Any help with this is greatly appreciated. I have spent a LOT of money on this kit and its not working correctly in the most important room in the house (My spanking new TV room)
The hardware
4 x WDTV LIve boxes bought over the years (Various firmware, from old right up to the latest firmware)
1 x Synology DS412+ NAS (8TB)
1 x WDTV Live Hub (1TB)
A number of new Samsung smart TV’s (32" model up to 60" model) (Latest firmware installed)
24 port Netgear smart POE switch
Vodafone router giving DHCP IP addresses
Several PC’s. laptops, ipads, iphones etc.
The problem
When I use the WDTV live box to play a movie or music track everything appears to be fine. However, if I press stop, the soundtrack or music continues to play even though I am back at the WDTV main menu. The only way to get back up and running again is to power cycle the WDTV box. I can then watch another movie perfectly right up to the point I press stop or pause and then the issue returns. I have tried all 4 WDTV boxes which have various different firmware and they are all the same.
MIscellaneous
All the TV’s work perfectly with the inbuilt DLNA and PLEX clients with the Synology NAS and the WDTV Live Hub. I can watch movies or play music on all TVs simultaneously with ho issues. The problem only occurs with the WDTV live box. Although I have 4 WDTV boxes, I am actually only using one of them connected to an Onkyo AV amp. (I have retired the other 3 since I replaced all the old TV’s they were connected to with new Samsung TV’s which have a DLNA client built in and also a PLEX app.
I have tried connecting a WDTV media player directly to a standalone TV bypassing the Onkyo amp but still connected to teh network and the issue is the same. However, if I play a movie from a USB key plugged into the WDTV live, the issue is not present. This leads me to conclude it is a network based problem.
I have done the following troubleshooting.
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Disable jumbo frames on the Synology NAS. No fix
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Disable IGMP snooping on the Netgear switch. No fix
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Disable uPnP on all devices on the network that supported it. No fix
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Disable DLNA on all PC’s by removing PC’s from the homegroup and turning off network media in Windows. No fix
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Tried 4 different WDTV boxes with varying firmware. No fix
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Tried a TP-Link 8 port gigabit switch instead of the Netgear 24 port switch. No fix
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Turned off the CCTV system, router and all TV’s apart from the one I was testing. No fix
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Tried connecting via Cat 6 cable and also wirelessly. No fix
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Reset one of the WDTV boxes to factory default settings.No fix
A gold star to the person who can find a fix for this.
BallBuster wrote:
When I use the WDTV live box to play a movie or music track everything appears to be fine. However, if I press stop, the soundtrack or music continues to play even though I am back at the WDTV main menu.
Sounds an awful lot like this … DLNA (UPnP) *bug* it happened randomly for me … but i discovered how to reproduce everytime (press …“option” … then … “home”) not only can you *hear* the audio, but if you go to “Gallery View” you will see the Video as well.
click *play* to watch the video capture i did below.
an “alternative” to power cycling, press the yellow button on the remote control until you get to “Preview Browse” View … and it will Stop Playing
As for a solution ? i have none … it’s a DLNA bug (happens on All my WDTV’s) , it doesnt happen with “Network Shares” though 
1 Like
Hi Joey,
Thanks for your reply. I will try the button sequence when I am back at home later. The annoying thing is that worked perfectly in my last house with (almost) the same hardare. The only items in the new house that were not in the old house are the Samsung TV’s, the 24 port network switch and the Internet router. I have eliminated these by using an old TV, swapping the switch for one I used in my old house and only accessing the WDTV Live hub and turning off the Synology NAS and the new router.
I am starting to think I have been cursed by a fairground gypsy. Lol.
Cheers.
Hi again Joey,
I will give the network share option a go as this is a perfectly viable option as the photo, music and video folder are all shared as SMB Windows type shares. I dont know why I did not think of trying it beforehand. Many heads instead of one I suppose.
I will give this a go and revert back with the results.
Cheers.
