it sees all the other files in the same directory, but not those. it's supposed to support mkv, so what am i doing wrong?

thanks
 
#94 ·
It is a nice gadget when it works BUT noone should be jumping hoops, bending over to make it work. The networking function should be just plug in the Cat5E and watch TV....NOT heading out to the computer store to get more stuff before it can play anything.
 
#95 ·
Agreed, but I had plans for the new PC anyway, since the P3/500 hosting my Squeezebox music library was really showing it's age. Now I have an eight terabyte server hosting audio, video, photo, software and other files, plus it automates backing up other machines in the house :D

IMHO, the live wasn't quite ready for prime-time, as demonstrated by the fiasco over the v12 firmware update (for those not aware: it bricked many units). I suspect WD rushed to get the product out for the Christmas market, plus in addition to competition from Asus/Patriot/Popcorn Hour, they saw Sony, Seagate and others chasing their heels.

It's getting to be a crowded space, so in addition to prices coming down, I think the manufacturers are going to be paying close attention to features AND software quality. I imagine the recent fiasco cost WD a small fortune in RMA's.
 
#96 ·
Mini Update

My LIVE has been pretty good for a month. I am still on the firmware that bricked some units but mine is not affected.

The networking on my unit only started to work properly AFTER I disabled 'SHARE WDTV Live' on the network. I haven't had any drop-out at all. There is still odd issues when my kitchen PC is 'busy' doing stuff and once in a while the SHARED FOLDERS from the kitchen PC doesn't show but re-initializing the network setting always works.

I notice another problem which happens when I play high bitrate clips (eg Blu-ray rip and the famous Planet Earth killer Bird Scene) I often get some random stutter. The strange thing is I can set the Bird Scene to REPEAT indefinitely and it would play flawlessly over and over again. I hope they will have more updates that actually fixes various networking nuisance.
 
#97 ·
Hi All,

I'm thinking of picking one of these up... but I've got a few questions.

1) Is Windows 7 a problem? I've heard it could be...

2) What I am trying to do... I run my network through the power cables in my house, and didn't have any success in streaming to my PS3.

I want to get this, add a USB HD and store movies and music locally. BUT, I want to push it to the USB HD via the network. I will not be streaming through the network... just copying to local storage.

Does anybody do this?

Thanks!

-Mike
 
#98 ·
Frameboy, I have Win 7 and it sees my WDTV Live just fine, no tweaking needed. I have the windows and comodo firewall active BTW. I did some testing and yes, a hard drive attached locally is automatically detected by windows as a network drive and you can easily add content.

Is the powerline network reliable? I don't know how well transfering large amounts of data over such a network would go.
 
#99 ·
Thanks DJ! Perfect!

Yea, the power lines work okay for my PS3. I use the D-Link adapters. I get about 200Mbps through it.

It isn't perfect, but it's fine for PS3 gaming, and it should be fine for transferring files.

I don't keep my PC on all the time, so the local HD on the Media Player solution is better.

I'll be picking mine up tomorrow... with an ethernet switch for my PS3 and a nice short HDMI cable! :p
 
#100 ·
I've had mine for a number of months now (got it the firat week they came out). Other than an incompatibility with my NAS servers (Eagle Tech units) it has been great. It took me a while to figure out that it can take a few minutes to scan my network (partly due to the incompatibility with my NAS devices - I blame the NAS units, not the WD TV Live) and find all the shares. In many cases, setup takes literally seconds. I was playing back my first video in under 5 minutes of receiving the box by courier. I use it daily to play back video, both avi and mkv files, and I have had 0 compatibility issues with file encoding so far. I running most video on a WinXP share for now, across a wired network. Although I haven't had any issues, it would have been nice if it supported gigabit for future compatibility.

Throughput on powerline ethernet may be an issue for streaming, but it likely depends on the file type (and therefore the size). Copying the files up to a local USB HDD wouldn't be an issue other than the transfer time.

apn - The issue with the bricked units on the firmware update had nothing to do with the firmware update itself, and therefore is not a factor in whether or not the unit was "ready for primetime". It was an issue with the network updater. I was fortunate in that I accepted the update over the internet and it worked (IIRC - I *may* have downloaded it, I can't recall, as I wanted a copy to save for the future). Unlike many companies, I was ahppy to see a number of firmware updates roll out quickly. You can't expect quality control to test the thousands of devices/combinations out there, so rolling out firmware updates is a huge bonus for the consumer.
 
#101 ·
Why would Powerline Ethernet be of any problem ? The LIVE is 10/100 and Powerline is faster than that and at sustainable speed. All the problem is in the pi$$ poor network chip and the support in the LIVE. Anything wireless may well have problem unless you have latest gear and under the best condition.

On a side note, I came across a couple of movies that has audio in WMA (Digital) format and there was no sound for both Digital or Stereo. VLC Player played no problem. No biggies as those are not that common that I can see.
 
#102 ·
Warning on using WDTV LIVE as "Server"

After a couple of months, I finally identified what was crashing my video playback over the network.

I mentioned before, I have had absolutely no 'crashing after a few minutes of playing a video' after I disabled 'Share WDTV Live over Network'.

The other day, I played around and re-enabled 'Share WDTV Live' and boom...network playback crashing again after a few minutes. These are most likely firewall issues but my setup is actually as simple as it goes with Gigabit switches and a few computers that are XP Pro and Vista. YMMV but this was a pretty common problem described.

