I have had a WD Media player for years hooked to my TV and to two hard drives with a considerable amount of video content that I took from my DVD collection, and have been very happy with it. I recently purchased a WD TV Live and a portable hard drive to use in a similar fashion when traveling. The new unit worked fine that way too. However, I decided, when I am not away from home, to try and hook up both units up to my large screen TV with HDMI cables to different inputs on my TV. Both units work fine, but there is a problem. Both the old remote and the new remote communicate with both systems. In other words, when I turn on one, I turn on both. When I select a function, both units detect the signal and respond. Is there a way to alter the remote signals so that I can control the units independently?
Nope…
But why would you need both hooked up to your TV?
I gives me more space for video. The old WD had two USB inputs, and I am limited to the contents of its two hard drives. The new unit also allows me to use it for Netflix streaming, and the old one does not have that capability.
But you can use a USB hub.
Here’s a pic of my Hub (10 Port) it’s a $10 china special … lost the power adaptor but works fine with 2x Self Powered USB Hdd’s and as many Powered Hdd’s as i want (up to 8)
(picture has 5 hdd’s plugged in)
Thanks for the hub suggestion. Oddly, when I tried a powered hub with my old WD a year ago, the system would only address one of the drives on the hub. I’m not sure if your WD has more advanced software than my old WD media player, but I concluded that a hub would not allow me to expand. Interestingly, I found a partial solution to my problem. I downloaded a WD player app for my iPhone, and when I opened the app, I was given the choice as to which WD system I wanted to control. I selected WD Live, and the phone only controls that unit and not the old WD media player. It’s not a perfect solution, but it helps. What is does demonstrate, however, it that it IS possible for the units to be wirelessly controlled independently, but the remotes shipped with the systems don’t provide that level of sophistication.
Crabby wrote:
Thanks for the hub suggestion. Oddly, when I tried a powered hub with my old WD a year ago, the system would only address one of the drives on the hub. I’m not sure if your WD has more advanced software than my old WD media player, but I concluded that a hub would not allow me to expand. Interestingly, I found a partial solution to my problem. I downloaded a WD player app for my iPhone, and when I opened the app, I was given the choice as to which WD system I wanted to control. I selected WD Live, and the phone only controls that unit and not the old WD media player. It’s not a perfect solution, but it helps. What is does demonstrate, however, it that it IS possible for the units to be wirelessly controlled independently, but the remotes shipped with the systems don’t provide that level of sophistication.
The WDTV Live SMP, WD TV Live Hub, WD TV Play, and new WDTV all support hubs. Not sure about the older WDTV Live HD and WDTV Live Plus.
You’re posting in the section for the newest player, so the hub will work on that…
I realize this forum is for the newer models of the WD players, and the reason I posted my original question here is because my new WD TV system prompted the question of dual control. The issue of USB hubs arose to deal with drive expansion after your statement that dual control is not possible. Thank you for your responses.
