I have the WD HD Live box. I have converted the majority of my movie library to ISO files to limit the requirement of grubby little hands touching them and in the end destroying them
I then went out and bought this WD HD Live box - at the recommendation of a friend. I have placed my movies on a NAS wired to a router and wired to the WD Live box. So far, all is working well… BUT…it has uncovered another problem (for me anyways). When we are talking about kids under the age of 6, who can’t read, it’s hard for them to identify their movies and choose one to watch.
My daughter can identify her name so I named a directory called “her name” and have placed all of her movies (in ISO format) in that folder. I have also put on the preview mode but it’s a real pain to have to watch through the intro credits in order to figure out what movie it is.
Is there an existing way to have the DVD cover for example to display or some other visual reference that she could relate to (hense no reading)? If the problem is due to the format that I have used to save etc - I am more than willing to bite the bullet and redo the DVDs but I would really like to know prior to continuing my large collection transfer.
If you put a JPG file with the same name as the movie, example:
Wow Wow Wubbzy.iso
Wow Wow Wubbzy.jpg
It will “Thumbnail” that as the movie. However, be advised that the Jpeg’s themselves will show up, too. (IE, you’ll see TWO thumbnails. One for the movie, and one for the jpg.)
Or you can make a playlist of all of your movies – then the duplicate thumb issue is resolved (your daughter just navigates to the folder with the playlist and can see all her movies as images there).
hang on a minute, what we’re saying here is that if you’re in a list of videos it will show you the jpg file too… as well as using that jpeg file as a thunbnail for the video? I’m in the same spot as the OP here. However, I’m currently using XBMC on an xbox v1 and am looking to upgrade as I’ve now got an HDTV… but I can’t be having it display the thumbnail twice. I can’t believe it does that… how hard would that be to fix? Creating a playlist everytime would be annoying too.
Seems to me there’s nothing better out there than XBMC… unforunately to run that and display HD video you need a powerful PC or a Mac Mini… neither of which is an option.
I don’t think it’s asking too much to have some of the features of XBMC in WD Live… it’s not like it’s anything crazy.
The list of niggles I think I’d have if I bought a WD Live are putting me off buying one. I nearly bought one last night, along with a 1TB WD USB drive… but now I’m thinking I need to look elsewhere or wait until something better turns up.
hang on a minute, what we’re saying here is that if you’re in a list of videos it will show you the jpg file too… as well as using that jpeg file as a thunbnail for the video? I’m in the same spot as the OP here. However, I’m currently using XBMC on an xbox v1 and am looking to upgrade as I’ve now got an HDTV… but I can’t be having it display the thumbnail twice. I can’t believe it does that… how hard would that be to fix? Creating a playlist everytime would be annoying too.
Seems to me there’s nothing better out there than XBMC… unforunately to run that and display HD video you need a powerful PC or a Mac Mini… neither of which is an option.
I don’t think it’s asking too much to have some of the features of XBMC in WD Live… it’s not like it’s anything crazy.
The list of niggles I think I’d have if I bought a WD Live are putting me off buying one. I nearly bought one last night, along with a 1TB WD USB drive… but now I’m thinking I need to look elsewhere or wait until something better turns up.
If you connect your usb disc to the WDTV LIve and use the inbuilt media library then you do not get double thumbnails. Its only via network shares that this happens.
But let’s be clear here - if this is important to you, do NOT buy the Live/Plus. It’s a rule of thumb in life that you should NEVER buy something on the promise that *eventually* it will work as you want it to work. (This is true, indeed, of even marrying someone but that’s way OT :>).
If you need net shares to not have duplicate thumbs and can’t live with creating a playlist then the Live ain’t for you. Sad truth is though that none of the devices out there right now will be perfect in this regard (I was hoping the Popbox would, but it has many other problems far worse).
Now – I have to tell you that the thumbs issue is my ONLY problem with the Live (and I have three of them) but I also think that the solution that Rich found (the playlist solution) isn’t bad at all. I use Playlist Creator (once again, Rich’s suggestion) and it takes but a minute or so to generate a new playlist when I add movies. I add movies two or three times a day, but I generate the list once a day and so far at least (in the last three days since I’ve stared doing this) I don’t mind it at all.
*Should* I have to do this? Of course not – and WD IS working on fixing the problem. But that fix may not come for six months (if at all) and in the meantime I have a media player which meets all my other needs. But YMMV, and that’s okay too. Just don’t go in with your hopes up and then have them dashed (because then you’ll have no one to blame but yourself).
