Another lagging problem

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live & Live Plus
1

I can see that there are tons of lagging problem with this device from this forum. Maybe I am missing something with the device that anybody here can help. I’ll just paste here what I have emailed WD Support, heck even the basic .wav file lags so bad!

Here’s my email:

Hi! I have this second WD TV Live for less than a week, the first one I have to return due to the same lagging problems. I’ve also noticed in the community forum about the majority of the lag problems. I have a gigabit connection on my network and I have never experience any problem playing my DVD(Vob) / Audio(Wav) files through any of my three PCs so I am not going to blame it to my network system. The WD TV Live is connected to my theater setup, it is hooked up to a wired gigabit connection from a gigabit switch, when I play any of my files from my net HDD, it lags so badly, sometimes it plays but it lags and it is frustrating, right now I have it running again playing audio wav files and it finally finished one song and then there is totally no audio, but I can see the bar still playing.  I can understand that the problem can be from a lot of reasons, Bandwith, network speed, wires, wired or wireless, bottleneck etc.

Here’s what I did so far to eliminate those problems. The thing is, I’ve tried all my PCs, played any files on windows media player, all of them work with no lagging, perfect! I can see I have no problem with my network (Eliminated). It could be a wiring problem now, I used wired instead or wireless, for the reason of wireless is always not reliable(Wireless eliminated). This time I looked at my HDMI wire and replaced it with a different one which is by the way are both brand new and made by Monster Cable ($70 each), still lags (HDMI wire eliminated). Also, all other things connected to my theater are working, Internet music, video, etc. So back to the wires, I replaced my Cat 5 cable with another Cat 5e, checked and still lags, (Cat 5 wire eliminated)

About bottleneck, I’ve tried turning of anything that uses my network but no luck, still lags(Bottleneck eliminated). Speed, like I said I have no problem playing the files with any of my gigabit speed PCs, I don’t exactly know the net speed of the WD TV device, that is the only problem that I can think of, if it is running 100mbs, it’s bad for Vob files, but maybe ok for wav files, to be able to play DVD or HD files(I’m not even playing HD files), it has to be a lot higher than 100mbs, if the speed is more that that then what else can cause the problem? I think I eliminated everything that might cause the problem without gtahering all the datas because I can see from the forum that they all talk about router model #, Speed data, bandwith number, etc. Through my experience with playing Audio(wav)/Video(Vob) files through gigabit speed LAN using a PC is basic technology and is supposed to be flawless, even if multi PCs playing multi files all together is still supposed to be flawless(except playing HD files), been doing it for years with HTPC. So my point is, if this device cannot achieve that technology(just playing simple wav files), then it is useless to keep it and not even worth spending time figuring out to make it work.

So my decision of returning this product totally is depending on what you can explain to resolve the problem. There is used to be a HTPC connected to my theater setup, it is out for service(hardware problem). I wanted to make it simpler and smaller this time, that is why I wanted the WD TV Live.

P.S. By the way I have the latest firmware.

Thanks for any help

Chris

2

Update:

While waiting for a reply from WD support, I’m still thinking about what causes the lagging issue.

I am using the WD TV Live with a Sony STR-DA5700ES receiver, since it is a brand new receiver while everything works connected to it through HDMI and all the cat5e cables through its built in ethernet switch at the back, I’m still curious about the HDMI(Audio/Video) being combined from WD TV to the receiver that maybe…maybe bottlenecking somewhere inside the receiver eventhough i’ve been switching it around with different HDMI input slots.

So I isolated  each signals, video through HDMI only then audio through optical only. First both of them plugged in, still lags, I pulled the HDMI video input out so I can just focus on audio signal without any interference with video signal, no luck! Still lagging! The file from the server is being read and is playing because I can see the status bar and track time still playing, there is just either no sound or just lagging sound. My receiver is fine and I think that’s the end of it. I might have to go back to my a bit bulky HTPC.

Cheers!

Chris

3

Have you tried playback from a USB disk instead of via the network?

4

Hi! Thanks Tony! Funny but I just thought about it, although I don’t prefer using a local drive because all my media are in a network and all hidden in one place inside the house. I did tried a flash drive connected to the front USB of WD TV Live and it works flawlessly, too bad I am not planning to move my TBs of media right next to it. So at least the audio going through my receiver has no problem and my receiver accepting it. I haven’t tried any Vob files through it though, I’ll deal with that when the audio is resolved. Thanks for the help!

Chris

5

This may be a wild goose chase, but over on AVS forum, there was a bit of discussion about switch “problems.”

Some switches have very small packet buffers and the WDs use HUGE TCP “segments” which can cause switch buffer overflows which can lead to lagging and stuttering.

Here’s a link to the discussion.

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1364999/official-wd-tv-live-streaming-media-player-thread/1710#post_22010467

Worth a shot…  

A know you paid a bazillion bucks for that Sony, but if the network switch isn’t “fat” enough, it might be responsible for the issue you’re describing.

6

Thought about that one too, I had it hooked up directly to the main gigabit ethernet cable from the wall, and once tried using a over the powerline network device to isolate it from my receiver, still no luck. Thanks  for the helpTony!

Chris

7

Update:

No word from WD support. Case closed. I am returning the device for a refund. I am going back using HTPC, bulky but much flexible and reliable.