WD TV Live Hub freezes/stops playing

Hello

I have my media files (mostly mkv) on my WD My Book Essential external USB drive and while playing a media file the playback suddenly stops/freezes. It happens very randomly 2 or 3 times during a normal movie. My possibilites are to press “Stop” on the remote and resume the movie. When the movie stops playing the HD indicator on the “My Book” stops flashing.

It has happened with three different movies.

Any suggestions how to fix this issue?

This happens only with your MKV movies or with all your movies? Also, when you are not reading from you external drive, the HD indicator it suppose to stop flashing, it is normal.

I only have MKV movies. No problem when playing on the internal drive on the WD TV LIVE HUB. I’m talking about the HD indicator on the My Book External drive.

Same problem here. I had an wdmybook essential and even bought another external hdd wd. The problem is like before. It seems that the problem came from the mediaplayer. I played the same movie with another mediaplayer and everything was ok. So we are waiting for a new firmware that will fix the problem

I have the same problem. It freezes with the 3 formats that I have (mkv, Avi and Mvi). Got it for Christmas and bought a WD External drive that I plug into it.

Hello

I have my media files (mostly mkv) on my WD My Book Essential external USB drive and while playing a media file the playback suddenly stops/freezes. It happens very randomly 3 or 4 times during a normal movie. My possibilites are to press “Stop” on the remote and resume the movie, or wait until movie restarts playing. When the movie stops playing the HD indicator on the “My Book” stops flashing. It seems to be a FW problem, because with latest happens more frequently.

Only happens with external HDD, never with internal.

Hi!

Has anybody found a solution for this problem?? :cry:

Hi!!

Did anyone found a solution for this?? It´s very frustrating, and I´m not the only one as you can see…( http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-TV-Live-Hub-General/Movies-Freeze/td-p/100464)

WD can´t give us an answer, it´s a HDD problem or a Media Player problem? In that case would be possible fix it with next FW? I don´t want to expend more money in new HDD, because this problem may not exist, more than ever if WDTV Live Hub and MyBook Essential are from WD…

Thanks!!

Has anybody tried turning media player off to see if the drive continues to freeze when playing the movies?  Can someone try it and post back here?

It’s the hub.  I have the same problem and someone found a work around and explained it here. 

http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-TV-Live-Streaming-Discussions/Solution-Handbrake-encoded-mkv-s-freezing-not-playing/m-p/400535/highlight/true#M8320

Bill, The only way I can get my hub to play anything after it hangs is to reset it.  It still hangs on that same file.  I know the file is good.  I rip them from my dvd collection and they play fine in VLC.  It would be nice if this was addressed in the next firmware.

And this is after trying the newest update?

I’ve had this issue for at least the last three updates.  I was not trying to play the files before that, so it might have been a problem even before that. 

Bill_S,

The issue redrapis620 is talking about is that the HUB, and SMP for that matter, can’t read the “libmkv 0.6.5” writing library that is used by the current version of Handbrake.  On the HUB the issue started with the first 3.**.** FW (it may have been present in 2.08.13) and is still present in the latest (3.04.17).

This is not an issue with HUB FW 2.07 and the same mkv’s play fine, so it was something introduced in the FW.

I’m not sure if this is the same issue that the other memebers have with their external drive mkv’s, but if they encoded the mkv’s on the internal drive with Handbrake 0.9.5 and the mkv’s on the external drive with Handbrake 0.9.6 then this would be why the internal mkv’s play and the external don’t.  This is because HB 0.9.5 uses the “libmkv 0.6.4” writing library which the current firmware will read.

Anyone wanting to see if this is there problem should download Mediainfo then open the file that will not play or freezes with Mediainfo and look to see if the Writing library says: libmkv 0.6.5.  If it does, then this is most likely why you are having issues with that file.

Tony,

Has this been posted in the Hub Issue Exchange?

[edit]

If it hasn’t then it’s probable that nobody knows about it.  If it’s in there let me know, so I can push it forward and get a response over it.

Bill,

I don’t know if it’s been posted in the HUB exchange, but it has been in the SMP exchange here:

http://community.wdc.com/t5/ideas/v1/ideapage/blog-id/streaming_issues/article-id/1639/page/2#comments

I didn’t actually know about this issue until I bought my SMP a few weeks ago and didn’t know that it was an issue with the HUB also until recently.  The reason that I didn’t know about it on the HUB is because I have stayed on version 2.07 due to cropping of thumbnails & png support for thumbnails not being added to the HUB which, although needs a work-around, can be done with 2.07.  This is something else which I wish would get pushed forward:

http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-TV-Live-Hub-Issue-Reporting/PNG-s-do-not-display-correctly-for-files-folder-thumbnails/idi-p/268062

I doubt they’re going to provide support for png’s.  They’re holding to the specs on that.  More than anything I think it has something to do with transparencies and how the hardware interacts with them.  That’s just my guess, though.  However, I would still keeping pushing it.  If there is any way to support them, they might get motivated to do so. 

Bill_S wrote:

I doubt they’re going to provide support for png’s.  They’re holding to the specs on that.  More than anything I think it has something to do with transparencies and how the hardware interacts with them.  That’s just my guess, though.  However, I would still keeping pushing it.  If there is any way to support them, they might get motivated to do so. 

Well, IMO, I don’t know how transparencies would interact badly with the hardware since pretty much all the theme images are png?  Because with the work-around in 2.07 and earlier of changing the extension from png to jpg it works great with zero issues.  Personally I think it has more to do with trying to get faster scrolling speed out of the firmware, but I believe their looking in the wrong place to do that.

But, believe me I am going to keep pushing.:smileyvery-happy:

I checked the firmware versions, and can confirm that it starts in FW 3.00.28.  The files play fine in 2.08.13.