Ability to disable auto power on when WDTV LIVE is plugged in, and HDMI auto switching

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live & Live Plus
1

I have my WDTV into a 10 socket adapter that have all my AV equipment plugged into, this goes into one wall socket.

When i turn on the wall socket, the WDTV Live starts up automatically, in doing so it:

  1. Makes my TV switch the HDMI input of the WDTV automatically.

  2. It interfers with my TV’s Freeview Tuner

Can you add an option to be able to stop this auto power on?

I have a Panasonic TH-50PZ80 Plasma.

2

You’re right. That is quite annoying. I would like to have the auto-power disabled or maybe to have the option to enable/disable it through the setup menu.

3

+1

4

I have the same problem.

5

Same here. Ability to turn off auto power is a must.

6

to have the option to enable/disable it through the setup menu.

7

this is realy a MUST HAVE .

8

This is a duplicate of the idea " Be green - don’t waste energy and save the global climate!" that has more votes.

Default behaviour for a home theater / media device is not “power on on power attach” and neither should the HD TV live do this.

9

I am glad that I found this post. I was convinced that I need a replacement for my device. This is just so unusual - you connect the device to the power supply and it switches on automatically. No TV (and TVs tend to provide the same features as the WD TV Live theses days), no Set Top Boxes act like these. When I plug them in, they wait in the standby mode till I press the ON button on the remote control.

Regarding the feasibility of this request. Maybe I am missing something, but isn’t it just one line of code telling the device what to do when the power is back? It can switch on (boot up) or switch to the standby mode.

10

Hi,

I’m trying to find out how to disable this auto power up for a My Book 3.

Very annoying as I only used the drive for backups from time to time, but I want to have the drive connected to the system.

I wonder if  you have found any way of achiving this.

Martin

11

Ability to turn off auto power.  +1

12

Y, this behavior is really annoying, I really plan to return my just purchased WDTV Live Hub if there are no plans for resolving this. 

So vote for option to enable/disable auto power up through the setup menu. (or change default behavior to “standby by on power on”)!

So WD guys, what is the answer?

13

Well, I’m not WD…  But I wonder how you expect them to resolve this in software, when it’s really most likely a HARDWARE issue.

In order for the WD to know what your SETTING is when power is applied, it has be able to RUN in order to read the configuration.

In order for it to do what you want, it would probably have to be designed with a microcontroler that runs all the time, such as the IR receiver.   That MCU would have to be programmed via the UI to prevent the RESET LINE from activating on the processor and starting the unit up.

In other words, if it doesn’t have that capability in HARDWARE, then FIRMWARE ain’t gonna fix it.

14

As you said TonyPh12345 You are not WD! Is your assumption based on experience or just wild guess?

We would really like some tech guy from WD to answer this: >> Is it feasible or not? <<

Please stop our suffering :wink:

1 Like
15

Fair enough question!

… It is a guess.  Not a wild one, but one based on experience 20 years ago designing basic Micro-controller-based systems.   AGES in the technology realm, I admit…  

Theoretically, the same MCU that remains active and powered up to watch the INFRARED RECEIVER could prevent the thing from starting UNLESS the Infrarad Receiver is used to start it.   But unless the system is hardware designed so that ONLY that MCU provides the mechanism to bootstrap the box, they aren’t going to be able to change that behavior via software.   I don’t know if the MCU they use for that application is firmware-controlled or if it is programmed at the factory.

But more to the point, people are saying to make it an OPTION.   An OPTION has to be read from the FLASH MEMORY by the CPU, unless field-programmable gates or something similar are built onto the main board for just such an application. 

So, unless the required hardware is there, the best you could hope for is that when power is first applied, it starts up and initializes the operating system, and stays on for a minute until it boots far enough to read the configuration, and then shut itself down if so configured.

And this is just a wild guess:   If they’d have designed that hardware in, the option would most likely be there, as I doubt they would have spent money on unused hardware components without a plan to use them.

16

Well I am a software engineer for embedded systems. Sorry but you are mostly wrong and contradict yourself. In a modern product, the micro controller controls everything.

You are correct that the microprocessor would power up. However it should only power up and appear off. It would read EEPROM / FLASH settings and only if the option says auto power up should it continue to a fully on state. Otherwise the software should not initialise the outputs etc. i.e. hdmi, optical out, usb etc. and sit in a low power state, similar to what it does when you turn it off via the remote after it turns itself fully on.

