Just wondering, because you release a firmware and start a thread and seem to sit back as comment after comment is posted about how the flippin’ thing doesn’t work. There is never any resolve until another firmware is released…with more problems.
Why are we, the community - bothering to waste our time with this [deleted] from you any longer when there are numberous other products on the market for us to choose from.
If you can’t do DVD playback properly | If you can’t do Bluray playback properly | If you can’t do HD MKV playback properly | If you can’t do digital audio properly | if you can’t do HDMI properly | etc etc etc - then don’t bloody bother wasting our time. Oh, and don’t mess around putting facebook on - that’s just insulting.
Just wondering, because you release a firmware and start a thread and seem to sit back as comment after comment is posted about how the flippin’ thing doesn’t work. There is never any resolve until another firmware is released…with more problems.
Why are we, the community - bothering to waste our time with this [deleted] from you any longer when there are numberous other products on the market for us to choose from.
If you can’t do DVD playback properly | If you can’t do Bluray playback properly | If you can’t do HD MKV playback properly | If you can’t do digital audio properly | if you can’t do HDMI properly | etc etc etc - then don’t bloody bother wasting our time. Oh, and don’t mess around putting facebook on - that’s just insulting.
First of all, I’m WD and I own three of them, and they work fine for me. I use mine everyday. As a matter of fact, I hardly watch regular TV anymore, because I have Netflix.
You need to understand that we’re not trying to intentionally break the device. And we do test it extensively. However, there is no telling how something will interact when it’s being used in cases that we can’t test for. That’s why we make the rollbacks available.
Moreover, you need to understand that you are making broad statements that are not true for most users. I can understand some user’s frustrations when they run into issues, and there have been quite a few issues, but you can’t paint what you’re saying across everyone’s experience, because it simply isn’t true. I’ve never had 95% of the issues that have been reported here. Well, except for some of the subtiltle issues. But they don’t even bother me too much, and I watch subtitled shows all the time. But I’ve arbitrarily thrown just about every type of video file at it I can, and without fail they’ve played.
What you end up doing is really your business, but I’m really happy with my device, and I do recommend it to others - even with its limitations and quirks. And I’m quick to point those out.
The frustration stems from the fact that WD put time and effort into frivalous / nice to haves like Facebook, etc. while core functions like VOB stutter and now this brightness issue linger on for months.
Make the player do what it was advertised to do, play video, music and pics. Do this “flawlessly” before adding nonsense like these other “apps”.
Regression-test the HE** out of the additional code.
Beta the Release Candidate.
Monitor the reports.
Fix the new bugs.
Release the code.
Go back to Step 3.
It seems that sometimes WD developers are rushing to release “On Schedule.”
I know a lot of users here complain “WD doesn’t release firmware often enough!” or “We’ve been waiting for this new feature!” But the majority of users are complaining about “We’ve been waiting months for a fix for bugs reported three versions ago” or complaining about bugs that HAD to have been seen in testing. This Colorspace / Brightness issue has affected both of my Lives, and it affects ALL video outputs, including COMPOSITE output. And since COMPOSITE outputs have NO hardware compatibilty issues, so there is NO chance that this would not have been seen in the lab.
But I for one would be happy to see ONE release per quarter if every release was stable, instead of one release per month or so that adds frustrating regression failures…
Good would be if the WD Support would listen carefully of what our Issues are and not write back that we get technical help here in the Forum after detailed Issues were forwarded.
Thats what my experiance is now after contacting the Support.
There was no offer to send Examples if Audio or Video to an internal FTP.
Neither here…
It would help WD and us who like to use the WDTV Live working if you would try to solve issues with our support we also offer alltime.
We do test the Software we try tons of time ( our sparetime) to figure out reasons of problems and announce them and anyways nothing happens. I see so many threads without any Feedback.
So my wish is a better together and improve of Feedback Users ask for at this Place.
My WDTV Live is, and has always, been collecting dust, since it has never been able to do what it was advertised to do. I bought this device to stream media from my Mac to my TV. But since it is unable to even connect to my computer it is useless to me.
