But there are .mp4 files that _ Quicktime Pro _ itself won’t play properly, let alone VLC or any of the WDTV boxes.
There’s no doubt that there are plenty of files available… the question comes down to how many “broken” files are available from a legal source.
It’s great that you’re having success with your Roku, but in general, the .mp4 issues go far deeper than WD making a simple mistake in the firmware that can be fixed in minutes.
Most WD users seem to have given up on these deep-running .mp4 issues getting sorted out, and have just embraced the Matroska container that the WD line seems to enjoy.
So, buy it because it supports mp4 (see, right here on the box), but don’t use it for mp4s because it doesn’t support that…got it.
It would be a different story if other devices supported the same range of mp4s that this does but that’s not the case. I can play all my mp4s on my Roku, or my computer, or whatever else device/software that advertises support for it that I’ve tried (I don’t think Roku even advertises support, at least they didn’t when I started using it for that). Just not the WD. But that’s fine, I understand. It’s not going to change. Dead horse beaten…
Now how about that promised firmware update for any or all of the other little annoyances? Are they still planning on polishing this turd?
So, WD fixed some sync issues, acknowledged in the Ideas Lab that there were other users reporting other sync issues, and asked there for sample files so the issue could be further looked at.
Without samples that desync, I’m not sure what else anyone was/is expecting WD to do… as far as I can see, only 11 people even bothered to “vote” for it, out of over 3150 views. I don’t see anyone offering any samples, like asked by WD.
It’s possible that I’m assuming that “working on a firmware update” means that they plan on releasing it sometime. This could be a bit of a stretch though.
Yep… a bit of a stretch … I got a similar “a future firmware release, maybe even the next one” about the Gen1, before it was deemed EOL and those “future” firmware updates that they’d been working on never surfaced.
Hmm…an even worse taste in my mouth now. So you’re telling me that when WD either prints something on a box or writes something in a forum, I shouldn’t beleive it?
Well, the Gen1 “promises”, if you can call them that (which they weren’t really), were coming from outsourced tech support, not straight from WD.
WD never promised me any more firmwares… tech support told me to look for the issue(s) to be resolved in a future update. That implied more firmwares were coming, and issues were being addressed, but it never guaranteed the release of anything – I was merely to look for it.
Just because a company is working on something, doesn’t mean it will see the light of day for the end consumer. This happens in the auto industry all the time.
What Bill told you can be taken to the bank… the last he knew, it was being worked on. But that doesn’t guarantee it will be ever be successfully completed – many scientists are also “working on” cold fusion.
So you’re telling me that when WD either prints something on a box or writes something in a forum, I shouldn’t beleive it?
That’s pretty much my takeaway. While some apologists here keep arguing everything WD has done (or, more accurately, not done) is just peachie (while intentionally confusing new codecs with old container specs and other inaccurate arguments or maintaining it’s up to the user to learn the technicalities of transcoding MP4s or remuxing MKVs when all they wanted was the plug-and-play box they were promised), some of us went from proponents to detractors pretty quickly. I found a competing box I bought new for less than the cost of a refurb WDTV Live, and haven’t had any problems viewing any of the files sitting around here since. There are some really annoying design decisions in that box’s firmware IMHO, but thanks to the information the manufacturer has provided, if you don’t like the software in the box you can replace it with a host of others. And if you accidentally brick that box trying new firmware, you can unbrick it yourself with a six-dollar cable.
The, “bad taste WD has left in my mouth,” with their lack of support extends far beyond one WDTV, since I won’t be buying any of their hard drives or any other product any time soon, and have been recommending against them to my clients as well. Their short-term decisions have long-term costs…while I won’t personally cost them anywhere near enough to worry them, if everyone with a damaged yet unsupported Gen1 or Gen2 does the same, and sees to it their companies and their friends do the same, well, maybe they’ll eventually buy a clue.
About the only reason I still hang out here is to see if anyone comes up with a homebrew software for these things…wouldn’t mind playing around with it with someone else’s software, and if it gets bricked, well, that’s not much different than its current state anyway.
