Western Digital WD TV Live and Live Plus HD Media Player

[willise]

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

[grog]

Originally Posted by PPL4GOLF

Why do you need to downgrade to the original firmware before using the 3rd party ?

Normally you wouldn't. It's just that I was having a problem with the 3rd party firmware that I couldn't figure out so I basically uninstalled and reinstalled it and fortunately it fixed it.

[grog]

Originally Posted by willise

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.

[danbcman]

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.

[dosborne]

Originally Posted by danbcman

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.

IT wasn't really an option to do anything else, unless they want to lose most of their customers forever.

Personally, I accepted the firmware update when it first came out and didn't have any issues. Still running it.

[jschall]

A nice review by Robert Heron on HD Nation, episode 22 (8 December):

http://revision3.com/hdnation

Among other things, Robert was impressed by the automatic upgrade to 1.01.11 the moment he plugged it in...


- Jeff Schallenberg
Mont Saint Hilaire, Québec

[753951]

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)

[pakostevens]

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.

[DJDiggler]

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.

[Jaymeister]

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.)

[danbcman]

Ya well youtube reboots and settings can be found at thier forum site
http://wdtvforums.com/
There is needed work and since this feature the net is new to this line no doubt it needs updating and I am sure they will take lots of time before the next update is released

[Jaymeister]

Thanks Dan.

No doubt they'll take their time before bricking any more units.

[danbcman]

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.

[PPL4GOLF]

I think it's been very well established that if you're into DVD ISOs, RMVB...you should look elsewhere.

[recon]

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