Ok I just hooked up my new wd live hd plus and all seemed to be good. The wifi connected fine and updated the firmware. Then I tried to stream a 1080p mkv file over my network. It played without a problem. Then I tried a AVI file that used xvid at 720p and it started to play fine and then would freeze up and the audio would go. I then tried a AVI file that was at a lower resolution and it played for a second and the sound went out and the picture was like it was in slow mode or something. Now all of these files play fine when they are played off from a usb drive attached to the wd live plus. Anyone have any idea what is going on here? I have a popcorn hour in another room using the same network and all files play fine.
I’m new to blogging but have had a wd player for awhile and had to troubleshoot a lot of networking problems of my own. The first thing I’d ask myself is “can the files play on my computer” . I recommend VLC Media Player (it’s free, No spyware). Next I’d consider what kind of hardware I was running for my wireless network (is it a G router or an N router speed. Also check your USB network adapter speed. If you have a “N router” and a “G adapter” you’ll get G speed. Next (what I did wrong) make sure that you’re network is shared through the router not your computers Network Adapter on the pc. The speed difference is incomparable. You could try to stream a small music file and see if it doesn’t lag.
Yes all files play fine with VLC. And it’s a N router with a N usb wifi plugged into WD TV Live Plus. I found a fix after reading the messages here for about 2 hours. It seems many are having the same problem as me and the fix is to roll back to an older version of the firmware. I went from version 1.04.14 to version 1.03.49 as was suggested to another and low and behold all files start playing with no problem’s over the network. Now I loose many of the streaming features that are in version 1.04.14 but at least my files all stream over the network now. Thinking I’m gonna return this though as I want something that is fully supported and with this being broke now for so long and 2 firmware updates and still not working I think I’m going to go with my 1st pick which is the popcorn hour. I have 1 already and yes they cost 2 times as much but everything works without hacks and has many more options then this thing. I got this for the bedroom HD TV and figure I would save a bit of money and still get to do what I wanted to do but I miss many of the streaming features of the newer firmware and the popcorn hour has even more. Oh well live and learn right???
I am having the same problems wtih my WDTVLIVEPLUS HD, firmware 1.04.31_B.
And tell you even more based on my troubleshooting discoveries:
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AVI files are hanging and freezing only when played over the network (Wireless or even Wired !). Files from 25Mb to 540Mb have the same issue, independent of the resolution (from 176x254, 320x240 to 640x576)
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Using the WDTV Option to Copy those AVI (or any extension) files over the network to a USB Drive attached to the WDTV, I found the troughput is appropriate.
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Playing the very same AVI files which hangs and freezes over the network, using USB Drive as a source works perfectly ! Divx, Xvid, and even MJPEG.
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Now the tricky part - even being bigger in size and resolution, MKV Files, DVD ISOs works fine both through the network (Wifi N, Wired Cabling) and also USB Drive source…
Seems to have to do with the bitstreaming rate while streaming from network…
What should I do ? Can anyone try to execute same set of tests ?
