So…the other day i noticed there was a firmware update for my wd tv live hub. I was excited and went to the wdc.com website to see what was new. Spotify was added. not something i use, but good to see that wd continues to add new services to their devices.
I also noticed the new WD TV Live Streaming Media Player device. Looks like it’s a mix of my WD tv live hub and my WD TV Live Plus HD Media Player. It looks like it is a WD TV Live Plus with the Live Hub interface and built in wifi. nothing ground breaking.
My concern is with the older WD TV Live Plus. It doesn’t seem to have a firmware update to include the spotify services. I’m a bit worried that wd will stop supporting it now that they have a newer device. So of course this makes me wonder what will happen with the WD TV Live Hub when a newer version comes out that will have built in wifi.
I have these two devices at home, and I’m worried that they will not support future services (amazon streaming comes to mind)
Any word about future support for the WD TV Live plus and the Live hub?
This is how technology works. It **bleep** that product cycles are getting shorter and shorter, but the reality is that a new model does not suddenly render the old model inactive. It will still do everything you originally bought it to do.
Agreed with Miami_Son. Eventually all tech becomes obsolete and then becomes unsupported b y the manufacturer, just part of the cycle. But as above, it is still a great box. When I bought the livehub, I moved my liveplus to the bedroom tv/stereo. They share movies back and forth etd and I still get great use out of it. On the upside, my liveplus has become more of a media server than the livehub. I stick two 2TB drives on it and use it to store movies and music that gets served to the livehub.
The Live Hub isn’t a year old yet, is it? I know I bought it within a week or two of it being released.
That said, I am ready to move on. This player has been somewhat of a disappointment. I bought it for the media library function, and despite a ridiculous amount of time invested getting it all in place, twice (remember the update that wiped the jpg/xml from your NAS), as of this moment half of the cover art doesn’t display. The fix is for the end user to roll back? Seriously.
I really don’t see how WD is doing things differently than the other companies. Let’s take the iPhone for example, a new one was released every year since launch, the IPhone original and 3G is no longer supported, it’s just the way technology works. To have a unsupported product with a ton of features which wasn’t included at launch is a big plus in my opinion. Take a look at WD’s release history, one new player every year. Now, If they are releasing a new player 2-3 times a year, then there’s a problem.
Personally, I can see WD supporting the older platform for a few more months to finish fixing all the bugs but not adding any new features. Once the majority of the bugs are ironed out, the platform is unsupported. That’s the way I see it happening but then again, there’s no official word from WD. From a business point of view, it makes sense not to support the older platform because it gives customers an incentive to purchase the newer player
Another positive thing to consider is that the Hub is almost a year old and WD is still adding features to it via firmware updates and not just fixing/adding bugs. that tells me it still has a lot of life left in it. I just hope they keep developing the firmware and fix more of the bugs without adding any new ones. Right now, I could care less if they add another feature so long as they fix the stuff that should already be working properly or that was broken in recent updates.
I think we give them to much slack to be honest. Trouble is, we think we are owed everything, but in reality you have to deal with what you have.
I am sure that a lot of you came from earlier WD Boxes, I came from the WD Gen 1, so I have seen plenty of improvements from that, but that’s a bit of a joke from my part, I paid the money for another item, it was not a firmware update, so I should have got a better piece of kit.
Firmware is a joke lets be honest, I and loads of others are on 2.04.13, how bad is that, usually you are 1 firmware away from the latest if there are issues, but to be this far back is embarrassing, add to the fact the rollback get out clause EVERY time.
It also annoys me when you see WD Ops saying that will be fixed in the next firmware, well they broke it in the last one, stick out a version B of the latest with that fix.
The box plays what I throw at it, if only it would scrape new items and let me view all my files as one selection, then I would be happy…
So expecting the features advertised at launch to work 1 year after launch is too much to expect?
I am not expecting WD to support a 3 or 4 year old device, as your iPhone analogy implies. My hub is less than a year old. It was a momumental pita to get it to see my NAS. I have never used the hard drive in it. Didn’t plan to; I bought the live hub for the cover art interface. I am a UNIX admin by trade and spend 40+ hours a week in a command prompt window; I don’t need the GUI. I don’t want my family to have to navigate directories however, and paid the premium for the Live Hub. All I want is for it to do what it was advertised to do.
To be honest I would pay for decent firmware. I guess it is time to start shopping for a new player.