(Or to see if some sleezy lawyer decides to file a class action…that might be fun to watch, too…)
So, buy it because it supports mp4 (see, right here on the box), but don’t use it for mp4s because it doesn’t support that…got it.
It would be a different story if other devices supported the same range of mp4s that this does but that’s not the case. I can play all my mp4s on my Roku, or my computer, or whatever else device/software that advertises support for it that I’ve tried (I don’t think Roku even advertises support, at least they didn’t when I started using it for that). Just not the WD. But that’s fine, I understand. It’s not going to change. Dead horse beaten…
No… I can beat the horse further… you can look at the MP4 Registration Authority and see all kinds of codecs that are “legal” in an .mp4 container. Guess what… the Sigma chipset doesn’t support them all. Guess what else… the WDTV documentation doesn’t list them all… it lists the ones it does try to support.
And it’s not even strictly an .mp4 issue – it’s the same with any of the other containers… the WDTV doesn’t support everything. That’s why they list what it does support for each container.
For instance, DTS-HD is “allowed” in an .mp4 – it’s a “registered” codec. You’re not going to find very many hardware players that are able to obtain DTS-HD licencing (AFAIK there are none and DTS isn’t about to change this). So, by your reasoning, instead of listing what codecs the player can play, you’re saying no hardware player should advertise that it will play .mp4 files because none of them can play an .mp4 that has a “legal” DTS-HD track in it. By that criterion, no Media Player will play any media container since they _ all _ have restrictions based on their chipsets.
Charlie, you do mean Anyone ELSE comes up with homebrew firmware, because such firmware already exists, and has for a rather long time.
I think he means firmware that intercepts the video/audio stream as it’s being extracted from the container, and transcodes it into a different stream that the Sigma can handle better, before passing the stream on to the hardware. Because that seems to be what would be necessary to resolve some of the issues.
Aside from being a major undertaking, I don’t even know if it’s technically possible within the capabilities of the NAND… it’s a nice theoretical solution, tho.
Aside from being a major undertaking, I don’t even know if it’s technically possible within the capabilities of the NAND… it’s a nice theoretical solution, tho.
Similar things have been said about cold fusion, but last I heard, they’re still taking a stab at it.
Ya… I’m lost too… if the Sigma isn’t handling the streams passed to it the way the user wants them to be, I don’t see what a complete re-write of the mediaplayer portion of the firmware would accomplish… it’ll still be passing along a stream that the Sigma doesn’t handle the way the user wants it to, no matter who wrote the actual code doing the passing of the streams.
So that kind of third-party firmware didn’t seem likely to be what was meant.
Either the firmware parses the stream out of the container, or it doesn’t… once it’s parsed, it’s up to the chip to try and decode the stream. It’s not like the firmware is extracting it and then transcoding it before passing it along, and doing a botched job of the transcoding.
If something is going wrong between container and decoding, and the stream isn’t being altered, why not point the finger to the stream in the first place? Or the decoder? What else can be going wrong? Why is it fallacial to “blame” the file or the codec? Why must it be the firmware’s fault? Just because a different chip reacts to the same stream differently?
And, as I said, if another player works better for your files, then that’s great for you.
But a quick look over at other forums, like the handbrake forum amongst others, sees a ton of posts asking about choppy .mp4 files and other major .mp4 issues. On Macs, on PCs, on iThingies… This isn’t just a WDTV problem. Now, if the files played perfectly on everything except the WDTV, then there’s some obvious finger-pointing to be done.
But it seems dang near impossible to make a decent .mp4 that will play on _ all _ the other devices, even taking the WDTVs out of the equation. If you get a file to work on one, it often won’t work well on another… it seems from all the posts I’m seeing as if you have to essentially tweak and fiddle your encodes to suit one particular target device and one particular target device only.
If it plays fine on your PC, and even on another stand-alone media player, that still doesn’t automatically mean the video stream is correct… it could just mean the particular player compensates better for the encoding faults.
… I got a similar “a future firmware release, maybe even the next one” about the Gen1, before it was deemed EOL and those “future” firmware updates that they’d been working on never surfaced.