I have a WD TV Live Plus, which is running the latest firmware and have I done the clear settings/leave unpowered routine. I ripped some DVDs to both VIDEO_TS files and an ISO using DVD Decrypter and DVD Shrink. The movies were “Oceans 11”, “Get Smart” and “Kill Bill 1”. I then copied the files to a WD USB drive and attached that directly to the TVLP. Every movie played without a problem. That is great!
But if I try to play the files over my home network I get stutters on the VOB files and the ISOs don’t play at all.
This may sound like a dumb question, but should I assume I need to look at my network setup? In other words, is there any reason to believe that the WD TVLP firmware has network problems? If I watch internet sources, such as mediafly or youtube, I have no problems.
Thanks!
There are some known issues playing VOB files over network, but no problems with ISOs that I know of…
Tony, are the issues with the latest firmware only? I’m not afraid of rolling back firmware in order to make it work.
All 1.04.x versions are affected.
Cool, thanks for the info. I may play with going to a pre- 1.04.x veersion for test purposes.
I wanted to give an update on playing files over my network based on what TonyPh wrote.
I have a WD TV Live Plus and I connect it via hmdi to my TV. My goal is to put the WDTV in my bedroom using wifi-n at 5 gHz. For test purposes I worked in my living room. Both TVs are 1080p capable. I do not have a way to rip blu-rays, so I will only be watching regular DVDs. I am okay with only outputting 720p. Whenever I change firmware I dod the full default settings and power cycle method.
I roll backed the firmware to 1.03.49. I was able to watch ISO files and VOB files. But there was an issue, which I remember from before the device was updated to 1.04.xx. The video is unstable. It seems to default to auto for hdmi and will put out 720p. This would be fine except that the output will break up. If I try to force it to 1080p, it comes back as 480p. If I force it to 720p and cycle power then it resets to auto. But even without the annoyance of resetting it I found it unstable. The other thing that I did not like was that I appreciated the internet video options in 1.04.xx. This is important because it was one of the reasons I bought the WDTV+.
I then brought the firmware up to 1.04.10 and then to 1.04.17_B. As I mentioned before I reset after every firmware change. Maybe that is extreme but I am trying to be strict about it.
Before I started this whole testing cycle I had problems with both ISO’s and VOB’s. I think that my ISO problems may have been due to my windows workgroup. I took a shot and changed the name of the windows workgroup name on my XP machine. This seemed to solve playing ISOs. Maybe it was voodoo, but ISO’s are playing fine. Do I even need to be on the same workgroup on such a small network? VOB’s do not play properly, as I expected. But I am fine with playing ISO’s and actually prefer it over VOB’s. I can watch a DVD over wifi, which is huge.
I still have to cycle power from time to time. It’s almost as if it gets overwhelmed if I watch too many different types of media, ISO, various internet video, and then I need to cycle power.
Anyway, ISO’s work great. I must have watched the fight scene between Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu 20 times for testing purposes!