I am glad I don't have any need for the WDTV Live to act as a server because that would mean I need to enable WDTV to be shared over network. It is not visually appealing for any HDD attachment onto the WDTV Live anyways. A cool/quiet small device that plays 90%+ of everything is pretty good.
 
#103 ·
Okay... so I've got it installed in my HT Case.

Powerline cable (which has been very stable...) to a D-Link switch to the WD Live and PS3.

I'm using ESET Security, and I think I've put the exception in okay for the firewall.

It is dropping my file transfer from Windows 7 to the USB drive off the WD Live for some reason. I've downloaded files that are hundreds of mb's for the PS3 with no issue... but simple file transfers are causing issues.

I'm wondering if it's sharing that is the issue... anybody have a similar experience? Any tips on making sure sharing is enabled?

Can I add the WD Live to my Homegroup?
 
#104 ·
OK, so after some initial success with an evaluation copy of WHS (above), I went out and dropped over a hundred bills (plus the damn taxes) on a full-fledged copy of WHS and just spent the last ~4hrs;

- re-installing WHS
- re-installing my mobo drivers
- downloading and installing close to 100 windows updates
- cleaning up the temp files
- defragmenting the system partition
- preparing and saving an image of the system partition

...and guess what?

[RANT]
The damn WHS box can't see my "network share" server anymore

I'm so sick and tired of this cr@p, the box is fine when it works, but it's more temperamental than a 3yr old child.

I've rebooted the server, rebooted the router, rebooted the WD, restored WD to factory defaults, yet the WD piece of sh!t is quite happy to surf YouTube and look at what my network laser printer might be sharing, but it outright refuses to see the shared server folders it quite happily played video from yesterday.

Note that other device in the house (2 computers, 3 squeezeboxes and an iPod) are quite happily accessing the server.

To those delusioned with frequent firmware updates (above), did you actually notice any incremental features? I sure didn't, and I put it all down to bug fixes i.e. low product maturity.

Network adaptor or firmware updates, I don't care. There are many network-related horror stores all over the net, and the manufacturer is eating a huge number of RMA's after the recent v12 firmware debacle. The bottom line is that this thing is garbage.

To those looking to buy one, my advise is DON'T: go buy the new ASUS w/ wireless networking or wait for D-Link's Boxee Box; at least those guys have a clue about networking.

As you might guess, I'm not in the best of moods as I write this, but I'm curious if anyone has any thoughts on how I might restore this thing to a working state before I drive over it in frustration.

[/RANT]

In the meantime, I'll probably resort to wasting another 4+hrs, installing WHS as a "New installation" rather than "Re-installation". I can't imagine that it had any bearing, but we're dealing with a 3yr old here...
 
#105 ·
I don't know anything about WHS (never really needed it for my applications), but I do understand your frustration with the WDTV.

I'm sure you already tried all of this, but I'll throw it out there anyway:

-turn off all firewalls (software, router, and windows)
-assign static IP to WDTV
-if using a wireless adapter for WDTV, unplug it and plug it back in after the WDTV has been restarted. I do this whenever mine "hangs" and it seems to work.

If you get it working, then work backwards. I know some firewalls have quirks with them ie BitDefender requires you to place the wireless IP in the trusted zone before you can access shares.

I get the same problem some times - can access YouTube, but cannot access shared drives anymore. It is a really frustrating problem.

Hope you get it figure out!

Good Luck
 
#106 ·
Well, after much consternation, I've got the WD seeing my WHS shared folders again (without repeating the windows installation process).

Thanks for the suggestions, willise, but unfortunately, I'd already been down those roads. I discounted all of those for the simple reason that everything was working with a virgin WHS installation, but stopped after a re-install.

In the interests of helping others with the same afflction, here's what worked for me;

1. Unplugged the network cable from the WD, reset to factory defaults and confirmed the IP addr was 0.0.0.0

2. Powered-down ALL network attached devices in the house; that's a lengthy list for me: 3 desktops, 2 laptops, 1 laser printer, 4 squeezeboxes (incl. Controller), 1 iPod, 1 PS3, 1 VOIP adaptor and 1 WDTV-Live.

3. Powered-down the main WRT54GL router and the BEFSR41 router (switch).

4. Power-cycled the cable modem and began poweing-up devices in reverse order; WRT54GL, then BEFSR41, then WDTV-live (network re-attached) and then the WHS desktop/server. Remaining devices to follow.

After confirming that the WHS server and WDTV-live had valid IP addresses, I checked for Network Shares on the WDTV-live and Voila!, it was seeing the server again and I could troll and play various video content.

None of this changes my opinion that in its current form, the WDTV-live is a fragile, temperamental, bug-riddled product prematurely rushed to market.

But for now, I'm happy again...
 
#107 ·
I can't figure out my issue here...

When I'm copying large files to my USB connected to the WD Live, I lose connectivity to it for some reason.

I've formatted the drive to NTFS.
I've done the DHCP reservation.
I've confirmed and reset all my sharing / network settings.

I just can't figure it out... I guess it COULD be my powerline connection. Hard one to test. My PS3 tends to be reliable, but that's 100's of MB's... not GB's.
 
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