New Firmwares Are Evil

I’m convinced.  Firmware updates are made to destroy devices to force people to go out and buy new devices.

I had the first WD TV and it worked find except for the fact that it didn’t have built in WiFi.  I went out and bought a WiFi adapter that was recommended by WD and no matter what I did, I could never get it to work.  So I lived with it.  Then came a new firmware.  I upgraded and my little friend stopped working altogether.

Because the new ones had build in WiFi, I tought I’d upgrade rather than deal with this old one.  So I bought a new one.  Worked well enough, though very buggy.  Kept installing new firmware releases and it got worse and worse.  Now with this latest one, I can’t use the WiFi anymore.  Recognizes my computer, but that’s it.  Will see my shared forlders but I keep getting “NO VALID MEDIA” yada yada type of message.  I’m sick of this **bleep**.  I won’t put up with this and go and buy the latest one.

This isn’t just WD.  It’s many other manufacturers such as Apple.  My cute little first generation iPad worked just fine.  As new firmware was released it got slower and slower.  I didn’t pack it with **bleep**.  I just used it to surf the web and read books and other minial stuff.  Eventually it was useless and all you kept hearing was “your device has reached its end of life” **bleep**.  It was only 2 years old! 

New technology is great, but those that take advantage of consumers are nothing but crooks.

Get real. I’ve been updating all my WDTVs to each and every firmware available and despite some newly introduced bugs NONE EVER rendered them unsuable or bricked them. Ever considered the problem might lie elsewhere (hint, hint) since you seem to experience this with other manufaturer’s devices as well?

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Yeah, it must be me since I’m the “only” one that’s had problems with devices.  Including WDTV devices.  Yep, must be me.

Most new firmware pushed by companies is optimised for newer devices with better hardware. It will run poorly on older devices and nudge the customers to buy new devices for a better experience. The senior management and shareholders need their bonuses! That said, I don’t think that is the aim of WD in this instance. I think they just didn’t test the firmware thoroughly before pushing it to the masses. This latest firmware made my WDTV Live useless. It became glacially slow and could no longer play 95% of my library. It affected many people as seen on the threads complaining of various issues. I am all for new firmware which adds new features to a device but not at the expense of its core features. Judging from my previous experience of WDTV Live bugs, I think we will wait for some time before we get a fix. I hope that I am wrong.

Isn’t that great?  It’s exactly what I’m talking about.  So now we have to wait who knows how long for WD to fix the problem (if ever) or go out and get a new one.  Fat chance I’ll be getting a new one.

I’m totally with you…

I can’t understand why this black box has just to play movies and installing a new firmware “suggested by WD” (original one, no hack no crack no custom, no no no no…) it is unable to contact a media server that 5 minutes before was working… unbelievable… who was the tester??? please…tell me whoooooooooo

Why? So you can send him your DLNA server so he can test it along with all the others he probably already did?