I recently got a new Slingbox SOLO and am looking to possibly get a new WDTV media player to use with it (essentially as another tuner in my home for my cable TV). See that the WDTV “Hub” is DNLA compatible. If I connect external USB drives to it, is the “Live” also DNLA compliant?
No.
The Hub is the only WD Player that acts as a DLNA SERVER.
The SMP is a DLNA Client only.
So the answer is YES from the Slingbox side of the question considering you want to push media to it from the slingbox. In fact, the SMP has a slingbox app.
OK, i am now thinking of just going with the “hub” device as it will not only serve as a media player & slingbox “extender” for a TV in our basement, but also a media server for some other DLNA devices in our home. Can then store items on its 1TB drive.
I know you can connect up to two external UBS drives to this HUB as well. Will these USB devices (& the material on them) then also be accessible over my home network on other DLNA devices?
mcf57 wrote:
I know you can connect up to two external UBS drives to this HUB as well. Will these USB devices (& the material on them) then also be accessible over my home network on other DLNA devices?
Yes, but I don’t remember if it’s automatic or if you have to configure Twonky manually to do it. But one way or another, yes, it’s possible.
So, when you say configure Twonky, does this then mean in order share material from an attached USB drive to the HUB, it might have to first go through another PC (w/ Twonky media server software installed). This isn’t how the HUB normally operates with its 1TB internal media, is it? I would rather be able to just have stuff go directly from the WD hub to my other DLNA devices (TV, blue Ray player, Seagate media player, etc) without relying on a PC being on.
Twonky is built into the hub.
Oh, got ya. I didn’t realize that. Thanks for the info and I guess you learn something new every day. :stuck_out_tongue: Yea, this HUB device is looking more and more like the device I would rather just go with. It will be hard wired to my home network so should perform flawlessly and it seems like it has a lot more really nice features. I have had good luck with other WD products and think their reputation in the hard drive field helps me feel better about getting a device with a hard drive in it.
I looked at some other similar network media streamers that have an internal hard drive and have no idea what brand is in them. Could be WD, Seagate, Samsung, Hitachi, etc. Anybody’s guess. At least here, I am confident & feel better knowing that its a WD hard drive in there.
OK, I wound up getting the WD “hub” a few weeks ago. It was a ‘deal of the day’ at Best Buy for $119 so I figured what the heck. So far, its a great machine. Best Buy then had a ‘deal of the day’ for their WD “Live” player last week at $69. I wound up nabbing one of these too. Again, a great little box and I’m glad I got both.
While I am easily able to stream content from the WD ‘hub’ to other devices over my network, I didn’t think I would be able to do the same with the WD ‘live’ player. However, I came to learn that this live player can sort of act as a media server with USB connected devices. My ‘hub’ player can see the ‘live’ and can stream their USB connected content. This was a pleasant surprise.
Is this network sharing something new with the ‘live’ player? In a recent firmware update? Or has it always been this way? Does this mean other DNLA compaliant devices over my network will be able to see the USB drives connected to the ‘live’ player?
mcf57 wrote:
Is this network sharing something new with the ‘live’ player? In a recent firmware update? Or has it always been this way? Does this mean other DNLA compaliant devices over my network will be able to see the USB drives connected to the ‘live’ player?
Nah, even the old Live/Live+ can do that.
No, DLNA-only devices will NOT see the SMP/Live/Live+. The Hub is the only WD streamer that has a DLNA server.
OK, got ya. One thing I did realize & forgot to mention is that the ‘hub’ and ‘live’ are not seeing all of my network devices. Specially a XP based network PC that I have “shared” folders over my network. I have a Seagate Theater+ player that has seen these shared folders fine. The WD products can’t seem to detect them though.
I thought I might have seen a post saying how to fix this problem, but can’t seem to locate it. Is there an easy way to fix this and get my ‘hub’ and ‘live’ players seeing this XP shared PC?
The most common reason for this is a mismatch in the workgroup names. Make sure ALL of the PCs and client devices are in the same workgroup.
Well, I do know that the XP based PC in question here is not on the ‘WORKGROUP’ name. Instead it is on a workgroup named ‘DESKTOPS’ in my network. Again, the Seagate player can see ANY of my workgroup names (WORKGROUP, DESKTOPS & LAPTOPS). However, you are saying the WD products can’t do this and any other networked devices HAVE to have the same workgroup name as them, correct? If so, kind of unfortunate.
Yes, that’s what I’m saying.
Are the WD’s on WiFi and the others connected via wire?
No, Both my WDs (hub and live) are on hard wired ethernet connections. We have a one story ranch with a basement. Before my basement was fully finished back in 2006, I decided to hard wire all the rooms (upstairs & downstairs) for ethernet. Glad I did cause while wireless can be more convenient and cheaper than ripping out drywall, I prefer hard wired whenever possible (for speed and overall reliability) so I did it while I could. I have several other networked components (TiVos, Smart TVs, laptops, PCs, etc.). All these components on my wired network works good & talk to each other fine so I know its not a bad connection somewhere either.
From an earlier response, it looks like I have to have ALL devices on the same workgroup name as the WD devices. so will have to change some things around.