The infra red commands should trigger an interrupt which would wake the device, like the way it does currently if you have turned it off and then turn it on again using the remote.

This will prevent all the interference problems that everyone is complaining about, including myself.

The above should be fully achievable through a software update. Especially since you can turn the device off via the remote and then turn it on again!

I find that I have to turn everything on, then turn the WD off so it does not interfere. WD could easily make this off state the default and add an option for those who want it to be fully on when power is applied.

This behaviour of appearing off when it is powered up is what practically all electronic equipment does these days, your phone etc, even the free calculator  you get. This is why the battery goes flat quicker than normal discharge.

In summary, if you can turn it off via the remote and back on, there is no reason this could not be fixed in a software update. The default should be ‘off’ with (if necessary, not sure who would want this), an option to make it auto power on. Come on WD please fix this!

This is the second WD product that I have bought that needs a  firmware update and it looks like the requests are going unanswered, it will probably be my last. The least WD could do is answer the topic!

17

jowjow wrote:

 

… Otherwise the software should not initialise the outputs etc. i.e. hdmi, optical out, usb etc. and sit in a low power state, similar to what it does when you turn it off via the remote after it turns itself fully on.

 

The infra red commands should trigger an interrupt which would wake the device, like the way it does currently if you have turned it off and then turn it on again using the remote.> * * *

But that’s not how these things were built.   You’re describing the way they SHOULD work.   I don’t disagree that’s the way it SHOULD work, but it’s not how it DOES work, and I believe it’s not possible to do it any other way because of the way the HARDWARE was designed.

   In the “Standby” state for the WDTV Live +, the WDTV Live (Rev. 2) and WDTV HD Gen 2 (Rev. 2) the CPU and MEMORY are powered OFF.   There is NO “Standby” state the way you describe it.    The CPU is DEAD.   The RAM is DEAD.  There *IS NO SOFTWARE* running.   No way to process interrupts.   It’s GONE, a dead rock.  The only thing powered up are voltage regulators and the MCU that controls the Infrared Receiver, and the receiver itself.   The Infrared Receiver tells the MCU to activate the rest of the system and power up the rest of the guts.  This hardware aspect was described some time ago by WD tech folks here in the forum.     This is a known fact; not a guess.

That’s why it takes so much longer for the Live+, Rev 2 Gen2 WDTV, and Rev 2 WDTV Live to boot.   They have to start from the ground up and bootstrap every time the power is turned on by the remote, even if the power PLUG has been there forever.

So, while what you describe *might* be possible, it’d only be possible for products that haven’t been manufactured for the last 7 or 8 months.

I’d be happy for WD to chime in and tell me I’m wrong !  :)

So, let’s say that they go ahead and write software the just keeps the output from being activated until the user hits the remote power button, which I agree is possible.   Here’s what that would cause.

1-  User plugs in the power.

2-  There is NOTHING on the screen, and no LED indication.  (but, unbeknownst to the user, the device is actually booting up.)

3-  The user presses the power button the remote.

4-  NOTHING happens.  Still no picture, and LED is still dark.

5-  User presses again.  

6-  Nothing happens. (But the device just hasn’t finished it’s 60-or-so second initialization.)

7-  User unplugs the unit and plugs it back in. 

8-  Go to Step 2.

…  followed by lots of posts here on the forum saying “My WDTV Live+ won’t turn on!” 

and lots of answers:

“You have to wait at least 60 seconds after power-up before you can turn it on.”

followed by, “THAT is STUPID.   I returned my box to the store thinking it was DEAD, and this is the third one I tried!   Why don’t they at least put something on the screen and turn the LED on???”

Not only that, but since the REMOTE controls the same RESET-LINE as the Power-Plug does, this would happen, too:  “I pressed the remote power button but it won’t turn on!”   When, in actuallity, it IS on, but you just can’t tell until the box has initialized (because there is no STANDBY state.)

I would guess that the latter scenarios would outnumber the dozen or so people who want this other feature by a 100 to 1 margin… :wink:

18

I still don’t think you have the full facts, you describe an MCU, which I would guess is a microcontroller, this has software, this can be changed.

I don’t believe that this cannot be solved. I can’t believe for a minute that the engineers responsible for this device made the boot sequence so restricted that they cannot change the software to cure this. The LED could blink in standby and be on for on and off for off.

The fact remains that this is a very broken product that over rides all other devices connected even if you did not want it on! 

The only way to solve this is to leave it plugged in permanently which is a huge waste of power. 

With out this fix it is not a multimedia device, it is a toy.