So I’ve had my eye on one of these for awhile…and this weekend I will be receiving one as an early Christmas gift. My questions are - is the new firmware a horrible experience for everyone? And should I just keep whatever firmware is on the WDTV out of the box and not upgrade? Or go the B-rad route? Thanks.
Although I don’t personally have as many WDTV Live problems as some people here, I would suggest that you would be better off waiting for the next release, or at least using the box for a week or two first, this will give you a good ‘feel’ for how well the box can perform. I have seen the following changes since the ‘upgrade’:
some of my mkv files appear to be very quiet
when playing VOB files, if I use the top level video_ts file so as to get dvd menus, the machine runs extremely slow. If I run any of the other VOB files it’s fine.
When connecting to my network the box appears to try a number of MAC addresses before it manages to connect.
If you run ISO images, have a wired network and have a brand new HDMI cable then I believe you will have very few problems & it will be worth upgrading.
Thanks, I do plan on going on a wired network (Win7 64bit) and either use shares or just attach my external hdd if the shares route isn’t stable. I have mostly .mkv’s, .mp4, and iso’s. Soooo looks like I’ll just do some testing and roll back if I get the issues I’ve been reading about. I’m just worried about it getting bricked. Just gotta hope my girlfriend kept the receipt!
I’m on Win7 32 wired, and just connected composite at the moment.
I’m not encountering the same problems that many are.
Every .mkv I’ve tried has played fine. Every .iso I’ve tried has played fine. Every VIDEO_TS folder I’ve tried has played fine.
I don’t have any .mp4. Even without the newest firmwares, many people have always found them to be problematic.
I’ve reflashed mine dozens of times. 1.02.21, 1.03.42, 1.03.49, 1.04.10, B-Rad, etc… back and forth and back and forth, for testing out various things and trying to reproduce issues – I’ve never “bricked” it. It’s a fairly sure bet that you’ll be ok if you decide to upgrade it to a newer FW than what it comes out of the box with.
RoofingGuy is right! It is easy enough to flash different firmware versions, so there is no reason not to try the latest version. Some people don’t have any problems with it. If you do have problems, you can always downgrade to an earlier version.