And contacting your support is like talking to prerecorded help line. You only get copy paste of instructions already available online. There is in no way any admittance to there being an issue. But a search of this community shows that this is very real issue. In fact I have yet to find anyone writing that they actually have access to Mac network shares working. And why not implement the AFP protocol for us Mac users so we don’t need to activate SMB just for the sake of the WDTV (which also means a sacrifice in security).
Networking with Mac OS X is broken on the WDTV. please fix it ASAP or I will be forced to void my purchase on the grounds of false advertising.
My WDTV Live is, and has always, been collecting dust, since it has never been able to do what it was advertised to do. I bought this device to stream media from my Mac to my TV. But since it is unable to even connect to my computer it is useless to me.
And contacting your support is like talking to prerecorded help line. You only get copy paste of instructions already available online. There is in no way any admittance to there being an issue. But a search of this community shows that this is very real issue. In fact I have yet to find anyone writing that they actually have access to Mac network shares working. And why not implement the AFP protocol for us Mac users so we don’t need to activate SMB just for the sake of the WDTV (which also means a sacrifice in security).
Networking with Mac OS X is broken on the WDTV. please fix it ASAP or I will be forced to void my purchase on the grounds of false advertising.
You could try asking for help from the community. If you do, you should start a new thread.
Can you give me any assurance that the downsampling of 96khz to 48 khz will be fixed soon.
WD actually said that is was fixed in the previous firmware update release notes.
I believe that the fix did work for the Live Hub.
I’m sorry. I’m a community moderator, not a product manager. If they say it is fix, then it should be fixed. If it doesn’t work on your system, then you should post it on the thread that is always made available for the version of firmware that’s been released. This way our product people can see that you, at least, are still having problems with it. Have you tried it? If so, and it doesn’t seem to be working, then you need to post to that thread to let us know what your experience is with the firmware.
I am an experienced media player user, and I need to say that WDTV Live, as a media player, is far from being a good player.
I already had in the past a TVix 6500A, and today I have TVix N1, a Xtreamer, a WDTV Live and a Zinwell ZP500.
While the internet features of WDTV Live are quite good, the WDTV Live basic video/audio/photo playback is far behind my other media players.
Honestly I believe that all the media player business today is basically “get the reference firmware from the chipset manufacturer, customize the GUI and add some fancy features”.
All my media players have issues and bugs, but the Sigma based players (WDTV Live and TVix 6500A) are/were the players that gave me more problems than ever. The other media players I have (TVix N1/Xtreamer/ZP500) are all Realtek-based players, and while they have some issues, at least the core functionality is far more stable than the WDTV Live.
With that said, I really believe that most of the WDTV Live issues are actually Sigma SDK issues, and it looks like that WD is struggling to workaround these problems.
For this reason, even if the Sigma chipset is considered a “high quality” chipset, it looks like that the media players manufacurers are having a really hard time using it.
So, at least in the “low end” market of media players, today I believe that the Realtek-based players are much more stable than the WDTV Live.
For the price, I am extremely happy with my unit. I use it upwards of 6 hours per day and have never had any problems. There are literally thousands of combinations of TVs, amps, switch boxes, computer etc connections. WD can’t test everything. After 3 months I’d say my unit paid for itself. If it died, I spend the money again instantly to buy another. 99.5% of what we watch is via this unit.
96 KHz audio sampling is a marketing gimmick. The WDTV Live box is a video streaming box not an audiophile grade HiFi player. The sound source for movies is designed for an instant 5.1 / 7.1 surround sound, audio visual emotional effect not a relaxed music experience. I conducted a number of tests using a pair of Stax SRX Mark 3 electrostatic headphones as a listening source. (The Stax are the equivalent of a pair of $25,000 studio monitors) Using high quality audiophile 44.1 KHz CD’s as a source, the audio was pleasant listening, definitely not audiophile grade HiFi listening. Considering audiophile grade digital to analogue chips alone cost double the cost of the WDTV Live box; for the cost of the WDTV Live box, it is value for money.