Hi Joey,
I tried connecting over a network share and the movie I picked started off fine. I waited about 30 minitues and pressed the pause button. I then got a message saying " Unable to play the selected file. Please see the User Manual for a list of supported file formats"
I press OK and the movie continues to play but the yellow busy arrow keeps rotating on the screen. I can wander around the menus but cannot end the movie or play another one without a power cycle. I tried pressing the yellow button and selecting different media views but it is still stuck trying to play the movie. Most other buttons on the remote control have no effect when this happens.
Its definitely a network issue as if I play any media from a USB key plugged directly into the WDTV Live, the unit works perfectly.
Any more thoughts?
I’m not sure you’re mixing up bugs. I’ve seen audio play on after pressing STOP for 1-4 seconds some firmwares ago when playing files from local USB. That audio would continue indefinitely is new.
Hi guys,
I have decided to abandon the WDTV as a networked media player. I spent another 4 hours yesterday with a technician colleague trying everything we could think of and its still the same. I eventually decided to use the HDMI ARC connection on the Samsung TV and the ARC output on the Onkyo receiver and use the plex app on the samsung TV to play the media. The ARC (audio return cable) allows the sound from the TV to be sent back along the HDMI cable to the receiver where it is treated as an input which is then played through the 7.1 speakers which is ultimately what I want. This also gives me the advantage of using the faster apps like Netflix on the Samsung smart TV (compared to the slow WDTV apps) through the receiver as well so in the end its a good result. I just wish I hadn’t spent such an inordinate amount of time trying to troubleshoot it.
The music menu on the Plex is a bit clumsy so I will still use the WDTV live with a USB key and my 30GB of music will play from that. Such a pity WDTV has these issues as I have always really liked its fast easy to use menu. Browsing media with Plex is not as good in my opinion.
Thanks again for your help.
Cheers.
I am experiancing the same problems. I can only seem to watch one movie or 2 tv episodes before you can no longer stop or pause or ff the file. If you press the OK button it brings up the progress bar showing 00:00:00 of 00:00:00 and only a hard power cycle can temporarily fix the issue. I thought i rectified this with the UPNP disable however it has come back and i am getting so frustrated with this.
Have you made sure there’s only one master browser in your network, preferably not the WDTV?
Hi Techflaws,
Many thanks for your email. I have checked and found that my Windows 7 machine is the master browser which is not unexpected. This PC is usually turned off about 7pm and at some point later that evening I would be in the TV room. At the moment the WDTV units are all plugged out as I have stopped using them. On investigation I found a setting in the Synology to make it the master browser which I have enabled. (The Synology is on all the time) For anyone who wants to do this on their Synology unit, proceed as follows: Open the DSM, go to control panel, click File Services, click advanced settings and put a tick in “enable local master browser”.
On restarting the PC, I can see that the Synology is now set as the master browser. There is a cool little utility for checking the master browser status at this link. http://scottiestech.info/2009/02/14/how-to-determine-the-master-browser-in-a-windows-workgroup/
I will reconnect one of the WDTV units this afternoon when I get in from visiting a client and do some further testing and post back the results.
Cheers and thanks again for your suggestions.
Hi again Techflaws,
Got home earlier than expected and reconnected the WDTV Live. I put on a movie and left it running. About half way through, I pressed stop on the remote and the soundtrack kept playing even though I was back at the WDTV menu.
I will stick with the Plex solution using the ARC (Audio Return Cable) HDMI lead as that is working perfectly and has the bonus of giving me sound through the receiver even if I am just watching terrestrial channels on the TV. This has worked perfectly 100% of the time since I enabled it on the receiver and Samsung TV.
Its a real shame about the WDTV units as they have never failed to play a media file for me in the past. Its a pity you need to be a scientist to troubleshoot them. Lol. I have been working in IT for the past 20 years and I reckon most of this troubleshooting would be way beyond the average joe soap who just wants to plug in a device and watch some media.
Cheers.
