Firmware updates are nothing like product launches. Users are frequently left in the dark regarding what’s being worked on. I’m sure you can point to exceptions but that’s what they are: exceptions to the rule.
The WD TV Live shipped with a known feature set, widely announced in promotional media.
The only thing WD are bound to do is to provide those features and fix any bugs affecting those features.
New features are bonuses. You don’t buy a product on the assumption that they’ll add cool stuff later.
To their credit, WD seem to be ignoring adding big new features in favour of squashing bugs, whilst promising to add new features that users are demanding (e.g. DVD menus) at a later date. They need to fix the AV sync issues and do their best to make network support more robust.
You can argue that DVD menus is something people would assume would be included along with ISO / VOB support, and I totally understand people wanting to hold WD to their promise to try and implement it.
Netflix support was never officially announced; beyond an over-optimistic post edit stating they hoped to announce “good news” within the Ideas forum; they’ve never mentioned it publicly.
You need to reign in your expectations a notch or three.
Some seem to forget that it was WD that asked for ideas on what they should include in the next firmware updates.
No one bought this with expectations bumped up a notch or three. WD should have thought this out before offering to expand the features by asking for ideas. They did not specify that these ideas were to be considered in the next product release. In fact some of the ideas are pending for the current released unit right now.
One of the main problems is that they let this go on for so long before announcing that they could not do it. In that time we got hints of the feature being in the works so of course expectations for this are going to rise. At this point my expectations are none for the WDTV Live and I would be surprised if any of the ideas are implemented in the current hardware.
Actually, Raster99, people were offering ideas before we set up the Ideas Lab. We had to herd the ideas over to the Ideas Lab from the boards. On top of that, it took some time to let the popular ideas rise. While that was going on, it took us a little time getting the right people in place to review the ideas. We never promised that we would implement any idea. We do love the ideas that are coming in, and we are certainly paying attention to what people want. But there’s over 400 ideas, just in the WD TV Live idea exchange, being able to implement them all is a whole other thing - especially in the current WD TV Live.
Nobody ever mentioned anything about WD promising to implement the ideas but WD sure gave the impression that the top voted ideas would be implemented if possible and that is not the case and it is misleading.
You’re right it does appear that the most popular would be a shoe-in. Unfortunately, not in this version of WD TV Live. Just so you know, I own a WD TV Live, and I wanted Netflix, also.
Nobody ever mentioned anything about WD promising to implement the ideas but WD sure gave the impression that the top voted ideas would be implemented if possible and that is not the case and it is misleading.
I think you have hit the nail on the head there.
Quote:
“top voted ideas would be implemented if possible”
They have looked at the idea and found that it was not possible.
Not all of the top voted ideas are getting implimented if possible. Some ideas getting implimented are at the bottom of the voting list. Most recent case was an idea less then a day old with only 4 votes being picked to be implimented.
Not all of the top voted ideas are getting implimented if possible. Some ideas getting implimented are at the bottom of the voting list. Most recent case was an idea less then a day old with only 4 votes being picked to be implimented.
We have already gone into that. Some things are obviously more difficult then others to implement. The voting purely shows the support for an idea with WD having the final decision. You seem to thing that this is some sort of democratic election.
Perhaps WD should make it known that the way ideas are implemented is up to them and them alone.
Perhaps WD should make it known that the way ideas are implemented is up to them and them alone.
Bingo!
And I’m sure I was not alone in thinking that the most popular voted ideas were to be given priority and implemented if possible.
I would have thought it was obvious, Western Digital are a huge multi-national company and not a some sort of democratic co-operative.
As to the ideas, there is nothing that WD have said that should give you the impression that they will definitely be implemented or that any implementation would be in vote order. WD have also not said that any idea posted would take priority over any update which has come from in house or other source.
Please Redirect Your Ideas to the Ideas Lab
[Options](http://community.wdc.com/t5/General-Discussions/Please-Redirect-Your-Ideas-to-the-Ideas-Lab/td-p/13386#)
04-03-2010 11:56 PM
I want to make sure everyone knows we have a dedicated place on the Community called the [<u>Ideas Lab</u>](http://community.wdc.com/t5/ideas/ideaexchangepage/blog-id/idea "http://community.wdc.com/t5/ideas/ideaexchangepage/blog-id/idea"). It was established for submitting your ideas and voting on ideas others have submitted.
The Idea Exchange is intended to give great ideas more visibility, and help Western Digital understand what our customers really want. We will read all ideas submitted there, and let you know our plans for addressing the ideas that get the most votes.
I would have thought it was obvious, Western Digital are a huge multi-national company and not a some sort of democratic co-operative.
As to the ideas, there is nothing that WD have said that should give you the impression that they will definitely be implemented or that any implementation would be in vote order. WD have also not said that any idea posted would take priority over any update which has come from in house or other source.
… We will read all ideas submitted there, and let you know our plans for addressing the ideas that get the most votes.
I never thought that WD was some sort of democratic co-operative so get that off your mind. And I never got the impression that ideas would definitely be implemented.
Why are we going back and forth on this. If you read my posts carefully you would have a better understanding of what I was saying.
In a nut shell: I got the impression as did many others here that the ideas section was to get ideas from the user base with the intention of implementing them in the product. A voting system was put in place to help organism ideas by what is most popular. Ideas that are the most popular would be reviewed and if possible they would be implemented in the product first. It’s obvious that any bug fixes or in-house ideas are at their discretion.
WD created the idea section and attached the voting system because of all the suggestions for ideas they were getting from the user base. They also put in a grading system to let users know what was the status of the ideas (unplanned, In review, etc…). This all gives the impression that the ideas section is there because WD has intentions to implement ideas from it’s user base. The voting system gives the impression that top voted ideas have a better chance of being implemented then low voted ideas.
If this is not the case then WD should remove the ideas section all together as it is pointless and misleading.
I think we will have to agree to differ on this point.
I’m too busy playing with my WDTV which works pretty well exactly as advertised. There are some bugs which need to fixed, which I hope WD are working on as a priority over any enhancements, voted on or not.
Yeah, I agree with Rich – there’s just too much fun (and too much to watch) with my Live(s) right now to think about adding anything else (but I DO want thumbnails fixed. Sigh :>)
Listen, I think we need to get over the Netflix not happening.
My Live is great. It’s great for what it’s advertised for. Recently, my 7 month old son killed my external drive. It had all my Xvids I’ve done for the past 5 years. Going through the process of re-encoding all my stuff is a daunting process. But because I own the Live now, I have decided to do better quality encodes… Handbrake (H264, ac3 passthrough, 160 faac) is my friend now. Even though my stuff is all SD- at least now it is more future-proof…
My Live will always be in use, but I do really wish it could have done Netflix- the device would have been perfect…
I just tested Netflix for the first time tonight and got it to work on the third try. My problem was with PlayOn server not showing up on my WDTVL. More to the point, I added a bunch of add-ons that seem to either lock up the server (no content found) or the WDTVL can’t handle that much stuff. The latter seems a stretch since I have an external drive that has a terrabyte of files on it.
