Some sort of playback problem

Well what was supposed to happen in the screen if i only held it for less than 10 secs? When i held it for alteast 10 secs, the screen went black for a sec or 2 then returned to the same screen before blacking out (same highlighted icon as well). Or is it supposed to be like selecting Reset to System Default in the Systems Settings where the unit actually resets with the WD logo and all? And i forgot to mention in my previous post that i did that alteast 10secs thing twice so its supposed to be back to the original video mode, right?

Yes, the paperclip reset is the same as a restore to factory default.

Hmm i must be doing it wrong then because using the paperclip didnā€™t really reset it it seems. Anyways since i also did the restore to factory default setting then the paperclip thing if done properly wonā€™t matter, right?

Anymore ideas? I also forgot to mention that i never did update the firmware (1.02.21) since i bought it 1yr 8mos ago. Iā€™ve always been paranoid with this kind of updates. And since i donā€™t really have problems before, i didnā€™t botherā€¦ it also helped that there are always people complaining bout something with the new firmwares :laughing:

Ok i just tried a 4gb thumbdrive and it doesnā€™t have the playback problem. So its my WD My Passport Essential (USB 2.0) 500gb which i bought the same day as the wdtv? This is my first and only external hdd. Any idea why this is happening? Anything i can do to fix this?

You would be better off using an external drive that is powered. I donā€™t think that the WD box has enough current to power an external drive.

Hmm but iā€™ve been using it for 1yr 8mos already and never had a problem with wdtv. I highly doubt there isnā€™t anyone here not using a passport for this. Its even pictured in the wdtv pagesā€¦

You are correct. The passport is an approved driveā€¦ I was just giving you a suggestion of something else you could try.

Yeah tnx :smiley: Maybe my next external would be a powered one. But that wonā€™t happen for atleast Christmas or somethingā€¦ hdd prices are still quite high from here :cry:

ecchi wrote:

Ok i tried that with a paperclip. Held it for 5secs and nothing happened. Held it for probably 10secs then the screen went black. Unfortunately the problem wasnā€™t solved :cry: I also tried Reset to System Defualt but still the same. Any more ideas i can try? Am i the only one who had this problem? Kinda hard to search here for this specific problem.

Did you hold for a couple of seconds and then release as I said or did you just hold until something happened. Nothing happens if you hold the button for a few seconds it all happens when you release. You must also be fully booted up with the GUI on the screen. I am posting this for information as it looks like a reset has not helped you.

I have used both an externally powered 1TB WD elements drive (3.5") and a USB powered WD Elements 750Gb drive (2.5") without issues. I do remember this matter being discussed a while back and it was recommended to format your drive with your PC before using it with the WDTV even though they come ready formatted. I did with the ones I used with my WDTV. Maybe its worth a try?

Barry

richUK wrote:


ecchi wrote:

Ok i tried that with a paperclip. Held it for 5secs and nothing happened. Held it for probably 10secs then the screen went black. Unfortunately the problem wasnā€™t solved :cry: I also tried Reset to System Defualt but still the same. Any more ideas i can try? Am i the only one who had this problem? Kinda hard to search here for this specific problem.


Did you hold for a couple of seconds and then release as I said or did you just hold until something happened. Nothing happens if you hold the button for a few seconds it all happens when you release. You must also be fully booted up with the GUI on the screen. I am posting this for information as it looks like a reset has not helped you.

Yeah held it for a couple of secs in the gui then released it but nothing happened. It should reset with the WD logo and all, right? You might have missed one of my recent posts, this problem doesnā€™t occur if i use a 4gb thumbdrive. So its the 500gb My Passport iā€™m guessing thats really at fault. Have i copied and deleted too much from it since i bought it? Iā€™d try defragmenting it but i think i read somewhere i shouldnā€™t do that.

@barrygreybeard - I didnā€™t format it when i bought it back in 08/18/10 i think (canā€™t remember really lol). Anyways does it still matter if iā€™m only getting this problem now after 1yr 8mos of use?

@all - how do you organize your media in your hdd that you use for your wdtv? Does it matter if there are alot of folders? This is probably the first time iā€™ve got the most files (episodes) transferred in it since i bought it.

@ecchi

file systems on HDD do get corrupted with time.

I recently had to repair my 1Tb elements drive, it would not create the index for the media server and sometimes a minutes before a file would start to play but that was all. Everything actually played fine. I connected it to my PC and windows took forever analysing it and found numerous errors the the file system structure. After repair and analysing again all seems OK.

If you have the opportunity to reformat it may help, or not, its up to you :slight_smile:

you asked ā€œallā€ about organising files, I have over 700 video files (my 10,000+ music files are now on a NAS) sorted in folders 4 deep and have never noticed any problems with organising them in that way.

Yeah it takes 1min 10-20 secs for me before it actually plays. If i pause it then play, same problem. Fastforwarding same problem as well. Though i noticed after the first episode i play finishes, the next one plays immediately. The next ones after that take takes some time to play :confused:

It doesnā€™t have any problems when i connect it to my PC though.

Iā€™d really like to reformat it but maybe later. I would have to copy everything from it to my pc which doesnā€™t have much free space lol. Do you think using it with this problem is harming my hdd or wdtv?

Bout the organaizing of file, guess its not the numerous folders.

I wouldnā€™t have thought that the problem would harm your WDTV, nor the HDD physically, and if it passes windows error check then the integrity of your files should be OK. When mine failed the error check I lost two files, so thatā€™s probably the worst that can happen!

Alright tnx :smiley: For now guess lā€™ll just have to watch and delete till i can reformatā€¦

Hmm i tried deleting the wd_tv folder in my passport but it canā€™t delete the ph.db-journal file. SaysĀ  Cannot delete ph: The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable. Can anyone tell me how i can delete it? Would just like to try if this might be the one causing my problem.

I had a similar trouble on my elements drive, I connected it to my PC and did a disk repair, then I could delete the folder

Good news :smileyvery-happy: Even if i wasnā€™t able to delete that one file, it fixed my playback problem :smileyvery-happy: Man i should have tried that long ago :laughing: Glad i donā€™t have to reformatā€¦ been trying to watch as much as i can just so i can delete files these past couple of days.

Um how to do that disk repair? Iā€™m still on xp. Is it through My Computer > Properties of the drive > Tools tab > Error Checking? I tried that a week ago but it seems to fail at Phase 2. Though its probably because of the WD SmartWare which i canā€™t seem to close at that time.

Can it be done using the WD SmartWare? I tried the quick scan using that and didnā€™t get any errors.

IF I remember from XP yes youā€™re in the right place and a failure is not good news, means that something is going bad with the disk. I think you must be prepared to reformat at some stage though. There is a risk some sectors will be unreadable again. Iā€™m not sure what the WD Smartware is, thatā€™s something to do with the Passport drive? If it is locking the drive that could be why it fails, you can maybe disable it?
Barry

WD SmartWare

It has some diagnostic features. I only tried the 1st two i think which were the quick ones. And i canā€™t seem to disable it at that time when i tried it. Will try again later before i shut my pc down.