Wd tv live hub alternatives

Hello Community, long time no see…

I’ve had the WD HUB for about 18 months now, and wrote the Ohagi theme way back…

Now, I am looking for a new media player for another room in the house. I must say that the firmwares have been too buggy on the HUB to call this an absolute succes, but I have been pretty happy with it so far. I am not using all the bells and whistles, but the HUB always plays my media files, so the basics works. (I gave up on the NAS features, when i finally made it work, a new firmware would mess it up again, and it was painfully slow anyway!)

But, looking for an extra media player, I was wondering what is new on the market? Any better alternatives? I wouldnt really mind getting another WD HUB, but then again, it there is something better on the market, perhaps it is time to take a new direction…?

Any suggestions? I use i mainly for playing video-files, HD. NAS capabilities would also be nice…

thx

ZballZ

Take a look here!

http://www.networkmediaplayers.org/

http://reviews.cnet.com/home-video-reviews/?sa=1000036&filter=1105350_124397_&sort=userRating%20desc&tag=mncol;dir1

Some of them use dual core and Android

Really good info here and not just media players either!

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=39

 Edit: This unit appears to be a new contender in the market and looks VERY promising!

http://www.pivosgroup.com/#!vstc3=specifications/vstc2=products

Seems kind of bad form to come on the WD-operated forum and ask for recommendations of their competitor’s products. Just sayin’.

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Bad form? Perhaps.  But I am not asking for competitors products - I am asking on alternatives. It could be a new WD product, in theory. 

Also, having been a part of this forum for over a year, I think it is fair to say that I know a little of the strengths and weaknesses of this product - and since WD is not taking this forum seriously anyway (take a look at the FIRMWARE or IDEAS section of this community) I would like to discuss a fair topic with fellow media-streamers…

I have no intention of bashing the product, but 18 months has passed, and pretty much every firmware has been a disaster. Personally I am still on 2.03.24, which is the only on that works (almost) flawless for me. It’s a great product with horrible support and development!

…also, I am undecided, so I might go for another Live Hub…

Thx Flhthemi!

Promising stuff out there :slight_smile:  Although it seems that only very few media players has the integrated HDD like the HUB - a feature I really like…

Quite a few of those units will allow you to add your own HDD. I think that’s a plus as it wouldn’t limit you to a particular brand and model, as we are now.

Take a close look at that Pivos, the last link. It looks like a lot of features for 89.00. I’m going to find a forum for it and see what people are saying about it…

Really I’m not dissapointed too much by the Hub, I just wish they would fix the .png issue and make the themers happy which in turn would make many of us happy. :slight_smile:

 @Miami_son

It’s OK. WD could care less about this forum and what’s said here. The Mods that run it are the ones that care about it. If one of them told me I violated a rule with the info I supplied then I would agree and he could do what he wanted to do with the thread, including deleting it. It wouldn’t bother me in the least. I’m cool with it, you should be too. :slight_smile: Just sayin’

Not so sure how you are running your WD but I use mine solely for videos right now and after the latest 2 firmwares WD has nailed it. I am using a NAS to store all my files on and they are iso files every video is on the root of the drive. They all work as close to flawlessly as possible.

I too am not a huge fan of the add ons exept my wife loves netflix. It is amazing to see that some people don’t have issues and others have tons I have to think that this is not solely a WD problem. I am using TW mojo theme with cover boxes and have tweaked it a little to suit my needs.

All in all I think the WD is the best media player in the business I don’t even have the desire to try another so if you want to get another unit I say hub or SM

flhthemi wrote:

 @Miami_son

 

It’s OK. WD could care less about this forum and what’s said here. The Mods that run it are the ones that care about it. If one of them told me I violated a rule with the info I supplied then I would agree and he could do what he wanted to do with the thread, including deleting it. It wouldn’t bother me in the least. I’m cool with it, you should be too. :slight_smile: Just sayin’

 

That’s funny.  We, moderators, are WD.  We strive to reflect WD in all that we do.  Everytime we, moderators, help someone, that’s WD helping that user.  So, I don’t think your assessment of WD not caring is really correct or fair.  However, I do understand that issues with a product can cause frustration.  So, I’m not saying we’re perfect.  But I am saying that we care a whole lot more than we’re given credit for. 

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Pardon me, Bill but I have to take issue with that.  I’ve only been on the forum for a few weeks now and my exposure has been limited, but I don’t see WD responses to issues very often.  Granted the format lends itself to user-to-user interaction and often the issues are resolved before WD has a chance for input.  But I’ve seen other issues that don’t seem to be resolved and all I’ve heard from WD is the sound of crickets.  

