Loses connection with local network on a daily basis

Every day I seem to fight longer and longer with my WDBHG70000NBK-HESN in order to get it to work. As soon as I turn it on, it tells me that the previously selected content source has been disconnected and would I like to find a new one.
So I go through the motion and search for my network again, but it never finds it. It sets on the spinning arrow screen and I just wait. After about 5 minutes, I have to unplug everything and then start reconnecting all the wires again. Sometimes this works, most of the time it will not.
I waste about 1.5 hours every single night just trying to get this piece of junk to work.
I cannot believe that Western Digital would put out such a faulty product. Does anybody else have this problem? I have applied every update available since I bought this box less than a month ago. I am at a total loss and would like to know if anyone actually has one of these machines that works.

I have tried two different routers, wireless and wired, neither seems to make a difference. And when it does actually work, the MP4 and MKV files will hang throughout playback. AVI’s seem to work ok as long as I don’t watch too many in a row.

well if you’re spending 1.5 hrs each night trying to get it to work, you’re definetely doing something wrong

the issues you described are definetely not the norm

now that said, others have encourtered these types of issues

I recommend fixing one issue at a time

and starting with the network connection issues

while you don’t provide enough info to really know for sure

I’m going to guess that you have a problem on your network with the master browser and are using smb shares to access your media

everytime a device comes on the network a master browser election happens, and if the master browser changes you will need to reconnect to your smb shares, this is a inherent problem with the MS implementation of smb shares

most people are able to solve this by keeping a dedicated PC powered on for sharing content, or many newer routers have the ability to force the router to always be the master browser

hopefully, that will get you started in the right direction

but you should also confirm what your set up is

what are you sharing from

how are you sharing the files

and what devices are connecting them

curbano72 wrote:

Every day I seem to fight longer and longer with my WDBHG70000NBK-HESN in order to get it to work. As soon as I turn it on, it tells me that the previously selected content source has been disconnected and would I like to find a new one.
So I go through the motion and search for my network again, but it never finds it. It sets on the spinning arrow screen and I just wait. After about 5 minutes, I have to unplug everything and then start reconnecting all the wires again. Sometimes this works, most of the time it will not.
I waste about 1.5 hours every single night just trying to get this piece of junk to work.
I cannot believe that Western Digital would put out such a faulty product. Does anybody else have this problem? I have applied every update available since I bought this box less than a month ago. I am at a total loss and would like to know if anyone actually has one of these machines that works.

I have tried two different routers, wireless and wired, neither seems to make a difference. And when it does actually work, the MP4 and MKV files will hang throughout playback. AVI’s seem to work ok as long as I don’t watch too many in a row.

 

This product certainly has its issues.  My advice:

  1. if you have the latest firmware, 2.02.32, down grade.  This forum is littered with people complaining about it, specifically mentioning a loss of networking.

2)  Read the How to resolve “Network shares” access problems with WDTV media players article.  Pretty basic stuff, but you should check the basic/networking 101 stuff just to be safe.

  1. Search the forums for “master browser”. This is really the fix that works for most people. The WDTV networking is defective from a master browser perspective, has been that way since the day it came out so I would not expect a fix anytime soon (aka NEVER). What most people do is make registry changes or if you have a router that supports being the master browser do that, that is the quick fix. Unfortunately many routers won’t do that so check your router to see if it can and search these forums for the registry changes needed if it won’t. IMHO by far the biggest defect with this product.

The two things that solved my problems in this regard are;

  1. set up your network so all computers, NAS’ and the WDTV have fixed IP addresses

  2. use Linux shares instead of Windows shares if your devices suport it.

All of this is so confusing. I have a Windows Vista machine, a Linksys Cisco Wireless N WRT160N v3 Router. I have tried following all of the advice here, but now my headache is even worse… I couldn’t figure out if my router was able to be set as the master browser. I logged into it and saw nothing that said anything of the sort.

I followed these steps: http://www.speedguide.net/faq_in_q.php?qid=289

But saw no improvement… Was I supposed to set it to YES? I read that in a different post, but it didn’t help so I just left it to AUTO. I was able to watch a few shows in a row but then it started acting up again and I haven’t been able to get it to see my Network Shares since.

Downgrade to which version?

I’d like to say I’ve never had problems with the WDTV Live SMP’s network connection, but once I’d managed to set up windows properly and got Mezzmo to act as a DLNA server the only problem I ever had was that the WDTV would change IP address on occasion and I’d have to do some fiddling to get it working again.  I’m expecting a visitor so I just reconnected my WDTV again and it worked striaght away, but I’d given the thing a static IP address at some point which my router still remembers.

