OK, I’ve now had my WD TV Live (3rd gen) since beginning of this week and my experience with this thing is just getting progressively worse! I want to clarify my setup and the problems I’m encountering so others can hopefully advise what I’m doing wrong, or suggest a better configuration, … or maybe confirm that my device must be faulty and should be returned!
MY SETUP:
WD TV Live (3rd gen) is in my lounge connected via wiFi to my network. My main wi fi router is in office in floor below but I also have a Netgear Wireless extender plugged into wall socket in the lounge approx 2 metres from the WD TV live box and the box indicates I have a full strength wifi connection and all other wifi devices work well using my wifi in my lounge. I am trying to view music, music playlists, photos, and videos from my two main windows desktop PCs which are located in office in floor below.
I have used the settings - operation menu on the WD TV to connect to windows network shares on my main PC running Windows 8, and my wife’s desktop PC running Windows Vista. It finds and connects to the folders I select on both PC’s every time no problem, and all the selected shares are being retained in the WD TV’s settings on a day-to-day basis, even if I power the box off using the red button on its remote. I have set the media shares to only be scanned when the box is in Standby. I have several times successfully got it to scan all the shared files into my WDTVL and have managed to view/play all file types a few times. I am typically leaving the box powered up in between use so it can rescan my media when it wants to. So all should work fine in theory. However…
PROBLEMS:
I get up in the morning, switch my TV’s source over to the WD TV. WD logo screensaver is displaying so I press the Home button on the remote to take it out of standby mode. I then go to view my Music section. More and more frequently I will find that when I select that it displays following message:
“The last content source has been removed. Please select a new content source.”
Aargh! I go into settings and check my network shares and all the share folders I have selected are still there and it shows when each was last scanned. So why does the content keep disappearing? I have to run rescans on all my selected shares to get my media to appear.
And even worse I now find the device is getting less and less responsive. It frequently hangs between trying to switch menu options or select media. Or when I select the media manager/dashboard view the orange circular progress arrow appears and frequently just sits there showing no progress at all, or takes ages until it displays any media. It’s getting worse and worse and really as it stands is unusable, as I typically just have to give up waiting and walk away swearing! This is only after a few days. So my questions are:
Q1: From above description, do you think my device is faulty and should be returned to Amazon, or is there something else I could try?
Q2: Am I likely to find the device will work more smoothly if I run it to connect to a DNLA server on my PC? I have the Logitech Media Server running on my Windows 8 PC (as I use that in the summer to connect to a Logitech Squeezebox outside) so I could try that, and I’ve just downloaded Plex server but have not started configuring that yet. Does the WD TV Live typically work better connected to server software as opposed to Windows shares?
Q3: I need clarification of what should happen if I power the WD TV Live box off using the remote’s red power button, or switch off connected PCs, as I now find myself scared to power down anything as I assume it will have to do a full rescan everytime it reconnects.
Q3a: If I power the WD TV Live box off using its remote control’'s red power button is that powering the unit off altogether, or is it just putting it into standby mode?
Q3b: I need to clarify what the device should be expected to store in its memory if I either power it off using the red power button on its remote, or put either of the network connected PC’s on standby or shutdown. I appreciate the WD TV Live has no internal storage so simply cannot play my chosen media in such situations, but what I’m unclear about is should it still store details of all media that was previously scanned and display this in the the media manager or elsewhere on the WD TV Live in the interim (so its ready to connect to the media when the related PC’s are back up and running); or does it have to do a full rescan of media every time one of the shared devices is powered up again, before it can display and play that media?
Looking forward to any answers, and advice or suggestions!
