Crackling / white noise on sound

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live & Live Plus
1

Hey everyone Got the WDTV Live this week, and was initially really pleased with it. It did everything I wanted it to do.

Yet, last night, I found a weird problem. I´ll start with the setup: WDTV connected to PC monitor (All I have atm) through HDMI, sound on DIGITAL in settings. I have some shared on my PC, and some on my Sonology NAS. I was playing a file from my NAS (and have been playing other files just fine from it)

So when I started this movie, I heard no initial sound, and when swapping to the other soundtrack (which should be a commentary track), all I heard was crackling and white noise BUT also, I could hear some of the soundtrack. I figured it was a soundstream the WDTV couldnt play, so I decided to watch another movie. But when playing that, I had the same problem with the sound. Seems like the crackling and noise had “followed” to the new movie.

I figured it also had a bad soundtrack, and played a movie I had seen before on the WDTV without a problem. Same thing happened. I also played a normal mp3 with the same result. I tried to turn off the WD and turn it on again, same result. I reset to factory defaults through the menu, same result. I used another HDMI port on the monitor, same result. I used another HDMI cable, same result.

But after trying a lot of things, I unplugged the WD completely, and hit the small reset button on the side - plugged it back in, and the noise was gone. Doing troubleshooting for a living, I wanted to recreate the situation, and I tried the same movie again, and ofc got the bad noise back, but got it back to normal again by fiddling with the cables (not 100% sure what the right way to “reset” the situation is yet), but could also recreate the bad noise with yet another movie.

So my questions are:

Is a “bad” soundtrack supposed to temporarily “break” the WDTV ? Shouldnt it just not play the sound ? I have tried with both the digital and stereo settings. I know that DTS sound should be downconverted to stereo if not connected to an amp, but I had the same results with both stereo and digital. Anyone else have this problem ?

Bad unit perhaps ? Thanks in advance for the help.

At the moment, my WDTV works as it should, but I kinda dont wanna use it now if it can break on any old movie I play

2

Welcome to the forum.

I suspect your HDMI is set to “auto” for display settings – you may want to try forcing it to a particular resolution and seeing if this fixes the audio issue.

HDMI in auto mode does handshaking with the device it is trying to output to, and I’m guessing your monitor isn’t good at this and that may be causing the issue.  Also, are you SURE your HDMI cable is 1.3 compliant?  This is a must and I’d at least try a high-end cable from a place like Best Buy (where you can always return it for a full refund) just to eliminate that possibility.

3

Thanks for the quick response :slight_smile:

My HDMI is indeed set to auto. My monitor is a full HD capable Samsung, and its running 1920x1080 fine. I just checked the case from the HDMI cable I bought, and it doesnt specifically say 1.3, but it does have all the specs of a 1.3, like 340mhz/10.2gbps, deep color and Dolby TrueHD and dts-HD

Its just weird that one specific movie can do this. I have been playing other things just fine with no sound problems

4

I’m sorry – you said in your first post you were connected to a PC monitor.  So now you’re saying this is NOT the case?  Or you’re saying it’s just a PC Samsung monitor?  A PC monitor is VASTLY different from an HDTV.

I would definitely try another cable.

5

Im saying its a PC HD 26 " LCD monitor (and not a CRT if that was what you meant). A model with built in TV tuner as well. Its no different in the ability to showcase full 1080p than a 32" “regular” HDTV

I just tried another cable and im getting the same result, but now I have been able to narrow it down to a single audio soundtrack on a certain movie. When switching to that, the error occurs. But I just had that on another track off a normal DVD iso as well

I guess I should just not switch audio channels :smiley:

6

Yeah, the old “Doc, it hurts when I do this” and the doc says “Don’t do that!”.

We know there are times when a file is played that afterwards the Live then behaves badly.  It shouldn’t – it should be able to correct itself or error trap, but for some reason it will not.  If this is something you can share (not something pirated) you might send it off to WD to see if they can test it, because they DO want to fix things like this.

7

Actually…I think I know whats going on. The 2nd stream I was able to get the error on was a E-AC-3…is the WDTV able to deal with that ?

EDIT: Well, let me answer my own question…the E-AC-3 is Dolby Digital plus / Enhanced AC-3, and I dont think the WDTV is capable of playing that :slight_smile:

8

Okay – still, the Live shouldn’t then choke on subsequent files.  That’s bad behavior.

But thanks for the info.