I have a Gen1.
Despite promising me “the next firmware…” several times, they just decided one day that it was too broken to bother fixing. The header compression in Matroska isn’t the only unfixed bug, or even the worst… it’s merely the latest to show up.
Yes, that EOL decision bothers me. Especially since I’d only had mine for a few months when the decision was made. (Why it was still on store shelves is a separate issue altogether.)
But once they made that decision, and they’ve stopped working on it, no amount of crying is going to force them to take pity on anyone.
I made 2 “bad” files. Once I knew the problem, I know how to not make any more bad ones. Now that I know, I can just keep doing what I’m doing, and they’ll play fine. Without holding my breath waiting for WD to fix it. It was a minor inconvenience at best, to me. And, for that matter, even someone with hundreds of illegal downloads (which won’t all have compressed headers anyways), could have had all their bad files fixed by now, while they sit and wait… and wait… and wait… and wait… Not that they should be downloading illegally in the first place, but again that’s a separate matter entirely.
And, after all… people who hung onto their Gen1 have shown WD (whether they meant to show this, or not), that they’re willing to accept its limitations, and are not just going to rush out and buy the newest thing WD has to offer. So why would they reverse the EOL decision?
What’s the consumer threat? “If you don’t fix this 2-year old device, I won’t buy a brand new, better one (thus obviating the need for fixing the old one)”? Yeah, that will really have them shaking in their boots. You already didn’t run out and buy a newer, better one… you’re not telling them anything new.
Would it be nice if they fixed it? Yes.
Is it going to happen? Nope.
So, I just do the best I can within those limitations.
I have perfect control over the media I make for the device. If pirate copies don’t work, I can see why WD doesn’t consider that high on the agenda. What’s the official company line? “We want to un-EOL the Gen1 so that people who download movies illegally can continue to use it with the newest pirates, along with legal users.” Ya, that’s going to go over real well in legal circles.