Some sort of playback problem

Hi guys :smiley: I got a WDTV Live (gen2 i think). Bought it 08/18/10. Never had a problem with it except now.

Used it to watch a movie some hours ago. Turned it off to do some other stuff. Turned it back on an hour later to watch anime. Now the problem is it takes 1min 15-20secs for an episode to actually play after i click play or enter. Its just a black screen for that duration. I noticed the seekbar/title/time show up for probably less than a split second when the picture shows up. If i pause it then play, it also takes 1min 15-20secs to resume. Same with fastforwarding: fastforward then play, it will take 1min 15-20secs for it to stop fastforwarding. Thumbnail previews work perfectly though :? Its just when you actually play it that this problem happens.

Anyone here encountered this problem? Is it fixable? Is my unit dying? :cry:

Press the side paperclip reset for a couple of seconds and then release with the player fully booted up.

Ok thats the really small hole beside the side usb port, right? Is that some hard reset button?

Yes thatā€™s a reset button and also a PAL to NTSC (or vice versa) change button if you press it for 10 seconds or more. So make sure you only press it for a couple of seconds before releasing. The player will reboot. Sometimes resetting can help if you experience any type of problem. You will need a paperclip or cocktail stick to press the actual switch.

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.

As RICH indicated; if you held it for 10seconds, you changed the video mode.

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!