Signs
P.S. Games of Thrones is bad **bleep** !
Give me a couple of days.
Thanks again Bill,
I’ll look forward to what will hopefully be a positive response from the WD team!
Thanks Bill,
I do appreciate your time and effort in posting in this community forum.
Ayhan
Thanks, guys.
3 Likes
Hello Bill,
are there any news about the missing feature:
Support for true PNG images with Alpha transparency for both FOLDERS and FILES.
Best regards
Gerd
When I looked into this, I found the specs for images on this device. What I found is that we really only support jpegs. So, support for png’s is really a feature request, not a bug. The other thing I found is that there is a max resolution limitation of 1280x720. The resolution limitation would definitely explain the cropping you guys are getting, especially since some of the size of images themers have been using are so large. Now, if you can use transparent png’s, then that’s fine, but we don’t provide support for png’s at this time. I would create the idea, if it’s not already there, and vote it up.
if i remember rightly, i could use .png on the live, and on the gen 2. ?
bringing out a device, that is designed to have themes., and that you are well aware from how the theming and moviesheets has gone on all of your earlier devices. wouldnt of it been a good idea to maybe give full specs, or guidelines with this device so that themers have standards to work to.
just seems strange to me that themes will work quite happily on a certain firmware and not the next. if the firmware was perfect and all you were doing was adding new services, surely the way themes are displayed wouldnt change.
What I found is that we really only support jpegs. … that reply means to me, it can support .png., but its not a priority to us. and at this time we dont have a clue on how to fix it.
mannymiller wrote:
if i remember rightly, i could use .png on the live, and on the gen 2. ?
bringing out a device, that is designed to have themes., and that you are well aware from how the theming and moviesheets has gone on all of your earlier devices. wouldnt of it been a good idea to maybe give full specs, or guidelines with this device so that themers have standards to work to.
just seems strange to me that themes will work quite happily on a certain firmware and not the next. if the firmware was perfect and all you were doing was adding new services, surely the way themes are displayed wouldnt change.
What I found is that we really only support jpegs. … that reply means to me, it can support .png., but its not a priority to us. and at this time we dont have a clue on how to fix it.
Remember, that on other older firmware the png’s might have been compressed to fit. And maybe it just became more noticeable. I think we are working on bringing out more documentation on doing themes. But that will be part of some web pages we may have to build.
As for what I said, “what I found is that we really only support jpegs,” that only means what I said. That was my findings. It has nothing to do with where our product team stands. I mean, we already know that png’s work. It’s just whether transparent png’s work. Which if I’m understanding users correctly, they don’t. However, if the device only supports a certain resolution size, then I would look at it as a limitation of the device, not the firmware.
Has anyone tried using png’s at 1280 by 720? Do they work correctly, as jpeg’s would? I would start there.
Well, WD have pretty much made a decision regarding Alpha Transparency PNG’s for “Folders”
http://community.wdc.com/t5/Live-Hub-Ideas/Use-png-image-as-folder-jpg/idi-p/161002
Use .png image as folder.jpg …Allowing transparencies
Status:Unplanned
by HomerJ on 27-03-2011 11:59 AM - last edited on 20-11-2011 04:10 AM
The ability to use a folder.png as a folder image, transparency , much like the “video_browse_gallery_thumbnail_folder_f.png”
Properly display png’s…stop changing them to jpg
Status:Unplanned
This is as designed.
Well i did sell my hub about 2 weeks ago, and 2 of my friends have sold theres too and purchased the boxee. i have yet to choose anything, even tho i have tested a few. Think after this result / reply, and its one that had been ongoing for almost a year. Has finished WD completely for me. I havent had a single WD product, live, gen 1 & 2 that didnt have issues one way or another. i wont be purchasing any other of there products, media players etc. Maybe bill you can pass that on to your guys… and im guessing alot of people will be feeling the same way.
Thanks for the reply information. My unit is now for sale on eBay and I will never buy a WD unit of any kind again. I will also inform all I know of this as well.
Thanks again.
Manny, how is the Boxee Box? Is it restrictive when it comes down to Bitstreaming or Simultaneous audio via HDMI and Optical? I was using Boxee for Windows for a while and it looked promising but they abandoned it. If they had kept up support for the Windows version, I may have bought a Boxee as well to compliment the Hub.
I went from my hub to a Boxee but sold it soon after as lots of niggles with playback every time there was a fw update.
I have ended up with a PCH A300 which I love.
Would liketo point out tho that I still have my hub used in another part of the house. With older fw it plays absolutely everything and the reason I use the A300 as my main player is because of its excellent in built in jukebox
Just a Question …
Do ‘Alternatives’ to the ‘WDTV Live Hub’ eg. Boxee , PCH A300 etc …
Support “PNG images with Alpha transparency for both FOLDERS and FILES” ?
" Because that’s the topic of this thread on Page(1) "
I am quite fed up with the Media Library Function being used with my External 1TB usb hard drive. It compiles forever, and when I plug the USB drive back into Windows 7, Windows has to scan the disk and recover from “errors”
The WDTV also leaves junk behind in every folder such as metathumb, xml, etc. which I can live with but it should make those links in its OWN folder rather than every folder it finds.
Just getting really fed up with these issues…the firmwares are a mess.
I agree.
From a “Boxee Forum”… Sound Familiar ? 
Full Article Source: http://forums.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=48291
Oh believe me, I agree with you 100%. I was just clearing the air about Boxee’s take on the whole caching topic. I think they should cache thumbnails from external storage, possibly from the useless (to me anyway) SD card slot on the front of the Boxee Box.
Boxee doesn’t realize how this is affecting them financially by not fixing all the “small” issues.
They would rather work on Internet apps…
So, it’s not just WD …
now i look at that…(scroll down)
http://www.hifi-forum.de/viewthread-181-7839-10.html
more Skins
http://www.mede8erforum.com/index.php/topic,7539.0.html
Mede8er 500x2
Yes they all look very nice … i downloaded a few, and all they are all “Home Screen” Graphics Replacement…
A Lot of those “Home Screens” could be easily done on the WDTV Live Hub.
(There are no XML’s in any of the ‘Skinpacks’ that i downloaded…, whether ‘media views’ are ‘skinable’ or not… i do not know, but at least the Hub offers it to a limited degree)
Next Week i can code and post some of these for the WDTV Live Hub .
Bit of Foreign language in one of the links which i didnt understand … but i did see “PC” pop up a lot . hmmm
Thanks for the Links !
