Done with this Worthless Device

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live Streaming
21

I think your getting confused between actknownledgement and them trying to help you with your problem.

If there was a much wider netflicks issue then you would see a massive flood of people complaing and it all over google and we don’t.

Its not a flaw in the device but them trying to work around issues outside of the product that they are aware to make customers happy.

Of course they are constantly tweaking the devices software to improve things .

Some devices are more forgiving of flaws in networks and isp but all devices have there limits of how much flaw they can deal with.

Only so much tweaking  can be done and  then it requires hard work to figure out where the real problem is.

Whats you home network hardware?

Now you want to  talk trouble shooting nightmare my first home pc was the altar 8800…what a nightmare that was and i suddenly feel old…lol.

22

mrvander wrote:, the next day - my Netflix app was different. New interface, new functionality - and it worked. 

Most likely coincidence… Looking at the dates of that issue thread was about the time NetFlix released the “new” UI with the “select your netflix experience” thing.  ALL media players that use the HTML5 front-end got it roughly the same time.

but what’s interesting there is that, if the new “thing” fixed your issue, then WD had nothing to do with it.  NetFlix is in complete control over app updates between firmware releases.  

Continuing:  VIC-20, C64, C128 – even had a few articles published in Compute!'s Gazette Magazine if you remember that rag… :). Had to give up Commodore in college and bought a PC with a $400 30 MEGAbyte HD.  Now I have one MILLION times that storage space in my NASes!  

23

TRS-80!!

24

I can’t believe christian1 is still posting about this.  Why would you keep trying the same thing over and over again and expect it to suddenly work?  Oh, yeah, so you can continue to **bleep** and moan and **bleep** and moan.  The fact that both of my two SMPs (identical in every way to his) have been working flawlessly with Netflix for several months, several hours every single day, is apparently irrelevant to this guy.  Oh, wait, I am just “lucky.”  Sorry, but it is not luck that causes two absolutely identical computers to behave differently.  So what might it be?  Well how about his network gear, his ISP, how Netflix serves his ISP,  PEBKAC, etc.  Lots of possible reasons.  But these are all WD’s fault in his mind?  As I already told christian1 in another thread, our first SMP proved to be such a reliable Netflix player, that we bought a second one.  We have watched many hundreds of hours of Netflix with the two, and have had just one time a movie froze and we had to reboot the SMP.  And, yes, we have paused videos many times (need bathroom breaks when you are watching for hours), and no it never ever ever causes any problems at all.  False advertising by WD??  I am sorry christian1 has had trouble, but as somebody else said, it really is time for him to get on with his life!  I also cannot understand how someone ends up with multiple devices that they claim don’t work at all.  I bought one SMP and made sure the things I needed it to do worked before I bought a second.  If they had not worked, I would have returned the first unit to Amazon.

25

After reading messages from christian1 and mrvander about their disappointments with their SMP and Netflix, I’d like to ask both of them: 

Does Netflix work fine on your PC running under Silverlight?  If so, have you spent much time actually watching it on the computer to see how it behaves for a long period of time?  This could bring some insight to the problem.

Also, christian1 mentioned he had done “this and that” to make changes to his router, etc.  Sometimes people “over-react” and make changes that can do more harm than good!  I suggest anyone doing this to their router reset it to the factory defaults and take their time re-configuring their specific data, but don’t make many changes to the default basic settings unless they know the consequences.  Just today, I had to reset my router back to the defaults because some new piece of networking hardware I was installing caused the router to “act out” and not reboot correctly.  So, when setting the router back up, I made some adjustments based upon new things I had learned about it since I originally set it up a few months ago.

Another thing people seem to do when something new doesn’t work, is they do radical things like “re-install Windows”.  Good grief, there is NO program or hardware on earth that would make me want to do that, although I have had to use Restore to get back to Point A more than once.

Anyway, I wish the folks having trouble with SMP and Netflix, the best of luck with whatever solution they move forward with.  Disappointed that the gang of forum wizards here could not help them to be more successful. 

26

mike27oct:

Yes, Netflix works fine on my PC under silverlight.  I can skip/pause/etc.  Fully functionality.

I’ve made a lot of changes with the network, and tried, probably all of the configurations possible, and recently reset the router to factory settings.  This didn’t change anything either.

27

ncarver:

I’m glad your SMP running Netflix works great for you.  It does not work that great for me.  Let me just explain to you why I’m frustrated with this thing.

First, I can’t say that Netflix is 100% not working, we watch it every night almost.  It just has a “behavior problem” for a reason I can’t explain or understand.

Here is the behavior exhibited in the WD SMP, in steps:

  1. Turn on SMP

  2. In 1 out of 4 boot ups, you will need to wait for the flashing light on the SMP to finish or else risk locking the device up.

  3. Navigate to the Netflix app.

  4. The lag time varies a lot when navigating to a movie/show.

  5. Find the movie/show you want to watch.

  6. No matter what, any show you choose will start out muted.  The only way to get it to unmute is to hold in the mute button on the remote twice for at least 3 seconds each time (I’m not kidding).

Now there are two paths, one if you watch a movie, the other if you watch a tv episode.

  1. If you watch a movie.  The movie will likely play through (caveat: there is no pausing, skipping or rewinding or the SMP will freeze.  The only way to ‘unfreeze’ the SMP is to unplug it, it is totally unresponsive.  After the movie is over, and you decide to watch another movie…you navigate to that movie, start it, and the status bar 10/10 times will load to 25%.  You can stop the movie, go back to the Netflix home screen, try to start, but, no matter what your second movie will never get past 25%.  The only way to watch movies consecutively is to either:

a) Go back to the WD home screen and reload Netflix.

b) Unplug/turn off the device and restart Netflix.

