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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
 
#55 ·
I'd like to figure it out also.

I am not network savvy but I am fairly heavily equipped (though not in supergenious' league).

3 gigabit switches in 3 separate rooms connecting a dozen devices including 4 PCs. I don't use any NAS. 2 HTPCs are on 24/7 so those are the servers. Wireless router and a networking laser printer are also attached to the gigabit switches. Nothing out of the oridinary I think.

I did mention in the past that I needed the LIVE to save a terabyte drive and I transferred some 700GB+ data which took more than a day but it worked. Shared Folder playback is where I have problem.
 
#57 · (Edited)
got it

Here is all I had to do....okay I may get it a little wordy but here goes it is just one extra click....
In on the drive you want to share go to sharing options for different networks
then done to home or work current profile go to
Media streaming then click on all all networks then click on wdtvlive and allow it access.

After all this I have to say I see the drive and all the files but while connected to the PC usb it tries to play them and stops saying the format is not supported okay then I run a usb cable from that drive into the back of the WDTV Live and all the files play perfectly so I did get to see the drive and even all the files listed perfectly but the media palyer starts then stops giving a format not supported message well this is really a small part of the service I need but now I am into this ... this deep so what to heck!
 
#60 ·
I also updated the firmware tonight but it didn't fix the issue. Nothing new was added, just the update manager. I am still losing connection shortly after. After playing a few vdeos, everything is gone except BRNEE (from Brother network printer).

I usually do what danbcman does anyways for all shared drives so I can add/delete across the network.

I'll use the B-Rad next and shut up if it works.
 
#61 ·
I've stopped trying to have the WDTV see the folders shared in XP but have been used TVersity as a server then share my folders through it. I've had zero problems playing movies that are sitting my desktop with the WDTVLive going through a wired network.

Separate from TVersity, mapped the USB drive on the WDTV and it shows on the PC as a network drive.
 
#62 ·
I received my WDTV Live yesterday. I placed it in my bedroom and plugged in the USB adapter. I looked at the IP address it was assigned by DHCP and set that as a reservation in my router. The I placed that IP address in the trusted zone on my network. Every share on the network was immediately available.

For me, it worked exactly as advertised, right out of the box.

For those that cannot get the network shares to work, except with TVersity (which it also picks up on mine), it must be either a defective unit, or a setup issue.
 
#63 ·
Willise

I'm sure I'm sharing my desktop XP folders correctly as when I connect my laptop to to the network I can see them on it.

But wonder your comment "I placed that IP address in the trusted zone on my network", where/how do I do that?
 
#64 ·
I cannot tell you how many times I have tried to connect a wireless device, that is not a computer, to my network for sharing purposes, and not see the shares. It happened with my LG390, a Samsung 4600, and the WDTV Live.

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the LG390 problem several months ago. I could see all the shared directories on any computer, but the LG could not see any.

SO i figured it must be my Anti Virus/Firewall program. I turned those off, and then the shares appeared immediately. So now I knew it was a firewall problem.

I was running BitDefender Total 2009 (but I am sure all of them must be fairly similar). In the firewall settings, you can add programs, IP's, etc to a "trusted zone" and the normal firewall rules will not apply.

Turn off your firewall (windows and any other) and see if the shares pop up on the WDTV. If they do, it is a firewall issue.

Let me know how you make out and we'll fix your problem.

Good Luck!;)
 
#65 ·
Well this is embarrassing.

I had tried before with the Windows Security Center firewall turned off without luck with the shares, but your comment about non-computer and Turn off your firewall (windows and any other) had me wondering.

Sure enough had another Firewall running (Shaw Secure) and with that off, now can see the shares. Guess what had me thinking every was setup okay before, was I could see the shares on another PC.

Now just to get Shaw Secure to allow the WDTV
 
#66 ·
Well now that we know that teh firewall is the culprit, you need to go to your router settings and determine what IP address has been given to the WDTV, unless you already know it.

Then in the Shaw firewall setup, look for something like a "trusted zone" , "exceptions", or "rules" and you should be able to configure the firewall to allow the WDTV access to the network.

I don't have Shaw in this part of the country, so unfortunately I cannot help you with that. If you run into problems, hopefully others can help with the Shaw issue.

Glad you isolated the problem! :)
 
#67 ·
Which Media Server for WDTV Live?

I finally got off the fence and bought this puppy from NCIX, along with the Belkin 200 Mbps Powerline AV kit. Excellent delivery experience, no setup problems, automatic firmware upgrade, plays all my media on a connected USB drive. Five stars.

Now for my small problem.

For some unknown reason, my Windows XP desktop, with 640 GB storage, where I download my videos, REFUSES to share to other PCs on my home LAN.

To ease this problem, I installed Twonky Media Manager on my XP PC, and now the WDTV Live can see the media on my XP PC, neatly organized by Twonky.

But Twonky isn't free. $46 - but they offer 50% off 'til 31 Dec.

So, is Twonky worth the cost, or do TVersity and XBMC offer equivalent or additional features I should check out?

- Jeff Schallenberg
Mont Saint-Hilaire, Québec
 
#72 ·
Jschall,

THere must be a setup issue in your XP machine, if other computers cannot see it on the network. If the folders are set up to share, they should be visible.

My guess is that the permissions are not set correctly.

Tversity works well, but the interface is not very slick and navigation is awful, IMO. XBMC is fantastic, when running on a computer or XBOX, but again, the beautiful details that make XBMC so great, don't transfer over to WDTV live.