It just appears to be something so trivial and yet so annoying that it’s a real surprise that it ain’t fixed. Surely it’s a case of “if we’ve used the file as a thumbnail don’t list it separately”.
Or you can make a playlist of all of your movies – then the duplicate thumb issue is resolved (your daughter just navigates to the folder with the playlist and can see all her movies as images there).
Is this a Media Server only thing, or it is something that can be used for network shares too? If so, how?
This is FOR net shares (media servers don’t need this).
Just create your playlist and put it in whatever folder you want (I have a folder called Playlists). When you navigate to this folder you’ll see your lists (assuming you have more than one) and when you select one the list will come up as thumbnails you can navigate through as you would normally.
The only “catch” is that because it’s a list when you play one file as it ends it will start playing the next file. If it’s movies this isn’t any big deal, as you can easily stop the next file playback (or shut the Live off at the end credits) but shorter videos might be troublesome.
You can even assign thumbnails to your playlists – of course, then you have the duplicate thumbs problem but that’s not nearly as bad because you won’t have as many lists (even my highly categorized movies only have six or seven such lists) AND the thumbs show up after the lists (don’t ask me why – just the way the Live sorts things I guess).
Try Playlist Creator – it’s shareware, it’s easy to use, and it’s made my net shares sooooo much nicer (and all this is thanks to RichUK, who deserves the credit for finding this workaround).
It is indeed a workaround, but lets be honest, it’s horrendous really. As a short term workaround then yeah, fine, but it shouldn’t be like this months later.
I tend to think of that word as meaning “causing fear or terror” (Webster’s) as in “the horrendous war” or “Adam Sandler’s latest movie”. Spending 40 seconds or so creating a playlist doesn’t exactly terrorize me or cause me any fear.
If what you mean is more on the order of indefensible (incapable of being defended or justified) then I would agree with you. WD’s position on not fixing this in the many many firmware updates that have come since this was brought up is truly indefensible (but not horrendous).
No, I’ve thought about it and it’s definitely horrendous…dreadful… woeful.
It’s got to be simple to fix; files with jpg (jpeg, gif) file extensions don’t even need listing when browsing videos anyway… regardless of whether they’re being used as thumbnails. It’s got to be one of the easiest things for them to fix.
I am a programmer… and while I may not be a genius and I don’t know the ins and outs of their code… I’d be a bit disappointed if this were hanging around on my to-do list for any period of time. Either they just don’t see it as important, or for some reason it requires a lot of effort … either way it doesn’t fill me with much confidence in their support of their product. But maybe they’ve been concentrating on much worse things?
There doesn’t appear to be many better options available either so I guess I’ll have to wait and see what happens here and what happens elsewhere before retiring my xbox1.
No, I’ve thought about it and it’s definitely horrendous…dreadful… woeful.
It’s got to be simple to fix; files with jpg (jpeg, gif) file extensions don’t even need listing when browsing videos anyway… regardless of whether they’re being used as thumbnails. It’s got to be one of the easiest things for them to fix.
I am a programmer… and while I may not be a genius and I don’t know the ins and outs of their code… I’d be a bit disappointed if this were hanging around on my to-do list for any period of time. Either they just don’t see it as important, or for some reason it requires a lot of effort … either way it doesn’t fill me with much confidence in their support of their product. But maybe they’ve been concentrating on much worse things?
There doesn’t appear to be many better options available either so I guess I’ll have to wait and see what happens here and what happens elsewhere before retiring my xbox1.
We have been through all this on the forum and WD see the ‘fix’ as a maybe and yes I believe they are concentrating on other problems which they see as a higher priority. The playlist is a workaround which works and does not take any real effort. It also allows users to keep all the files and thumnails where they are in the event that WD pull their finger and give us a fix. Using Playlist creator (free) is very very easy and it only takes seconds to make a playlist. (before somebody accuses me of pushing the program I would like to say that I have no vested interest in it and if they can find an alternative that works then I would be glad to recommend that after testing)
The definition I have of horrendous and dreadful is also ‘Causing fear, dread or terror’ which certainly does apply to either the problem or the workaround. Unless of course your life has been such that you have never come across problems.
I don’t think the user in that video is using the library function, he’s just browsing videos… and he’s not getting duplicate thumbnails.
How come? Am I missing something?
It must be using an attached disc because they are not using the Live version. They are using the WDTV HD.
If you click under the video you will see the detail added by the poster.
“The newest model has Ethernet connectivity and can play radio and movies streaming from your computer. I have the first model with a 1 TB Hard drive filled to the brim”
