Can't see MBL under "Shared" in iTunes

MBL does not appear in itunes under “Shared,”–only “Home Sharing” appears.  I have searched through all official WD & iTunes documentation & cannot find anything.  Have only copied a few files into MBL Shared Music folder just to check if things are working without wasting time copying a very large iTunes library.  Win 7 OS.

Tried unchecking & rechecking “enable” for iTunes Server on Dashboard as suggested elsewhere here & that worked.  

mysterytramp wrote:

MBL does not appear in itunes under “Shared,”–only “Home Sharing” appears.  I have searched through all official WD & iTunes documentation & cannot find anything.  Have only copied a few files into MBL Shared Music folder just to check if things are working without wasting time copying a very large iTunes library.  Win 7 OS.

Mine shows the MBL share but there’s nothing there. Shared Music folder has all my library.

I’ve talked to WD Support for over a week now (on my vacation, not funny at all…) & they keep telling me they don’t have any complaints about the iTunes Server not working. Well, that I cant simply believe…

I see many out here now having exactly the same problem:

1) MyBookLive shows up in iTunes >10.5 (mine is PC-version) as a share but drop-out when iTunes try to scan the files.

2) Doesn’t show up at all in iOS5 devices (iPhone & iPad) & has never done since the first day.

I’ve used iTunes to copy over the mp3’s with consilidate & so on, all according WD’s recommendation.

I’ve tried to put some few mp3’s on the root of MBL’s “Shared Music” folder, still doesnt work.

I’ve done a iTunes re-scan in MBL & waited even for days to build up the database of mp3’s, still doesnt work.

I’ve even connected my MBL directly to a computer, not via router, still doesnt work & looks still like 1).

I’ve really tried  EVERYTHING  10 times or more now, still no success…

I’ve added 3 PDF’s below describing all I’ve done so far, my settings & still It doesn’t work.

Please look through It & If anything looks strange please let me know, highly appreciated!

Overall Western Digital really needs to catch up on the back log for this problem, It’s really one of the main key-points why I bought this product.

1) iTunes Server Issue:  https://dl.dropbox.com/u/54351635/MyBook%20LIVE%20-%20%20iTunes%20Server%20Issue.pdf

 

2) System Settings & iTunes Media Folder Move:  https://dl.dropbox.com/u/54351635/MyBook%20LIVE%20-%20System%20Settings%20%26%20iTunes%20Media%20Folder%20Move.pdf

 

3) Router Settings:  https://dl.dropbox.com/u/54351635/MyBook%20LIVE%20-%20%20Router%20Settings.pdf

CONCLUSION so far (after 2 weeks of frustration): It must be a firmware issue or a batch problem with the MBL’s doing this, I cant see any other ways though I’ve really tried all to isolate the problem & MBL iTunes share has never showed up in iOS5 (iPhone & iPad)

I was going to say try doing it on a wired network instead of wireless - I couldn’t see the WD under shared via wifi (this is with a mac running osx lion). Same thing for time machine backups.

The solution for me via wifi was to *enable* (as backwards as it sounds) wifi isolated mode.

UPDATE: As we speak I have managed to point my iTunes (PC-version) to my Shared Music folder in Mybook LIVE making It read my files including album art. If I’ve managed a true share (as WED intended) or just a re-direct of my storage from a USB-drive to MyBook LIVE I dont really know, but It reads somehow from my Mybook LIVE now.

BUT…

The most irritating non-working function that doesnt simply work is Mybook LIVE share to iOS-devices (iPhone & iPad).

I have an ongoing long mail thread with WD Support about this & more issues with iTunes Sharing at the moment…

Well, well… Another disappointing reply from WD…

To access the iTunes server from MBL in a iOS device (iPhone or iPad) you need to go via the very limited WD 2go app that is really not built to play music for a longer period of time…

The question to WD is then: When Apples iTunes software easiliy deliver sharing to any iOS devices why cant MBL do this task, I really dont understand…

Was this a limitation set by Apple or a limitation in the WD MyBook Live and when will It get solved by WD?

Answer: ___________________________

Apple has a closed ecosystem for the most part. The iTunes server is part of an open source project that was able to reverse engineer some of what Apple does to serve up music to a computer. Whenever Apple makes a change to this code, the community has to spend some time trying to figure out what they did. For example, when they  moved to 10.5, they broke the ability to serve video from the open source server. This has not been solved yet.

As for the capability to serve up music to an iPhone from the server, I don’t think this capability is even in the Apple ecosystem (I could be wrong on this - please correct me). We have never advertised that fact that we could do this, so not sure why you think this is a WD issue. I know this is what you would like to do, and there are likely some alternatives out there, but what we offer is our Apps (WD Photos and WD 2go). WD 2go is more of a productivity app aimed at managing your device and cloud service like dropbox. The media aspects are not the best. We are looking at improving this in future versions/apps, but not until next year.

Tony