I still haven’t spent a lot of time playing with this new device but the problem I reported seems to have been resolved. Leaving the device off overnight seemd to correct the persistence problem. In that, I could again navigate to a video and play it. I took 2 different actions between the reported failures and what looks to be resolution. First, my Windows workgroup is NOT named WORKGROUP. Therefore, I figured out how to configure the WD TV Live device to use my workgroup. Second, I updated the firmware on the NAS device (D-Link DNS-321) where I have stored a large amount of media to include many of the subject mpeg2 (HDTV) files (recordings). While I think I tried both methods the NAS includes a UPnP server which I’m finding preferrable to using windows shares.
This makes the situation much better and reduces my complaint to the fact that the WD TV Live hung up so completely without providing any indication of what was wrong. I’m still left with mere speculation about the cause of a serious malfunction.
