I'm Returning my WD TV Live Thanks To All The Bugs in Recent Firmware!

Community Archives WD TV Live Streaming Firmware
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What a shame!!!  This box has much more potential than the Roku and Boxee put together IMHO.  However, it has more bugs in it than a tree stump in the forest!  Thanks to the recent firmware update, my WD TV Live now:

  1. Changes screen resolution on its on.  i.e. it need to be set to 1080p60Hz, and it’s constantly switching to either 1080i or 720p - totally unacceptable!  

  2. At least once per day it loses “contact” with my external USB drive connected to it, so all media on this drive is unuseable until I “remount” the drive.

  3. At least every other day, some times once a day, it freezes to the point that unplugging is required (It won’t even turn off with the off switch on the remote)

Essentially, the only thing that this box can consistently be reliable at doing right now is being a paperweight.  It’s sad, because I really liked this box better than my Roku 1 which I’ve had for a year.  But, now I’m going to have to go back to the Roku because, despite it’s limitations on playing home media file types, at least the Roku is rock-solid reliable.

I’m very disapointed by this, and I wish WD was more resposive to all of the reported problems out there.  Sadly this mirrors WD’s response to problems I had with a WD Worldbook external drive I bought about 4 years ago.  That one went back too.

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Hi, I have spent several days with my WD Live TV and the firmware is a disaster! A totally unuseable product!

I’m gonna give it a one more shot before I return it.

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try exchanging your box for a new one, it couldnt hurt right?

I’ve had mine since day one and purchased a second a few weeks later.
neither have ever had problems playing from a hdd (front or back port) or streaming 1080p from my NAS drive through WIFI.

Also they’ve played every video I’ve thrown at them except one which I found was a .mov file.
One of my tv’s is 720p and the other is 1080p and both SMP’s lock to the correct aspect res.

I understand your frustation and would do the same if I had these issues, but remember more people are likely to complain about a product than praise it (a market research fact).

4

Me too, unfortunately.  There is no indication that we should have hope or confidence that the many issues will be addressed…

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I’ve had mine for about a week did all the firmware updates works great. This media player has more to offer then all the rest combined. WD has really pulled out all the stops on this one. If your not leading your following. I believe WD is setting the media player standard.

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While I’m annoyed with several bugs I haven’t experienced any of the three mentioned by the OP yet.

7

I have a Live Plus, not a Streaming, but I fully understand the frustrations of getting the thing to work well; if not properly.  A big problem I had turned out not to be with the unit or the firmware – it all was caused by how Win 7 operates, I finally discovered months later.  Nevertheless, I love my Live player, because we use it every day; not just for movies or Netflix, but also for listening to our large iTunes library, Internet radio from around the world, photos and other things.  I also have a Roku, and I like it, too, as it is different enough from the WD box to use both for their particular attributes and strengths.

WD may have lost the poster of this thread, but hang in there rest of you folks, this gadget is cool. To help, here are some tips:

–  One’s network needs to be setup and working well before connecting a WD player. This includes sharing folders from PC to PC.  A good understanding of network setup is essential.  I didn’t have one at first, and I had to get it.

–  Wired is much better than wireless unless your wireless network is good and solid all the time (excellent or very good signal strength at the WDTV location.)

–  Get the complete user manual from the support area of WD.

–  Avoid being the first person on the block to install the newest firmware if you unit is working fine.  Read the forums for potential problems with it before you decide to install it.

–  Revert back to a firmware that worked well for you if necessary.

–  Check out the WD Support area for your particular unit; especially browse through the FAQs.

–  Spend time regularly in these forums reading threads that interest you.

OK, so who wants to add to this list?

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Yes, your list is good but none of that will fix bugs in the player.  We have to rely on WD for that and they just don’t inspire a lot of confidence in their ability to fix these issues. 

For example, there is a serious problem with MKVs stuttering reported here: http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-TV-Live-Streaming-Issue/MKVs-stuttering-due-to-network-exhaustion/idi-p/312872

A respected member of this community tracked this down to a network buffering problem in the SMP itself.  He reported this over a month ago and its status is still listed as “New” as if someone from WD hasn’t even looked at it.  So, that suggests that they aren’t going to be addressing this serious defect any time soon.  How long are we supposed to wait for this basic playback to work correctly?  I’m not willing to waste $100 to find out…

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+1 for the WD Live Streaming Media player being the best widely offered solution right now at it’s price point and one of the first to market with the latest chipset.

The new Roku, HiMedia and Kaiboer players have some attractive features - USB 3, eSata, but they release so many models.  I have confidence that WD will put sufficient effort into the current firmware before releasing another model.

