Network problems with WD, no problems with google chromecast

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live Streaming
1

I recently bought a chromecast hdmi key, that connects to my PCs through wifi : it is 20 cms from my Wd tv smp and has no problem with my wifi network.

How can such a little key work without network problem and the wd tv have a lot of network problems : loosing wifi connection, sometimes not finding the DNS, …?

2

  How can such a little key work without network problem and the wd tv have a lot of network problems

Well, since I have both products, I’ll tell you why:  Because the Chromecast has to only connect to the Wi-fi signal and a mobile device,  whereas the WD has to connect to the same things as well as the network , it’s shares, etc. (which is not the same thing and is a lot more involved than a wireless signal and mobile device).  There’s more to it than this, but the short answer will have to suffice. 

BTW, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but my WD operates better than my Chromecast which is limited in the tricks it can do, and in some cases it cannot work with the apps made for it.  You will soon be discovering this for yourself.  I like my Chromecast so much that it has been disconnected from my system for quite a while.  Don’t even want to use it – simply because I have other stuff that works better and does more.

3

Thanks for your answer. I agree that chromecat is not perfect : for me it works perfectly with youtube, but is not as good as the wdtv for streaming local videos.

Unfortunately my wdtv is very unstable : it sometimes works perfectly, but also has a lot of problems. Apart from using the local disk (that also works with my wd gen1), the most stable I could find is using with an UPNP server (Universal Media Server). But this does not prevent having the network that sometimes does not work.

eg : last days I could not be able to copy a 1 GB file from my PC onto the local disc through the network : the transfert works OK some minutes, but looses the network.

When I use the network test menu entry, it takes 10 seconds to have the 3 green lights that say the network is OK. Yesterday : it stayed on the 2 red lights with a DNS error. Sometimes I have to reconfigure the wifi network tu be able to use it. I am not a network expert, but I think there probably should be some solution to maintain the wifi network working at the wd tv level…

4

Hi,

I was a little harsh on the Chromecast last night, because it does work fine with YouTube and Netflix, but other than that, I wasn’t able to do much with it.  One big issue I have had is with the app called Avia.  It’s purpose is to enable streaming of personal media content to the Chromecast, but it never has worked since I installed it on my Kindle tablet.  Their support told me it was because it was incompatible with my version of Kindle, the problem was caused by the Chromecast’s internal SDK, and it would be fixed “soon”.  I have waited for months for this to happen and it did not. So, last night after your message, I decided to test it all again, and to my surprise since my last check a month or so ago, it was all working!  I was able to stream from my Kindle (using Avia) to the Chromecast, both music and videos from my home network hard drives.  Finally.

As for the problems you have with the WDTV, if you are using wireless instead of wired connection, this could be the cause of problems you described.  Why not post a new message about your WDTV specific problems and see if you can get some help for that here?  Good luck.

5

I already reported my problems, and it seems there are others users who have these types of problem. But no solution seems to appear on the forum, and last  2.01.86 FW has even more network problems.

I agree that chromecast does not adress the same usage, but even if it has less quality for streaming videos from the PC through chrome (sometimes image and sound are jerky), it never looses the network connection.

6

I have a wired, gigabit network, along with strong wireless when I need it and do not experience any jerky audio or image with Chromecast (or WDTV).  I attribute this to not using wireless to stream video except in the case of Chromecast or my tablets, and when I do this, I usually use the 5G signal with the tablets.

7

Thanks for your answer.

Unfortunately my TV is far from my router, and setting a wired connexion is not possible.
I have wifi N : 150 Mb/s : in fact my PCs can transfer files about 40 Mb/s. So, this should be largely enough for streaming mp4 videos (around 6 Mb/s. I agree that transient problems with wifi are acceptable, but loosing totally te connexion is more problematic…

8

In fact, now that I do use my chromecast as it should, using the Plex Web App instead of the chrome tab cast (as explained in https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201206866-Cast-from-Browser-or-Desktop)) , it allows me to see videos from my PC through my Wifi in a perfect way (no audio or video jitter) on my TV.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for my wdtv smp ;-( that regularly looses the network…

I still hope it will work some day as does the chromecast.