I think before you begin worrying about firmware you should try the Static IP thing, since from experience I know just after a firmware update is the time it’s most likely to change IP address.

As for playback, I stopped using MP4s long ago because it seems the WDTV doesn’t buffer them properly.  I THINK that once the bitrate gets to about twice the average bitrate the WDTV can’t keep up and everything goes to **bleep**.  I mostly alliviated the problem by switching to MKV only but I have found the issue to reoccur while watching an old black and white episode of Doctor Who from an MKV.  I’d mostly forgotten about the MP4 issue, but while I was on the VideoHelp forum an esteemed member called Jagabo happened to mention it and I was glad I wasn’t the only one to have encountered the problem.  I’m not sure why they hadn’t fixed it by the previous firmware since the issue has been hanging around for god knows how long, but since I seemed to be the only person to have brought up the 24 bit FLAC thing, even though I KNOW other people have encountered it, I’m guessing either no one bothers telling them these things, they don’t listen or they can’t figure out how to fix it.  I know the issue with MP4s isn’t overwhelming bitrate because the enternet connection is more than enough to handle the SD encodes I play, plus it will quite happily play a full BD rip whose average bitrate dwarfs the maximum bitrate of the puny SD encodes that cause the issue, which leaves only bad buffering as the likely suspect.  I’ve deleted all my MP4s since the last firmware was installed so can’t test them with the new one but, yes, as things stand it is a faulty product and I can’t wait 'til the day when I can afford replace it with something better.

Since noone bothered to upload their suddenly faulty MP4s for testing I’m not entirely convinced about the cause just yet.

Some of us have discovered the wonders of ‘Bitrate Viewer’.  Where are we supposed to upload them exactly?

I know the Opening Title from Astro Boy brings the WDTV Live to it’s knees and I MIGHT be able to recreate a file that acomplishes just that.

http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/346787-streaming-high-bitrate-1080p-on-10-100-LAN?highlight=WDTV+buffer

http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/363980-Would-an-ac-router-stream-a-pure-bluray-rip-to-a-wdtv-live-gen-3?highlight=WDTV+buffer

We may both be wrong but I independantly came to pretty much the same concusion.  So it’s been there since at least 2012, which is pretty much since day one, and the problem was still there in the last firmware.

Honestly, if I found a problem like that in MakeMKV or MKVToolNix Mike or Mosu would have it fixed by the next update.  I tried reporting the 24 bit FLAC in an MKV issue to WD and not only is there no way to upload files for them to look at, it’s an unpeasant experience all round.  Plus they seem more interested in meddling with the User interface then getting the thing to play the **bleep** files properly.  Neither 24 bit FLAC in MKV nor 6.1 FLAC nor 6.1 DTS-MA in MKV have been fixed in the new firmware.  PRIORITIES PEOPLE!

(And yes, I know messing around with code isn’t easy)

WD TV Media Player
User Manual
SETUP AND ADVANCED FEATURES
Operation:

3 Hours Energy Saving Auto Shut Down.

This function is set to ON by default.

Set it to off.

Solved, eh?

ndjamena wrote:

Some of us have discovered the wonders of ‘Bitrate Viewer’.

Yeah, some of us have too, a while ago (2011?), leading to interesting results:

Avatar.Region.A.1080p.png

Avatar.Region.B.1080p.png

ndjamena wrote:

Where are we supposed to upload them exactly?

As you can see, images can be uploaded here, files on sendspace.com for example.

ndjamena wrote:
I know the Opening Title from Astro Boy brings the WDTV Live to it’s knees and I MIGHT be able to recreate a file that acomplishes just that.

There’s several test files available for that already, google for clips with jelly fish or birds which go from 20 to 120 Mbps. The WD stutters at constant bitrates of ~50-60 Mbps but has no issues at peaks like in the US version of Avatar. I’m talking playback over network shares (wired) here.

I realize it’s probably bad form to make my very first post here be a criticism of others, but frankly I find it really obnoxious the way this topic has been allowed to be hijacked.  I started reading this topic because I share a similar frustration as the OP.  And while I’m grateful for the advice about the Master Browser and fixed IP addresses and registry changes, I do not appreciate a bunch of irrelevant discussion about uploading faulty MP4s and the wonders of Bitrate Viewer.  What the …??