I’ve had my WD TV Live Streaming for about a week. Got really excited about having all my movies, music and other playable media so easily accessible on the Flat screen TV.
Excitement and good feeling soon fly out the window when I start to choose the movies I want to watch and ‘Unable to play selected file. Please see user manual for a list of supported file formats.’ with a bloody great big green tick by it - wrong signals or what, try a big Red X in your next firmware update.
The file in question is an mkv. file format. The actual file will play on VLC on my Mac & PC but not on my WDTVLSMP.
It has played some other mkv. files but not all of them, why I don’t really know. I’ve checked media info against other mkv. files it has played and there does not seem to be any difference.
Secondly mp4 are an issue as well, again some will play and some wont.
If anybody can shed any light on the issues above please air them. WD stuff is normally **bleep** good gear. I really like this product when it works, the interface is really good and it sits well and is almost invisible underneath my TV.
Is there file format that the WDTVLSMP likes and plays without any issues if so what is the best format for the device.
I also had MP4 that failed to play, suggesting that it is not a supported format. My device is the WD TV Live Plus (WDBABX0000NBK) and it says it has updated its firmware from the Internet as of a few weeks ago. I downloaded the MediaInfo utility and here is what it says. Any reason why you think this file should not play?
General
Complete name : E:\Movies\Sci Fi\Star Trek.mp4
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : Base Media / Version 2
Codec ID : mp42
File size : 1.98 GiB
Duration : 2h 6mn
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 2 235 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2010-06-10 03:20:40
Tagged date : UTC 2010-06-10 10:21:44
Writing application : HandBrake 0.9.4 2009112300
THAT is odd… I’m not sure it should keep the WD from playing it, though.
I note that you used HandBrake to re-code it. In HB, you might want to try setting the FrameRate to “23.976” instead of “Same as Source,” which is what I’m guessing it had used…
Thanks for the quick response. It didnt even TRY to play the file, just said it’s not supported. I would have expected odd frame rates to play but perhaps misbehave. I didnt do the encoding and dont own a copy of HB. I have several MP4s like this and I was hoping there was a simple way to avoid recoding all of them …
Is it reasonable that the WD Live may fail to play a file for networking reasons? The device connects to my server wirelessly and the network was “busy” at the time. It sometimes took 2 tries to get it show the list of files in a directory. So might a slow network response lead it to think it cannot play that file? If that was the case though I would have expected it to complain that the file was “damaged” not that the file type was unsupported.
Have you has a look at the format profiles for the audio and video and ensure that they are compatible. I know this was the issue I had before with some MKV files that give me a similar error message, Unfortunately I ended up reencoding them to have a different audio profile.
Since the device claims to play MP4, and this is an MP4 file, I was figuring the only thing that could be wrong is that either one or both of the audio or video streams were using a codec not supported by the device. But I don’t know what codecs ARE supported so I can’t determine if that is the cause. I do know that the file plays on my PC with no problems.
Your suggestion is good, but I don’t have the knowledge to assess the file and answer the question. I posted the MediaInfo information on that file above. Can someone out there tell me if the audio and video “format profiles” are compatible?
unfortunately gcbodie I don’t have that experience or expertise either. I searched the WDC faq and the knoweldgebase but it doesnt break down what format profiles are supported, I know for sure the audio profile HE-ACC is not as that was the issue on my MKV files.
