I recently bought the WD TV Live Streaming Media Player, I’m happy with the majority of the media player but that’s not to say it’s not without fault. Its Wi Fi signal strength range is very poor. I have found that the WD TV Live has to be within 2 meters of less to receive a clear, smooth signal for the ‘services’ functions or to update the firm ware. It’s next to useless if you’re like me and planned to keep the media player in the lounge room and except it to use the ‘services’ when your modem/router is in another room more than 2 meters away.
But my main problem/issue with the WD TV Live Streaming Media Player is that it takes hours to ‘compile media library’ from external hard drives… (I read on a review site that it took days for one man!) I understand that some external hard drives (such as mine) are huge in terms of content size, e.g. 1TB. But when I connected my external hard drive to my old WD TV HD media player it only took secs to load all my content and play without a problem!
I was wondering does everyone have the same problem as me or? If so I’m considering buying another external hard drive for my media items e.g. movies, pictures and music, but I’m lead to believe that even with a smaller external hard drive it still takes some time to compile the media on an external hard drive. If some I’ll probabley return it to the shop!
It feels as if WD has taken 1 step forward, 2 steps back with their current generation of media players, very disappointing from such a great and respected brand.
So my WD TV Live Streaming Media Player taking hours just to scan/‘compile media library’ any and every time I connect my external hard drive is there for damaged?
I don’t think it’s the size of the HDD so much as the number of files. I have around 9tb of films, but that’s only 600 titles as a lot are in uncompressed HD.
It only takes 2-3 minutes to build my Media Library from scratch.
What I don’t have is my hundreds of TV programmes and thousand or so albums (maybe 20,000 tracks?) in the library. Despite taking far less room than the films I think this’d slow it down an awful lot.
So I have these programmes and these tracks on my 3tb My Book Live NAS and don’t have those areas assigned to the library.
That’s Tip 1. Tip 2 echos what Tony said - turn off madia scraping.
I recently bought the WD TV Live Streaming Media Player, I’m happy with the majority of the media player but that’s not to say it’s not without fault. Its Wi Fi signal strength range is very poor. I have found that the WD TV Live has to be within 2 meters of less to receive a clear, smooth signal for the ‘services’ functions or to update the firm ware. It’s next to useless if you’re like me and planned to keep the media player in the lounge room and except it to use the ‘services’ when your modem/router is in another room more than 2 meters away.
But my main problem/issue with the WD TV Live Streaming Media Player is that it takes hours to ‘compile media library’ from external hard drives… (I read on a review site that it took days for one man!) I understand that some external hard drives (such as mine) are huge in terms of content size, e.g. 1TB. But when I connected my external hard drive to my old WD TV HD media player it only took secs to load all my content and play without a problem!
I was wondering does everyone have the same problem as me or? If so I’m considering buying another external hard drive for my media items e.g. movies, pictures and music, but I’m lead to believe that even with a smaller external hard drive it still takes some time to compile the media on an external hard drive. If some I’ll probabley return it to the shop!
It feels as if WD has taken 1 step forward, 2 steps back with their current generation of media players, very disappointing from such a great and respected brand.
Hmm, my SMP is located in my bedroom. That are about 15 meters from my router and its one floor up. I do not have any problems with the wifi signal. FW and other things are going quite well.
According to your other problem I don’t know because I haven’t a hdd connected. I only use streaming from my server.
My biggest file on my 1TB My Book HDD is my movie file which is about 194GB. I have no TV programmes and very little music on my HDD, I connected my HDD to my WD TV Live MSP today and it continued to ‘compile media library’ for about 5 hours before I turned it off, feed up waiting for it to finish compiling!
I have issues with compiling my library of ~1TB shared with NFS over wireless (802.11n which streams my 1080p content fine). It ran for overnight and NOTHING. With a wired connection I have no problems at all, it’s done in minutes.
Edit: I can answer the media scraping question. The term refers to downloading the information about individual episodes from tvdb. That’s how the player can give you a synopsis in media player view plus the cool fanart in the background.
That’s the oppisite of my problem, mine takes so long to compile I have never seen it finish compiling!
dmcguire wrote:
I have issues with compiling my library of ~1TB shared with NFS over wireless (802.11n which streams my 1080p content fine). It ran for overnight and NOTHING. With a wired connection I have no problems at all, it’s done in minutes.
Edit: I can answer the media scraping question. The term refers to downloading the information about individual episodes from tvdb. That’s how the player can give you a synopsis in media player view plus the cool fanart in the background.
That’s the oppisite of my problem, when my HDD is wired it takes so long to compile, I have never seen it finish compiling!
