Oh I do think you should continue to report all the problems, and I also suspect the WD tesm IS listening, and doing what they can. Let’s hope they can continue to make progress.
I still happen to think that those of us who are having success have lowered our expectations on what the Live should do. For example: I quickly learned early on the Live didn’t “like” mp4 files so I converted all my stuff to mkv. That was no trivial task and one might argue I shouldn’t have to do it, but from long standing experience with such things I knew the path of least resistance was going to yield the best rewards.
Another example: so then all my stuff was playing fine wireless and one day I converted a blu-ray to a VERY high bitrate file (it was around 29mbps). It would not play wireless. After doing a few more conversations along these lines I came to find out there was no way I could stream these high bitrate files wireless (now, it’s only a handful of files but it’s not predictable as to what files end up with what bitrates when I’m using a VBR encoding process).
My choices were simple: I could come here and rant and rave (and realize there was no fix from WD in sight), I could convert all those files to a lower bitrate (probably what any sane person would do, but I was unwilling to live with the loss of quality) or I could upgrade my network. I chose to go to a wired setup (and, yes, it’s a PITA to have to run those cables in the attic to my two Live units) and now all is well again.
So I guess what I’m saying is that it’s important to point out where there are bugs (and there are), but it’s equally important to know what the workarounds are and I may be naive but I still do believe that *everyone* can get a stable, high speed playback experience IF they are willing to do those workarounds.
Some might say they shouldn’t have to, and I am not going to argue that point. If you buy an Apple TV it might irritate you that you can only play MP4 files (and even then not all of them – they have to be below a certain resolution, FAR below what the Live can play). In that case if you are unwilling to live with the restrictions you can wait for Apple to fix them (HA!) or you can live with them, or go elsewhere (I chose to go elsewhere – hence my two Live units).
I am generally very happy with the Live. The only two I would like from that list is the auto detect of frame rate and menus. I would be surprised to see BD menus due to being Java for most blu rays.
I would also like proper chapter support in ISO’s/mpegs rather than the 10 minute jump. For mpegs, chapter fwd and back could jump/go back 5 minutes at a time rather than skip to the next/previous title without having to be in ffwd.
I agree that the speed of updates is disappointing and new features are not being rolled out despite the vote pattern, however WD need to address the bugs such as audio synch and on-going networking issues. This last one is very difficult becasue networking issues are often impossible to diagnose in the lab. Everyone’s set-ups are so different.
I think once most (but never all) people feel networking is stable, network share and media centre support works then we can look towards work on adding features. But remember that new features often bring their own set of bugs with them. Do we really want more bugs on top of the ones now.
Personnally I am satisfied in the main as it achieves what I want. Simple streaming of my vids and home movies. I have never experiecned audio synch probs or have never noticed them. BUt some net streamin gTv would be nice.
I have had lip sync problems but only after fast forward at high speeds. If the files allows it, pressing pause and wait around 10 seconds allow the WD to catch up and play in sync. Unfortunately, pressing pause doesn’t always work and so it ends up going back as far 5 minutes instead. Not sure why that happens.
For me the simple point is just to filter out content as going to network share > video ; I expect to have only video content shown not everything! Looks elementary for me but doesn’t seems so for everyone
OK this is what I have to say… The number 1 thing they need to fix is USB HUB SUPPORT!!! I feel bad for people that use a wireless dongle and now have only 1 usb port left… what makes me upset is there is a Hacked firmware that HAS THIS SUPPORT ALREADY!! SO how hard is it??? Must not be that difficult if somone else can do it?? This should be number 1 on their list… I have 2 harddrives almost full and wanting to get a 3rd to use but can’t because I wanna wait until USB HUB SUPPORT is implimented. I don’t really wanna try a 3rd party firmware unless I have to. Next on the list should be FULL DVD SUPPORT. I want to be able to skip chapters just like on a dvd and see the extras and stuff like that off of an ISO file. These should be the most important on the list. SO PLEASE WD GIVE US FULL DVD SUPPORT AND USB HUB SUPPORT!!! For the price the box is great just need a little more features please!! Thank you!