There really is no need to pay for Twonky, IMO. There are other, cheaper (free) ways to do what you need.

And do not update to the Version 12 firmware!
 
#73 ·
Firmware 1.01.12 is poison!

Thanks for the heads-up, danbcman.

On Friday 4 December, I took delivery of my WDTV Live, plugged it into the Internet and powered on. It immediately asked me to update, so I did. It turns out the update was to 1.01.11. The problem firmware is the new 1.01.12. So I am extremely lucky I didn't get bitten.

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/updates/?family=wdfwdtv_live

http://www.geek.com/articles/gadget...ricked-by-the-latest-firmware-update-2009127/

The WD announcement says only "a small percentage" of users get bricked, but that seems to be a lame attempt at damage control.

Has anybody here tried the custom/homebrew firmware from b-rad? What are your experiences?

- Jeff Schallenberg
Mont Saint Hilaire, Québec
 
#74 ·
I've been running b-rad's firmware since he released it. I was having big issues with the networking support in the stock firmware to the point of making the box essentially useless for me so I figured I didn't have much to lose by giving it a try. The biggest issue with the stock firmware was the dropped network connections, "lost" servers/shares, etc. that have been well reported. The second more minor issue was that you couldn't map a share permanently - you always had to go to Network, browse to the server, share, folder, etc. Huge PITA, especially if you have multiple servers and shares to deal with.

Both of these were fixed with b-rad's firmware. It lets you explicitly mount a share so you can go straight to it and you can also have a config file with multiple mounts that executes automatically on startup. You also have the option of using NFS instead of CIFS/SMB which supposedly gives better performance (I say supposedly because I didn't test this much since I wasn't having any performance issues with CIFS anyway).

Overall I haven't had any significant issues with b-rad's firmware and I've been very happy with it since it solved my major networking issues. The only problem I had was a weird one that prevented me from editing some config files (it's a long story and not really relevant to this thread so I won't bother with the details). I never figured out why exactly I was having the problem but I suspect it was related to one of the later version upgrades not applying quite correctly or completely. The fix was relatively straight forward though - I just downgraded to the original firmware and then applied b-rad's latest firmware again and it worked fine after that.
 
#76 ·
I have to agree - the way you have to select your shares everytime is a real pain.

What do you have to do in order to install the B-Rad firmware? I know you have to put the three files on the root of a flash drive and change the version number to a higher number. but what about after that?

Do you map the drives in the same way?

Thanks
 
#78 ·
What do you have to do in order to install the B-Rad firmware? I know you have to put the three files on the root of a flash drive and change the version number to a higher number. but what about after that?

Do you map the drives in the same way?
It's actually a bit simpler now than it was in the earlier versions. The version number included in b-rad's distribution is already higher so you just copy it to a flash drive as is and the WDTV will see it as a new firmware and go through the normal update process.

After its done you can place a file called net.mounts in the root of the flash drive or in the /conf folder on the WDTV itself and it executes automatically on startup. There is a sample file included in the distribution with examples. It's also simplest if you just keep a usb drive in at all times since any mounted shares show up as "local" folders but only if a usb drive is inserted. There is a way now to set it up so your mounts show up under Network instead but I haven't bothered with that because I had an old 2GB drive that I wasn't using so I just leave it in the WDTV. It's a lot more convenient to have a scratch drive always there anyway.
 
#79 ·
wdtv live firmware

I see at the wdtv live site they have isolated the troubles with version 12 firmware and say the problem was directly related to the internet update process so for me all the updates will be via a usb drive.
They also said they will replace all the affected units at no charge to the customer which is in my veiw the right thing to do.:)
 
#82 ·
I got WD TV Live as Christmas present for my better half. Since I don't have Ethernet port anywhere close to her TV I had to look for alternatives. It was either one of powerline adapters or USB wireless adapter. I have ZyXel X-550 wireless router in my basement, but it will only do A/B/G over wireless. So, I decided to treat myself to new router and settled on Netgear WNDR3700 that has Gigabit switch and does dual band wireless N. Unfortunately, it's out of stock everywhere in North America.

I picked all that up at Memory Express. For USB wireless adapter I got last Linksys WUSB600N v2 they had in stock. So I don't get very embarrassed when she opens box I decided yesterday to try it out with my existing wireless router. WD TV Live recognized WUSB600N v2 immediately. All I had to do is select appropriate parameters for my wireless network, type password and it was connected in 1 second. Recognized that there is new firmware, downloaded it and installed it. After reboot, it recognized all my Window 7 shared libraries. It played my pictures and mp3’s without hiccup.

When it comes to video, everything was stutter free (including 10Mb/s MPEG-2) until I tried my home videos at Blu-Ray bit rates. They are encoded as MPEG-2 at 30+Mb/s. That was simply too much for wireless G and entire video was playing in slow motion at about 2/3 of original speed. All h.264 and Xvid/DivX I have were flawless.

I hope that once I get Netgear WNDR3700 even Blu-Ray will work as expected. All in all, with only few hours of testing, it certainly lived up to my expectations. Time will tell how well wireless connection is suitable for HD streaming.

As a side note, Linksys removed drivers for WUSB600N v2 from their web site, and even though this adapter is certified by Microsoft to work with Windows 7, there are no supported drivers for it. After I found who makes chipset for that adapter I downloaded drivers straight from chipset manufacturer and adapter was working fine when I tested it in Windows 7 x64. Drivers can be downloaded from Ralink support website at http://www.ralinktech.com/support.php (RT2870/RT2770/RT307X/RT2070/RT3572/RT3370 chipset)
 
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