Random doesn't seem random any more

Playing all songs of a certain genre still works for me (for .mp3 and .ogg files, but not for .flac files, but that was always so).

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Confirming that this is still broken in 1.04.17_B, which is not a surprise considering they didn’t say it was fixed in the release notes.

I am playing my entire music library via Tversity and curiously, when on Shuffle I only get songs starting with the letters Y or Z.  If I play all the songs just in one folder it will shuffle properly.  Strange.  Using 1.03.49 where Shuffle works as it should.

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Random is not Random any more. I have my music sorted in folders by artist and always wants to play around the last 10 letters of the alphabet not any thing at the start and if I choose a song from the start of the alphabet it goes back to the last 10???

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Still broken in 1.04.22B

At least you get the last 10 letters Cameron, I only get songs starting with Y or Z!!!

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“Still broken in 1.04.22B”

Just adding my confirmation to this, along with my concurrence that for me this bug is a deal-breaker.  I’ve rolled back to 1.03.49.

I have a large music collection on a Synology DS-209+II. When I choose Music/All from the WD TV menu, I get a list of song titles in alphabetic Album-title sequence.  No matter which song I choose as my starting song, when using newer firmware, all subsequent songs come from a very small alphabetical range of album titles, grouped around the album that contained my starting song. This eliminates about 95% of my collection from ever being played during that session, and obviously results in many duplicate album choices within a short period of time. Very annoying! WD support responded to and accepted my problem report via the Ask a Question support link, but I’ve never seen it acknowledged in any later release notes.

Come on, folks, this can’t be that hard to fix!

 (PS…Using Windows 7 and IE 9, I could not get text to post on this board.  Had to use my wife’s laptop with Vista/IE 8.)

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Did you post this in the thread started for the new firmware updates?  If not, could you please?  That way the product people will have the best chance to see it.

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OK, this is in the firmware thread now, and I still haven’t seen a response from WD.  It would be nice to see if WD acknowledges that this is a problem and when it will be fixed.

This behavior of showing the same files everytime shuffle is selected really limits the usefulness of the device.  There are two aspects to the problem:

  1. Always starts with the same file.  The first file selected should also be shuffled in whatever container is selected.

  2. Shuffles amongst a small subset of the total files.

Thanks

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+1

The current “false” random behaviour on music files, I can confirm is really a pain on everyday use of my WDTV. Please do something about it, it can’t be so hard to fix I hope !

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Would be nice if someone from WD could at least reply that they did read this topic and try to solve the bug.

The WD Community was created for Users, such as yourself, to help one another, and to share your experiences and ideas with one another. As Moderators, we are here simply to facilitate and oversee the community. However, if you are looking for technical support from WD, you will need to contact them directly.

To Contact WD for Technical Support
http://support.wdc.com/contact/index.asp?lang=en

OK I just submitted a bug report then directly on WD site, hope to get at least WD team to acknowledge the issue through this “official” channel and will let you know here if yes or no…

 but I really thought WD people were regularly checking on this forum to care about what the users find as good or less good on their products.

 I hope we are loosing our time when signaling bugs here, or proposing enhancement ideas for the future releases.

On my side I will continue because I think this is usefull at least to know that we’re not the only one to get a specific issue…:smiley:

Papavalex, You describe my symptoms precisely. I was told in the last support email I received that they were looking at this bug but that they were not going to dig too deep since I reported the problem associated with the Tversity media server and they felt that was not their problem.

So I was debating trying out 1.04.31 but after reading this I think I will stick with the wdlxtv firmware based upon 1.03.49.  It is fantastic having telnet & ftp access to the device and linksheets/moviesheets is probably worth the sacrifice of not getting to enjoy Netflix 3.0.  At least my WD is usable and music shuffles properly.

horizons1

I’ve also been cursed with this annoying bug - and at first I thought it might be a TVersity issue too. But I can confirm that it most definately isn’t an issue with TVersity.

It also happens on Twonky media server as well. In fact Twonky served up a ramdom selection based on exaclty the same small subset of my files that TVersity did.

So it seems to be a WDTV Live issue - NOT an issue with the media server software.

Has anyone got any idea where else I need to send this info to best motivate WD to start worrking towards a fix?

Regards,

SplittingDistant

How can the WD firmware have any bearing on what Twonky decides to serve and not serve?

RoofingGuy,

I might have confused the issue by saying the Twonky Media Server “Served up” the files - as that suggests (I think!) that Twonky “pushed” the files when in fact the WDTV Live “pulled” them.

The WDTV Live uses the “All Tracks” or “All Music”  folders of whatever media server it connects to and should read in the file list and randomise it before playing back tracks.

If you read the full thread there are probably clearer explanations available than mine :wink:

My bad… sorry.

There’s enough other complaints about things that have nothing to do with WD (along with the valid ones that WD needs to address), that it just seemed to these sleep-deprived eyes as if you were complaining that Twonky was misbehaving.  I thought you were using it much like the “Play To” in WMP, and it wasn’t sending what you wanted.  :smileyvery-happy:

No problem!

Now off to bed with you - a roof is not a good place to be without enough sleep!

Regards,

Kevin.

For what it’s worth, I just reported my similar lack of randomization experience to WD tech phone support.  I’m running 1.04.22 on a WDTV Live with music being hosted by WMP v11.  Maybe if they get enough reports, they’ll consider it an issue.

And same for me reported back to WD as well 2 days ago

For the record I have the issue using “All Music” feature connected to “Wild Media Server”, so I guess a 4th media server listed here with the exact same issue.

And of course I had NEVER seen the issue with any of the preceeding firmware I used (up to 1.02.21 though…)

3rd email today from WD : they’ll come back to me to confirm if they consider a fix (or not …) and when … SO we need a bit ore patience maybe

(Note : their first answer told me to rollback to 1.02.21, but I declined because I am still interested in some new features of the more recent ones…)

I have seen the same problem since 1.04.X.  The last stable release where this problem does not manifest itself (for me at least, using Tversity) is 1.03.49.