WD TV Live and MKV High Bitrates

So, I know that WD TV Live doesn’t support high birates over local network and internal WiFi. But what about USB ?

I mean, if I use a USB Wireless Adaptor can I broke this Samba limitation?

Can I stream High Bitrate MKV using an USB Adaptor like ASUS USB AC53 or something?

Thank you

Ivan Milazzotti

Of course it DOES support high bitrates over wired network.

I’ve streamed high bitrate mkv files over both wired and WiFi without any issue using the latest firmware.

iMilazzo wrote:

So, I know that WD TV Live doesn’t support high birates over local network and internal WiFi… can I broke this Samba limitation?

I have never had any issues streaming up to 45Mbps blu-ray sourced MKV files from a Samba server (Linux) to my multiple WD Live SMPs via Ethernet (wired).  None!  If you are having issues, then you have a network or server problem.

Now Wifi is another issue.  I was never able to reliably stream files much over 20Mbps using Wifi to the SMPs.

I have recently purchased the WD My Cloud EX2 specifically for storing HD contents and streaming videos to my WD TV Live.  I have gigabyte connection throughout my network and I have a wired connection to my WD TV as well when streaming.  I noticed I have buffering issue for videos that have more than 15mbps from the NAS.  However, I have tried other storage devices that are older and less powerful than the EX2 and they stream fine.  I also tried streaming from an external usb hard drive connected to my PC and it to it, and my WD TV connects to that share drive and everything is also fine.  I’m even able to stream a bluray over 40 mbps.

Why can’t I even stream anyhting over 15mbps on the EX2?  Is there anything specific I need to configured on the NAS?

Thanks in advance.

@activemind: I have an LG NAS and an iomega, and I used to have a similar problem with one of them (don’t remember which), what I thought was a buffering problem (video would freeze and/or stutter). I found that using NFS (Linux-style “file share”) instead of SMB (Windows-style “file share”) cured the problem. Some time later, a firmware update on the NAS made this problem go away and I no longer had to do that so I don’t think it was ever a buffering problem. So that might be something you can try.

Also, my experience with the WD TV Live suggests that whenever you hit a bump like that (i.e. have some kind of a problem with playback) make sure you restart the WD TV Live using the menus (not just power off/on) because sometimes they seem to become permanently confused after an error situation.

I run my SMPs over wifi, no wired ethernet, and haven’t had that problem for a while. However, I do not know if I am playing similar content as you. When you say “15mbps” or “40mbps”, how do you tell? Are you looking at stats displayed by the NAS or what?

The WDTV is 100mbit only. Some people reported problems going away when adjusting the port speed on their routers.