WD has a media streaming lineup that in my opinion has, hands down, the most potential of any I’ve seen in the price point.  But potential unrealized isn’t going to keep customers.  I know it takes time to correct issues and maintain coherent revision history, and adding services is a vital marketing requirement, granted.  If the little nagging aggravations aren’t even acknowledged how can anyone possibly KNOW that you care.

Throw us a bone, man.  We all want this lineup to be the best thing going.  You have willing and capable testers with a vested interest in making things right.  Use us.  You might find we’re a more valuable resource than you think.

Respectfully,

GCG

I’m not sure I’m understanding what you’re taking issue with. I was addressing the fact that us moderators were being separated out from WD, as if we’re okay but WD isn’t. When, if fact, we work for WD.

Nevertheless, I do understand the rub you are expressing. Most new users come to the community with the expectation that this is, or at least should be, a support community. And when they don’t see any WD people posting answers to questions or issues, they get frustrated and think that we don’t care. We do care, but this community was intended from the beginning to be a user-to-user community, and not a support community. That’s most likely not going to change. So, the obvious WD support presence that might be expected is not going to be here.

In response to throwing you a bone, we did try doing open beta-testing with community users for a while. But that didn’t turn out as well as we’d hoped. So, we decided to stop it. That doesn’t mean we gave up, as a matter of fact, we’re probably doing better beta testing now than previously. But, users do need to understand that if something hasn’t been fixed, that’s because it’s not yet fixed. Hopefully, as the issue exchanges get more organized, our users will have the statuses updated more regularly. So, they’ll know more of what to expect on the next firmware release as it comes out.

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Never mind.

Fthtemi - yes the the Pivos does look very promising, Im gonna research a little more on this…

My apologies for hijacking your topic.

GCG

whatever… just buy the best of best out there like… the xtreamer prodigy :neutral_face:

Maybe the reason that WD ignores most of the posts on this forum is that the chip manufacturers design and manufacturer chips compliant to internationally recognised standards and WD as a business are not going to waste valuable time arguing with non-technical people who refuse to read the specifications of the product or user manual.    

I used to work in the electrical/electronic servicing industry; I spent many hours explaining to consumers that their product will not function the way they want it to function and the functionality of the product is clearly explained in the user manual.

It never ceases to amuse me the amount of people who critique electronic products without understanding the design concept behind the product.

The following statement is repeated on this forum and many other forums on the internet.

“I can view the video on my computer but it does not play on my streaming device.”

There is a big difference between professional digital recording and broadcast video using dedicated hardware chips and processing the same video on a computer using software codecs.

Digital and analogue video is produced to international professional video specifications designed to be transmitted or played without any computer processing in the chain.

Computers process video by programming the CPU and GPU into mimicking a hardware video chip. That is why it requires serious computing power to process video. A hardware video chip contains NO computing power; it just converts an electrical signal into a visual signal without the requirement of a CPU or GPU activity.

There are four major manufacturers of streaming chips on the market. Regardless of the manufacturer, the functionality of the video streaming device is similar as the following.  

The WDTV Live is a dedicated hardware video streaming device not a computer.  The WDTV Live does not have the computing power to use software codecs to transcode and play computer bitmapped video.

The Sigma chip used in the WDTV Live contains a MIPS microprocessor, a basic GUI, I/O support and dedicated hardware video chips designed compliant to the professional international digital broadcast standards. The alpha numeric text is generated by a text generator chip capable of displaying text on TV screens.

Sigma and the other streaming chip manufacturers will not release the specifications of the hardware video chip. There are six commonly used digital broadcast standards. Therefore; it can be assumed that the Sigma chip contains all six dedicated hardware video cores and the microprocessor switches the digital video to the appropriate core.

A hardware video core is incapable of processing digital video outside its hardware design parameters. You will have to refer to the WDTV Live specifications and the publicly available Sigma chip specifications. That should give you the digital broadcast standards specifications.

All streaming chips on the market will reproduce professional broadcast standards video faithfully. I have conducted a number of tests with video on the WDTV Live box. If a DVD or bluray is virgin ripped to a hard drive that movie is still compliant to the international professional digital and analogue video specifications and will stream through the WDTV Live perfectly. 

Video streaming chips are manufactured by the millions, maybe tens of millions. The forum posts on this site are not that high compare to the streaming devices in circulation.

People have to start taking responsibility, read the product documents and make a technically informed decision and purchase the product to do their particular job.

