Cause Freezing found! WD, PLEASE PUT THIS SITE BACK ON LINE ASAP!

[kilgore72]

Hi, when you remove the Internetblock (127.0.0.1) it freezes again with the Firmware 2.02.32 !

[SenorHizzle]

I might be crazy, but it looked as thought the site was back up… Could be a fluke…

[crownrai]

This site is not back up, it just generates a 404 type error page. I just did a sniff of the WDTV network activity and it was trying to hit that URL over and over again. I’m guessing because it hit the 404 error that it just keeps trying and runs out of memory after a while Setting the DNS server option to 127.0.0.1 works because it can’t resolve the www.wdtvlive.com website anymore. But doing this will basically disable the Internet for the WD box.

An alternate solution is to just redirect the DNS lookup for that wdtvlive website to something other than the real IP address. Pointing it to 127.0.0.1 seems to be working for me… Unfortunately, that may not be easy for anyone whose router doesn’t support DNS name entries/redirecting or can’t run their own DNS server.

You could try using WDLXTV mod and then edit the host file entry in the OS to change the lookup for that wdtvlive url as well. But again, this all depends on how much effort you want to put into fixing this solution.

For most people, downgrading to the previous firmware seems to be the easiest solution.

[lynnskii]

It’s not the home page, it’s this particular page the unit is trying to connect to:
http://www.wdtvlive.com/wsapps/appservice.svc/json/browseapp
which doesn’t exist.

[Peter_Riddell]

When you save the results of http://www.wdtvlive.com/wsapps/appservice.svc/json/browseapp it mentions a stored procedures called sp_BrowseApps_ByCountry_CategoryFlags_Paging_v07. If this is the naming convention used for stored procedures has someone incremented the version number on one of your sp’s and it now doesn’t match what’s hard coded into the wdtv live files? Version numbering in the names of stored procedures is bad mmmkay?

[JoeySmyth]

oops, sorry

[kilgore72]

I blocked this website, but it freezed again, only setting the DNS to 127.0.0.1 solved the problem

[crownrai]

How did you “block” it? Most routers when they block a web page will show you a “Sorry, this site is blocked” web page. That is still a webpage to the WD box and it will still take up resources if it keep hitting it over and over. You need to block the name lookup for wdtvlive .com or have it resolve to something that doesn’t error out.

[kilgore72]

@crownrai : Yeah, thats the problem, it is still showing a website, therefor it freezes again, the router only disallows to get in contact with the suggested site , but this doesnt help, therefor i blocked eyery contact to the internet, i rarely usés Netflix or Hulu.

[lynnskii]

For me, as well as some others, blocking internet access or changing the DNS to 127.0.0.1 with firmware 2.02.32 proved to be a temporary solution. The lockups came back after some use. I’ve gone back to 2.01.86. No lockups, but I have the persistent invalid user/password bug when accessing network shares, but I guess I’ll live with it unless WD comes up with a solution. Some people in the forum say they’ve been contacted by WD and say they’re “aware of the problem.” I won’t hold my breath, but we’ll see.

[crownrai]

@kilgore72 : Thanks for the clarification.

I’m going to keep my DNS redirect enabled and see how well it performs over the next while. I really want to try out the WDLXTV custom ROM again too. I’ll install that and see if I can just do the name lookup redirect using the local hostfile instead of on my router.

[Peter_Riddell]

I was thinking about that too crownrai. Set the dns on wdtv to your pc then set the hostfile on the pc to point the wdtv domain to loopback. I’d be very interested to hear what happens if you could post back here.

[BTT_ARRIFANA]

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[crownrai]

I have an updated recommendation for anyone who wants to use the DNS redirect method for the www.wdtvlive.com website. Instead of pointing it to 127.0.0.1, have it resolve to some non routable or unused IP address on your local LAN instead.

When it is set to a 127 address, the process that is trying to hit the wdtvlive website will in turn connect to the local web server on the WD media box instead. This adds extra load on the media box that would be best to avoid. Having it redirect to a non existent IP address will slow down the extra web traffic to basically zero, with only the odd ARP request for the unused IP address.

So point it to an unused IP on your local subnet or a non routable address (like 192.168.254.254 or 172.16.16.16 for example). There’s lots of numbers you can choose here, as long as its a non-routable address it will all work the same.

Now, if your router doesn’t support DNS redirects, your next option would be to run a separate DNS server on some other host/PC on your network. Preferably something that is on most of the time your WD media box is turned on. Just setup the DNS server, enter the redirect for the wdtvlive web site and enable forwarding to your ISP’s DNS or Google DNS servers for everything else. There are lots of solutions out there for windows and linux so it’s best you look up those separately as this forum is not really the best place to help with that.

As an aside, I installed the WDLXTV mod on my media box. I was able to edit it’s local /etc/hosts file to do the name redirect instead using a DNS redirect on my router. Only problem is that file gets overwritten on every reboot so I just need to find a way to keep my edits and I’ll be good to go with that solution.

[John_Smith1]

Downgrade to 2.01.86 from 2.02.32 firmware is working for me on WD TV Live WDBHG70000NBK-01 version, no freezing and the USB external hard drive can be recognized by WD TV Live. Thank you for this information. Make sure once downgrade the 2.01.86 is completed, set the “Setup > System > Auto Detect New Firmware > Off”.

[horizons1]

Yep. I downgraded a couple months ago and moved all my movies from a network share to a 2tb USB drive and all is well.

[stuffie]

These “solutions” are all workarounds. The best solutions is a new firmware.

[JoeySmyth]

true, but what are people supposed to do ? … sit around and do nothing and wait for firmware that may not happen ?

[cbscpe]

You could also move on to an alternative solution. I have been using WDTV boxes for a long time and it seems WDC is able to screw up things each time they fix existing bugs. I have this freezing and also I have the problem that it now no longer recognizes some MKV files it previously played flawlessly. I have now added a route of the wdtvlife address to the Null0 interface (cisco router) and will see if this helps. If not I will wait on “Infuse” to be available on Apple TV and that will be the end of the story with WDTV Media Players.

[MrPink]

I’d like to point out that downgrading FW does break some things, notably certain stations I want to play via TunedIn no longer work, they apparently require a codec or other enhancement that is not present in the older version.

I’ve got an ASUS router and I should be able to try that “point to an unroutable IP” solution for that domain. I’ll try it.