I had high hope for this product. Seemed easy enough. I’m used to tinkering to get software and hardware to work. I like a challenge. Nonetheless, I still don’t understand, for the life of me, why such products are put on the market as is (even with the firmware updates). Why is it so cumbersome to get the WD Live to access folders? Sure I’ve seen the Youtube tutorials. I know I’d get it to work eventually. But I’ve decided not to. I’ve got a Boxee that’s working properly and I wanted to add another one in another room. I was curious to try out other options; Apple Tv, Roku, Netgear, or the WD Live… Then I thought how my 70 year-old father would fare faced with all those hurdles? Besides calling me for help, not a chance! This should basically work out of the box without having to read dozens of community posts to find which crazy workaround seems to come up the most, thus, possibly the option with the best chance of success. I’m tired of products that leave the consumer pretty much alone to get it to work as it should. It’s not a shady 3rd party application. It’s a pretty straightforward piece of hardware made by a well-known company. Unfortunately, it’s back to the store… : \
Hi, is not that hard to share a folder from your PC. Check the link below for the steps.
As someone nearing 70 myself I have found ‘sharing’ fairly straight forward. It takes a little time and practice but it works OK. You also need to allow sharing without password protection to occur as well. This is found in Advanced Sharing Settings as a part of your Network and Sharing Center in the Control Panel.
Why people don’t just access their files from an attached HDD confuses me. I use my wireless connection to transfer files effortlessly from my PC to the attached HDD, all pretty simple really. The WDTV SMP is an inexpensive device that some people want to do ‘expensive’ tricks with. I am a great believer in the Keep It Simple St***id method.
It seems the vast majority of problems occur with external media sources and sharing. Therefore for me the attached 500GB HDD works as sweet as …
For something SIMPLE, get your dad a Roku. He can even add a flash drive to the top of line model and watch mp4, jpg and listen to audio files like mp3. It is a media player, but NOT like a boxee or WD, so learn more about it if it interests you.