I had about 100 Gigs of media and had a hard time compiling it then after I coverted the hdd to NTFS and transfered the files again it compiled like sharm, took about 30 mins or little more
My SMP is connected via wired ethernet but when I tested with wi-fi initially found the range to be ok.
However I have never been able to get the media library working with my NAS. As I say my unit is connected by wired ethernet. I use an Iomega home media NAS. I’m on latest firmware for both units.
I get the ‘compiling media library’ message but then the SMP and NAS become unstable and I have to reboot both. Media scraping is off. My shares are set to read/write. I have even set up a test share with just 1 mp3 file and removed all other shares and have the same problem. I can see that the SMP created a .wd_tv folder and .cas2 files on the NAS but nothing after that. Admittedly I haven’t spoken with support about this yet, but I e-mailed 2 weeks ago without reply. Tried doing the same with a USB key and media library compiling finished within seconds.
P.S. i’ve tried all the tips I can find on the forum. Turn off media library, remove .wd_tv folder from NAS, clear media library on SMP, re-add shares but to no avail.
It’s a shame as otherwise I really like this little box, but without the media library the greatest function for me is missing.
Thank you for your prompt reply. The login details I’m using on the SMP match those on the NAS for the share I am attempting to use and 100% set to read/write on the NAS. Or should I attempt setting permissions via Windows?
STOP PRESS - My SMP is reporting a new firmware upgrade! 1.07.15. Can’t find what’s new but I’ll give it a shot!
My nas is a windows home server. I set the permissions on the log in account using the server user management software. and it wouldn’t work.
then i right clicked on the folder from windows explorer and clicked on properties / sharing tab , and looked at the permissions there, the user I added didn’t show up.
I had to manually add them on the individual folders using this right click / properties / security tab, add a user there
again, it may not be exactly what you are running into, but I know i swore i had permissions right, until i went and verified it on the individual folder.
I have set up and tested / checked every possible way of setting permissions. Media library still does not compile. I have a little experience with corporate networks and think everything is set up as it should be. Besides WDTV can write a folder to my NAS and I can move files around from it which would indicate write permissions are ok.
I telephoned support but they could not help at all. Not even the slightest suggestion.
I’m now guessing that there is some problem with the network protocols between the WDTV and the Iomega NAS. All I can think of right now is to put a message out to see if anyone has the same combo and can or cannot get it to work.
For a while now I’ve been testing with a single share containing just 1 mp3 file (which I have changed just in case I had picked a dodgy file). Accessing the smb share is no problem and as I say moving files etc. from the WDTV works without any hitch. I’ve noticed that as soon as the media library compiling starts the network connection to that share becomes unstable - cannot access it though windows or WDTV (spinning wheel of doom). I can see that there is a lot of network activity but my NAS shows next to no disk activity. The WDTV creates its folder containing 2 files:-
wdtv.cas2 47k
wdtv.cas2_lock_file_check… 0k
These files are created at the start of media compiling and never change / update again.
To get access back I have to reboor the NAS. The WDTV will then need a reboot / pull the plug once or twice whilst stopping the media library.
could you move it to the root of your nas and retry?
or perhaps it’s already there?
It sounds as though you are doing most everything right.
I have found disabling the media library, and then clearing it through the WDTV setup>system>media library interface stops the network access and the server didn’t need a reboot.
Sorry i can’t be more helpful, i am a software engineer / network administrator, and this is about as confusing as they get.
Your advice has been spot on and I really appreciate your time with trying to help. Unless some bods from WD and Iomega bang heads together I’m not sure this is gonna get resolved. I will persevere though. WD support are supposed to still be looking into.
If anyone else reading has any experience of trying to get an Iomega Home media NAS + WDTV working with media library and would care to share your experience would be much appreciated - even if it’s bad news!
I am having the exact same problem as you. Same symptoms with the .cas files being created on my NAS, but the media compilation not completing - even with only one file in the NAS share. I have WDTV Live Hub / Medion NAS. To get WDTV operational again after attempting media compilation I have to poweroff/on WDTV, remove NAS share (which hangs WDTV again as its still trying to compile the one file in NAS). then power WDTV off/on again.
Permissions seem Ok on NAS - not being a Linux expert I wonder if its something to do with the .wdtv directory created on the NAS. In trying to delete that in the NAS mnagement panel it wouldn’t delete - (due to the .prefix in Linux ?). I had to delete via windows. Wondering if the WDTV is trying to do writes of some kind to the .wdtv after its created (via WDTV Linux ?) and can’t so it hangs.