I’m confident that it was one of the safest early adoption purchases I’ve made.  It would really be a no brainer if they would open it up for custom firmware though.

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marsradio, have you try rolling back to the previous firmware, and then reapply the update. There is chance that this may correct many of the issues you are currently facing. You can find details for how to rollback from the link below: http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5860/session/L3RpbWUvMTMyNjkwNDYzNy9zaWQvRHppZ1NzT2s%3D

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I’ve had the same problem with my USB flash drive since the update, after about an hour watching a .avi,

i lost the USB, i couldn’t remount it until i did a reset on the unit. Then it happened again …argh. For a

workaround, i copied the .avi to my NAS and streamed over the network, whiched worked fine.

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Hi everyone.   WD regularly reviews product return rates and closely monitors customer reported failures.  We work with our customers, including our community forum users on resolving critical severity and usability issues as quickly as possible. I wanted to thank you for reporting these problems, and let you know we are looking into these problems.

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Hi.

I have had mine from day 1 also and I have done all the  Firmware udate to and I have had no prob with it and love it also…

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@BBBBBrandom

WD did respond to my forum post and also sent me a replacement SMP player very promptly! I was pleasantly surprised that WD did listen to my complaints and made me a happy WD customer again. The problem is… The SMP still has the rebooting issue when browsing media. It’s a shame we have to wait so long for a fix when it comes to a pretty serious issue such as this one.  I really hope this issue is fixed in the next firmware release. A number of user on these forum have been reporting this issue and we haven’t heard a repsone from WD. 

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Moor208,

It would be re-assuring if WD were to say that the problem will be solved and when. However, it seems to be normal to never acknowledge specific issues except to say that concerns are being documented and considered.

The only re-assurance you can have is that the re-booting issue has been posted on the “Issues” forum and the status has been upgraded to “investigating” by WD staff.

I do wonder though why many users do not seem to have this issue. Are they just not using the Gallery view or is there some other factor causing this?

FWIW, I have rolled back to the 1.05 firmware and have no issues with “browsing media reboot”. I have had 1 “fatal error has occurred” issue when starting an AVI file but much better than reboots every few minutes.

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Hi there,

Not sure that you guys have the exact same problem, but the following issue is fixed in our next release:

http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-TV-Live-Streaming-Issue/System-restarts-when-paging-through-files/idi-p/363177

 And I totally understand your comments about our community.  We are pretty hands off since WD doesn’t provide technical support on our forums.  Various WD staff, like myself, try to keep the community up to date and informed as best as possible.  We also have some staff dedicated to the issues board to keep these threads updated as best as possible.  I’ll make sure I forward over this one since it possibly fell through the cracks.

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BBBBBrandon,

Wow, thanks for responding on this!

I’ll be really happy if that issue is solved in the next firmware if no big new issues are introduced.

I appreciate you letting us know.

Thanks again,

vango44

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I’m in agreement with the OP… This product has left a bad taste in my mouth toward WD products… primarily their media players.

I’m the owner of the first generation media player, and I loved it… I had no issues with it…

Fast forward,  I decide to take the next step and get a player capable of playing local media and some of the streaming services I’m subscribed too and its been frustrating…

Netflix and other services just for unknown reasons lose their login credentials and I’m constantly nagged with the “reactivate” your device prompts…

Random reboots … doesn’t matter what I’m doing… whether I’m navigating to watch a movie from my local storage… or wherever i may be navigating… its random… it will decided it wants to reboot…

Constant freezing…  this is random also… It could take place during the middle of a movie…   when I start a movie… when I’m searching on Youtube… its just totally random…

Unfortunately, I am passed the point to where I can return my unit… I tried to wait it out to see if there would be firmware updates that would fix it… but none have even come close…

and please… no chiming in about how your WDTV SMP works flawless…    This is about the hundreds of incidents just as similiar to mine that have been reported on the hundreds of forums all over the internet… This product has serious QC issues and I will no longer be a beta tester for WD home entertainment products…

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My daughter wants a mediaplayer in her bedroom so she can watch  movies from our NAS.

I don’t want her to watch TV all the time.

So I gave her  the WDTV Live…now everybody wins.

She’s got her mediaplayer, and I prefend her from watching TV all the time  ;-)

(buying a HDI Dune next week, and never going near a WD-product again)

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I’ve had nothing but problems since day one with my SMP. My SMP constantly loses the connection to my external WD Essential 1TB HDD (back & front USB port). This is the first WD product I’d like to throw against the wall. I won’t bother updating to 1.07.18 because it doesn’t fix any of the issues I have. I seriously hope that the next major firmware update will be released soon and will finally fix the annoying HDD disconnection bug.