  1. If you watch a tv episode.  The behavior is identical to step 7, with the exception being, if you get to the end of the episode and get the ‘Next episode will start in…seconds…’ the next episode will never load past 25% on the status bar.  The only way to watch tv shows consecutively is to either:

a) Go back to the WD home screen and reload Netflix.

b) Unplug/turn off the device and restart Netflix.

You might say, what is wrong with just doing step a.  I must add that this process can take several minutes. 

I’m convinced that there is some network issue, here’s what WD believes it is:

From WD:

I apologize for the inconvenience of this continuing issue. Please know that any instability in video playback is related to network latency, unless caused by hardware fault, which is extremely rare. We have recently come to find that there are known network stability issues when using almost any networking device regardless of brand or hardware, with the Verizon FiOS Actiontec MI-424WR series of routers. If you are using this router, please consider a replacement. Otherwise, if freezing/instability continues to occur, please consider replacing the WD TV Live at the place of purchase if possible, or requesting an RMA.

This is their latest and I’m guessing final response.

I don’t have any numbers off hand but I’d be inclined to think that Verizon FiOS is one of the more popular ISP in the country, furthermore, typically a large ISP gives out standard router/DVR equipment, so there must be many of these Actiontec routers out there.  Given that I’ve tried (what I believe) is almost every setting on the router, *suggestions welcome*, I’m left to deal with this subpar functionality and periodically  ********* and moan, as you say, on the message board to try and give other’s at least a fair warning of what they could possibly expect.

If it’s a network router problem, there must be a lot of people with that router out there.  Are they having the same issue?  What router settings cause a problem?

If it’s my ISP blocking Netflix, why does Netflix work perfectly with any computer or Iphone in the house?

Also,

When I say I’ve had three of these SMPs.  I don’t mean that I purchased more than one for my house.  I mean that the first one that I had bricked after a few days (returned to Amazon).  The second one had all these issues (and more) that I’ve described, WD contacted me and kindly replaced it.  The third is the one that I currently own.

28

Ok, Christian1 – I’m definitely going to take your side on that part.

I’ve had FiOS for almost six years.  It makes NO SENSE to me how WD would think a VERY COMMON router, the MI-424WR, would be responsible.

I have that very router, of course, and I find it to be about the most capable ISP-provided router I’ve ever seen.  HIGHLY configurable, HIGHLY flexible, and for the most part, very reliable.  The only problems I’ve ever had with the 424 were a power supply that failed after a few years.

But that’s why it’d be interesting, as has been suggested a couple of times, to take your WD to someone else’s house (friend, relative, whatever) and see if it works there.

29

Ok, Tony, knowing that someone else here has that router and not the same problems as my SMP is good.

I was able to take the unit to a relatives house who has a different provider/router/etc. Can’t believe it, but, it had none of the issues that I described above. Their setup was wireless (I use ethernet) and 35mbps less bandwidth connection than mine. I was in shock.
Ive tried wireless at home, netflix still had problems.
I have a WD USB hard drive at home, (didnt take with me) though I’ve tried disconnecting that at home, Netflix still had problems.
I have tried disconnecting everything from my home network, and, only connecting the SMP, with my typical settings as well as a reset of the router to factory settings, issues persisted.

Tony, I think it is a great router too, it has enough settings to make you think your a network engineer. So, my question now would be, though there are many possibilities, what router configuration could be causing a problem?

30

I *am* a network engineer.  ;)  That’s one reason I like the router a lot.

The only non-default configurations I use are:

I put the WIFI network in a completely different network.  I use it as my “Guest” WiFi, and have a firewall rule that prevents those WiFi clients from having access to anything except the internet.

I changed the internal network from 192.168.xxx.xxx to 10.0.0.xxx (faster to type things.)

I have a lot of static DHCP entries – about 20 or so.

I have a lot of static DNS entries - probably 15-20.

I have a firewall rule that prevents changing the DNS server used by clients to anything other than OpenDNS (don’t want my kids to be able to bypass the DNS screening)

I have Dynamic DNS turned on and configured

1 Like
31

christian1:

I know how frustrating it can be to have a Netflix device that is flaky.  I consider both of the Samsung Blu-ray players that we used to use for Netflix fairly flaky.  The one we have in the bedroom (the newer of the two) required a somewhat similar procedure to what you go through with the SMP.  It would often freeze while buffering a movie, and the only way to fix it was to locate the wall plug and unplug the player, and then wait several minutes for it to reboot!

However, instead of repeatedly trying that player, hoping that it might “magically” start working flawlessly–and then posting over and over and over to some Samsung forum about what **bleep** their players are for Netflix–I looked around for some other device that worked in our environment.  Of the two I ended up with (a Logitech Revue and an SMP), the SMP works by far the best for us, with a hiccup only every 20-40 hours of viewing (perhaps even less).

The problem with forums is that the people that tend to post are those that have problems, so there is little basis for judging the rate of occurrence of problems from comments.  You believe WD is falsely advertising when they say the SMP supports Netflix, since the SMP hasn’t worked on the one network/ISP you have tried it on, but this is hardly any sort of meaningful sampling.  There certainly are a number of people posting in your threads that Netflix works fine for them.  Every networked entertainment device I have tried has failed to work for some fraction of the people that try it out.  We are a long way from such devices being like a toaster that “just works” when you plug them in, since they have to try to function with various routers, access points, operating systems, ISPs, levels of technical expertise of users, etc.  Frankly, if you are not a person that is willing to try something out and return it if it does not work, you should simply stay away from these types of technology to avoid frustration.