martinmarty wrote:
- I have no idea how many of these boxes they’ve sold. Maybe there are millions of people using it without problems and only a few of us that seem to be out here all the time. With consumer electronics as with other products, people aren’t going to join a forum and post comments about how great it works. Only people experiencing problems seem to congregate to discuss, so it’s easy to get the idea that “everyone is having problems with the new release”. Go check a forum about a cable TV box or a router and you’ll feel a similar mood, at least in my experience. What’s that old saying about a happy customer tells one person but a pissed off customer tells 10? Something like that.
Here’s the thing. It’s certainly very possible that only the people who come here are experiencing problems. But it’s unlikely. What’s far more likely is that while only people who have problems bother to come here, there are many many people experiencing problems who don’t know the forum exists. Some probably call tech support. Many others just return the box, or if its older just stop using it.
The one thing that’s definite is that many of the issues are not subjective. Oh, they vary in how they affect people, that’s true, but that’s because people’s USE of the box varies, not because the bugs are all inherently intermittent (because some are, but many aren’t).
When I can give you a distinct set of things to do that I’m pretty darn sure will cause you problems… then that’s a real bug, not smoke. Want an example?
1.) If you don’t already have one, create a YouTube account. Log in via your Web Browser.
2.) Turn on your WD (this presumes firmware 2.02.32) and enter the YouTube Leanback app. Log in to your YouTube account.
3.) Now PAIR the Leanback app to your Desktop instance (this is different from merely logging in). The directions on how to do this are contained in the Sign In - Settings area in Leanback.
4.) Now on your Desktop instance find a very long video. 40 min or longer (so a TV show or movie, and even better if it’s a higher res). In fact, ideally find several of them and shove them all in your playback queue. Then, right there in your desktop web browser is a little option in the playback window to transfer the playback to your WD player (it’s located in the same place as the Full Screen option–which now should have two options to either do full screen on your PC, or to transfer the video to the paired playback device). Do so. And then sit back and watch some YouTube videos on your TV.
5.) Exit Leanback afterwards and you’ll notice the Interface now crawls (because leaving Leanback didn’t release the system resoruces). You may also get a system message about being low on memory.
Now the above may happen with a lot less being done. PAIRing the devices I’m not sure is necessary. It may happen with only a single long video, and I can’t say I’m positive you actuallly have to watch them all the way through. But the reason I’ve laid the steps out as described above is that I know that particular sequence and conditions lead to the problem. It should be duplicatable by anyone.
Again, I am not saying there aren’t uncountable numbers of people with no problems. Just that if so, it’s because they aren’t using Leanback in this way (although remember there are many other bugs in 2.02.32 – this is just me describing a single one that’s consistent as an example).