If people want to view processed video on a video streaming device then there is a high possibility that the video will fail to play correctly. That is not the fault of the video streaming device but of the software package. Until such time that software writers start understanding the way hardware video works and write their programs complaint to the professional international standards, then it will an ongoing complaint blaming video streaming device failure. 

If people want to watch processed video, watch that video on a computer.

If people want to stream video through their homes; virgin rip the DVD or bluray to a hard drive and don’t process that video any farther.

3 Likes

thepanoguy wrote:

Maybe the reason that WD ignores most of the posts on this forum is that the chip manufacturers design and manufacturer chips compliant to internationally recognised standards and WD as a business are not going to waste valuable time arguing with non-technical people who refuse to read the specifications of the product or user manual.    

I don’t think WD specifically “ignores” posts, at least not in the sense that most folks would interpret the statement.

They’ve been quite clear, right from the start, that this is for user-to-user communication, and not a support forum.  It was never intended for a WD employee to pop on and give a reply to every post made.

When WD feels they do need to address something, they do.

That being said, from what I’ve seen they’ve also been quite liberal in the moderation.  Any post that doesn’t violate the TOS is generally allowed, and not edited or removed.  You can bash WD with your opinions all you want, and WD isn’t going to come and say “you can’t express yourself here”.  Sure, they’d like all their customers to be happy, but at least they’re not limiting opinions.

My bigger “complaint” (beyond the “my PC can do it, why can’t the WDTV??”) is when folks make apples-to-oranges comparisons… “this player that uses more expensive/capable chips, and costs 4 times as much, can do it, why can’t the WDTV?”  Um… what were you expecting?

If something else suits your particular needs better, so be it.  But that’s not automatically WD’s fault.

They’ve presumably decided on a target consumer base, and work towards that.  I don’t think most people would expect the same features and abilities from a $100 device and a $1000 device.  And, it seems (at least at the minute) that WD sees no business potential in jumping into the $1000-$2000 player market and fighting for market share there.

1 Like

I have no illusions of making a Mercedes out of a Mercury.  The hardware is what we bought, …  but there are issues that do fall to WD.

The folder thumbnails still are problematic.  I have to erase the .metathumb files to insure that the folder thumbs aren’t corrupted in the event of a power failure.

Many of the more popular custom themes are recommended for firmware version 2.07 or below due to something that was “broken” with firmware 2.08 and is yet to be corrected.

And If I go back to that then the ordering or FLAC (my preferred music audio format) tracks will be reversed resulting in an album playing backward.  For theme works from the likes of Pink Floyd and others this has a serious impact.  Don’t get me started on the inability to remove the pause between tracks.

All of these are in WD’s court.  They may be working on them, they may not, we don’t KNOW because they prefer to keep the users at arm’s length.  Why, I don’t know.  I’ve browsed through the Issues forum and the most common response, that isn’t the equivalent of a rubber stamp change of the status, is an admonishment for not filling out the form correctly.  This isn’t dialog.  And pushing the user-to-user community thing didn’t carry a lot of weight with me either.  I have to at least hope that some of them are “users” too.  You would think 335 views of a topic on what else to buy in the space of two days would send up at least a yellow flag.

GCG

GulfcoastGuy wrote:

Don’t get me started on the inability to remove the pause between tracks.

 

All of these are in WD’s court.

 

 

So, hardware limitations are up to WD to “deal” with?  Isn’t that up to Sigma to possibly fix in future chips?

RoofingGuy wrote:


GulfcoastGuy wrote:

Don’t get me started on the inability to remove the pause between tracks.

 

All of these are in WD’s court.


 

 

So, hardware limitations are up to WD to “deal” with?  Isn’t that up to Sigma to possibly fix in future chips?

If that is in fact a limitation of the hardware then I have no beef with WD on THAT issue.  My main compalint is the aparent reluctance to ingage in some sort of dialog on ongoing issues.  

GulfcoastGuy

If you would allow me to answer that.  We are in the process of correcting that right now.   it may take another couple of weeks before you see the results of it, but the issue exchanges are going to become a lot more active than they are now.  We ran into some  issues that required more handling than originally anticipated.  Also, I lost a couple of moderators in the process, and they were a part of that.  Please be patient.  But do know that we are still working on the issues being posted. 

Now that doesn’t take away what Jim said about chipset limitations.  But we won’t know that until some of these are more fully investigated.  That’s why, in most cases, we’re not saying anything yet.  We simply don’t know.  But we will.

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