So what do the thmers want or need from WD?

[mannymiller]

I havent been on here for sometime, and sold my WD hub about 6-7 months ago and vowed never to buy a WD product again.  why? because they dont listen, and dont care. 

I have had everyone of there products. every single one was plagued with bad firmwares. full of bugs. it got to the point where you had to decided what you wanted to work, and what you didnt. for themers the .png support. or the fact it worked for a short peroid was good for themers, well i certainly liked the look. and some of the themes that joeysmyth produced using this method i would consider to be the best looking. yet this was pulled on the 3.x firmwares.

now WD explained that this was no longer supported. The way i saw it, they broken it and couldnt work out how to fix it. 

To me the fact you could theme this device is what sold it to me. it you dont care about the themes, then do not give the option or ability to able to theme it… simple.

Also a kind request. please do not keep sending me emails to beta test anything. as far as im concerned everything is still in beta. the idea of beta, is to have it tested and fix what ever bugs arise. NOT supply another firmware with even more bugs, and services i dont want and care about. 

so my conclusion. if you want something that works dont buy WD.  My intake of headaches tablets have reduced considerably since leaving them.

[Magnus33]

Not very helpful to post that in a help there now was it.

Iam not sure what you problems with the box where but i dealt with a copmany that really didn’tr care which is boxee.

As of today they killed support offical for the box althought it really stopped in jan.

The wd does what it promises and issues do get fixed which is something boxee never did.

Maybe not as quick as we like or with enough info on whats going on but it does happen .

Some people seem to have this expectation of perfection from a device and that is never going to truely happen.

What they should want and expect is a device that deleivers on its promises and keeps supporting the device.

Boxee failed on all these fronts but wd hasn’t.

A perfect example of somethign truely bad is media scanning.

On the wd it takes 20 min and the box uses my metadata.

On the boxee it takes 20 plus hours and metadata is a aftethought at best.

[pearl]

@magnus33

The issue is that the Themers here feel that they are not getting the support that they would like to be able to code to to a standard that they can expect will be consistant with the new FW releases. I am not a coder and agree with many of your statements, I am just not sure that they are what this post is refering to. If you bought the Live Hub to because of the themes or the ability to write themes, you may rightly so be unhappy with what has transpired so far.

On your note, I too am very pleased with the product. I did not (and would not) buy this or any other product for the theming  aspect. I had Hundeds of movies, Thousands of CDs and several hundred concert videos. I was looking for something that would play my media from some sort of menu system, be able to access media on remote machines (servers, USB drives and NAS), and for me, having all my music in FLAC, that became the most important feature to me. I originaly bought a live plus and to be honest, was and still am very happy with it., using it in the bedroom now that I have a HUB in the TV room.  It is an extremley basic menu system, but plays my media which is what I bought the box for. Therefore, i am very content with the product. The fact that some amazing people here wrote themes that I use has only enhanced my experience, and I am truly grateful for that. That being said, if I was stuck with the stock theme, I’d be content, as I simply want to find a movie or a CD and play it without flipping discs. So yes, if you bought the HUB to play your media, it works great, and I get a bunch of other online features (Youtube, TuneIn, Spotify, HULU) that I use every day. Bottom line, works great for those of us that wanted those features. I got what I bought it for, and have very little to complain about.

Now, if the main reason you bought the HUB was because of the ability to have cool themes or to code them yourself, you may be pretty frustrated, and rightly so. As the FW has progressed, the ability to do these things has diminished, or at least beome much harder. I fault no themer here for being frustrated or deciding to stop upgrading their themes. I would expet that they would like to spend their time coding better and cooler themes, not trying to retrofit what they have already made so it will work with each new FW realease.

Bottome Line:

So, let not confuse the issue of this thread. You area happy, or at least content with the support and features that you are recieving (as am I), but that is not what a thread entitled " Re: So what do the thmers want or need from WD?" is really about. It is about the issues surrounding wriing themes and the lack of support these people are getting as third parties trying to help out the community, and doing it in their free time, for little reward. I am absolutley in love with the theme I am currently using, it’s a piece of art, and i am awe of the coder that wrote it. I will be truly bummed when I get to a FW rev that makes it so I can no longer use this theme. Will it stop me from using the HUB? Nope, I need a menu system and reasonable search function that will allow me to find and play the media I am looking for. I bought it for that and intend to use it to that capacity.

I thank all of you who have dedicated so much time making our HUBs look better. As above, it’s not why I bought the device, but you have certainly enhanced my overall experience with it. 

-P