Best firmware for iso playback?

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live Streaming
1

Hi-

I’ve had the unit for a little while now, and I’ve not been able to get iso files (dvd) to play back without stuttering.  I had heard that 1.10.13 behaved well, and went with that, but I still get stuttering.  Since I don’t really see using this  for much of anything other than iso playback, is there a revision that is particularly stable for iso playing of DVD images? 

Thanks!

2

Are you streaming via wired, wireless, or combo of both?  If there is any wireless in the chain, that could be the problem, and not the firmware – no matter which WD player you have.

3

Only the WDTV box is connecting wirelessly: the rest is cloud storage going directly into the router over GigE.  I’ve seen folks say wireless will cause problems, but if I’m direct connected from the storage to the router with copper, and straight from the router to the WDTV via wireless N with a strong signal, the amount of N bandwidth a standard DVD consumes is so small that in order for it to *really* be the connection and not inadequate product at the endpoint after only one hop, the wireless network would have to be catastrophically bad and the whole connection would just about have to fail.  This is not the case, as is proven out by the fact that every other device in the house has no problems with iso or even more demanding formats. 

I’ve also heard legends of the WD products doing a better job with network shares until some event that changed how they behave… hoping (against hope?) that this does the trick. If, on the other hand, the answer is “WDTV’s wireless capability is subpar/behind the curve no matter which player or firmware you have (and thus wireless isn’t a good solution),” I’m inclined to believe it at this point.

4

Cloud storage, eh?  I, too, have cloud storage, and cloud storage is only as “fast” as your internet provider AND the cloud storage provider wants to send data to you.

Once again, I have no stuttering if cloud storage is not in the picture.  Until you send and receive your streaming data within your own home network, you really have no idea if you have stuttering problems or not, and if you do, what may be causing it.  Cloud storage brings its own set of “problems”.

For example, I can stream m4v movies fine to an iPad from either a WDTV drive or a Pogoplug drive within my gigabit home network using 5g-N wireless.  I have even streamed HD ISO and MKV files to an iPad using VLC Streamer. Works great, just not for all movies.   But, when I am outside my home network, success all depends upon the internet bandwidth of the external location.  It really has to be minimum of 20Mbps, and even then I have experienced stuttering.  (My home internet bandwidth is 30Mbps service.)  I do not stream HD movies from outside the home network, as most any I experience are not 20Mbps – most homes and public internet connections are usually no more than 20Mbps, and even much less.

If I stream data from my cloud storage versus my hardrives, I can and may (and sometimes have) experienced stutter.  It’s all about the cloud storage at this point.

So, to test for stuttering, even if you have a gigabit home network and 30Mbps internet, take the wireless, the internet and the cloud storage out of the picture, then you know you should not experience stutter, and if you do, it is being caused by your home environment; and not necessarily your WD player.  Don’t be to quick to blame the WD player for your problems.  Heck, my Live Plus unit is an older model than yours, and it comes through just fine for me!  It is NOT the WD that is causing the stuttering; it is only reflecting what it receives.  “Garbage in; garbage out.”

5

My goodness- not sure if it was intentional, but that was incredibly condescending.

I think you’re making some assumptions about my setup that make me wonder if you stopped reading when you saw the word “cloud.”  My cloud is a direct attached NAS setup, hence my assertion that there is only one hop from the storage to the device.  It’s perfectly acceptable to call a shared local storage environment a cloud.

The thing is going direct from the disks to the router via gigE, and to the WDTV via wireless N.  I’m only pushing DVD iso, which can’t possibly exceed 10 or 11megs per DVD specification, and no other device in the house struggles with these files over the wireless network; only the WDTV stutters. 

I have been far from quick to blame the WDTV for the probelms - 1) there is no bandwidth constraint in the infrastructure that could create a bottleneck per any specification anywhere in the chain; 2) every other device doing the same thing as i’m asking this one to do is under the same constraints and running off the identical infrastructure that the WDTV is having a problem with; 3) it is well documented that this thing is problematic doing even the simplest things over wireless (which I wish I had known when I got it).

At the end of the day, something is wrong with the hardware or the firmware impelmentation of wireless connectivity for this device.  Period.  I have heard that some firmware revisions perform better than others, but I’m not seeing much evidence of that.

6

Sorry you were offended, but a “cloud” is not a cloud.  especially if:   “It’s perfectly acceptable to call a shared local storage environment a cloud.”  

UNLESS you can access it from outside your local network,  If you can’t, then it is just a local drive…  I have a cloud too, one is drives connected to my Pogoplug drive (which I can access via the home network (which in this case is not a cloud) but in addition, when I am in Timbucktu and on a decent internet connection, I can also access this particular drive (and in this case, it is a cloud).  I also have virtual cloud service, and that, also, can be accessed same ways, and this cloud is on some server in a “data farm” somewhere in the USA.

Hope you see the distinction here.

FYI, for over a year I thought my WDTV was screwed up, until I figured out that the problem was coming from Win 7 sharing and server issues.  Once I got that figured out, my life got better regarding the WDTV.  If the WDTV does “most” things OK, then it is likely something external to it that is messing other things up.  Like Win 7, in my case.

7

Wow.

“Hope you see the distinction here.”

Again, incredibly condescending.  Also wrong. 

http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,1237,t=cloud&i=39847,00.asp

There’s plenty of other sources defining what a cloud is, and they are pretty consistent with my take.

For the record, I *can* connect to the storage array via Internet, but that’s not how I use it.  So even by your (incorrect) definition, it’s a cloud.  But I digress.

Still looking for an answer to the original question.

8

I particularly prefer the “Today’s Cloud” definition given by the PC Mag link, as that is what I refer to as the cloud these days – connecting to data not by wires or wireless within the home network, but by using the internet as a highway of travel between two data points.

Anyway, I earlier gave you some ideas of what might be happening.  I, and plenty others here have no problems with our WDTV and ISO file playing, and if I did, it could be the unit itself, or something else.  When wireless is in the picture it complicates things alot.  Is there any way you can temporarily string an ethernet cable to hook your WD to, and see if it works better, wired?  Try to be completely wired between data points to create a good test situation, temporarily.

When I first got my WD, I blamed it and cussed it out for a problem that just would not go away – it took a whole year to  figure out why sometimes when looking in WD’s menu for “Media servers”, I got the message “there is no media in this folder”.  Yes, I tried all the know ways to solve the problem.  I finally figured out it was Win 7 not always processing my large music collection completely for sharing, and so I gave it plenty of time to do so.  The problem has been gone for well over a year.  I believe it was completely fixed by a Windows update somewhere along the way.  (Computer problems can often come and go in between Windows updates – a problem is created by an update, and eventually gets fixed by an update.)  Same holds true for any product update.

Wireless gadgets can fail, or somewhat fail.  Example:  I recently determined that the wireless card in my laptop is failing, but not yet completely.  The signal strength is more than excellent, but it is not processing the data well;  the bandwidth is uneven; giving me poor results at speedtest.net that I can see.  Take the wireless away, (house is fully CAT5 wired, anyway) and problem goes away.  Bring wireless back and use a different router, and problem is back. Hook a wireless adapter to PC’s ethernet port and wIreless (signals from routers) is fine. Verdict:  apparently it’s the PC’s wireless card that is bad.

Finally, I was once an electronic tech in military and for a while afterwards in consumer electronics.  Troubleshooting electronic problems is not easy all the time.  It’s basically a process of elimination and substituting to narrow down the problem’s culprit.

So, good luck with solving your problem of ISO stuttering.

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