It's finally over

Dear Western Digital,

It’s been a long day and I’m very tired, but before I go to bed this evening, I wanted to take the time to congratulate you for having built what is truly the worst piece of consumer electronics I have ever used – the WD TV Live Media Player.  Not only is it the worst device I have ever used, you have managed to create something that has sucked countless hours, even days of my life away from me, in the quest to ‘just get that one thing working’.  And in so doing I have been robbed (admittedly because of my own persistence) of precious time with my children, my wife, and my friends, time that I will never get back.  

But first, a bit about me.  I am in my thirties with a masters degree, gainfully employed and happily married with two beautiful children.  I have enjoyed working and tinkering with computers and consumer electronics since the mid-1980s, and while not overly technical, I pride myself on a general ability to ‘sort out’ software and hardware issues with electronics, be they my own, or those of friends and family.

As such, I wasn’t too worried when your device failed to detect my ethernet connection when I first plugged it in.  I tinkered with the manual settings and achieved success, and eventually auto-detection began working sporadically (I never could figure out why).  When it failed to find my NAS – no worries! – I tinkered some more, and eventually by disabling my windows server and setting up a linux server, somehow was able to start streaming files to the device.  I never could figure out how to get digital audio for my Vudu or Netflix accounts out of the s/pidf port, but hey, stereo is OK too I guess.  The intermittent network conflicts with my Squeezebox and my wife’s iPad were annoying, but it wasn’t that big a deal to reset things from time to time.  And when the audio from locally stored home video was horribly out of sync, hey, I recorded it myself so really, I knew what everyone was saying anyway.  

Even the constant resetting and loss of accounts, and rebuilding of media libraries wasn’t that bad – I did it so many times that I got to the point that I could set everything up in a half hour or so – although by then guests tended to have lost interest.  Bleary eyed, I have trawled your support forums and the internet for countless hours late at night, seeking solutions for all sorts of issues this device had.  I could go on and on about the ways in which this device has sucked my life away over the past year, but what I really wanted to share was about the firmware update process.  It really is ingenious – every update a tantalizing promise of a fix for one or more unremedied problems, and yet invariably the creation of several new ones that sent me back to the support forums seeking new answers.  The wave of joy I rode after each successful update was amazing, only followed more spectacularly by my crash into depression upon the discovery of even more problems.  But finally, I came to version 1.11.14.  I tried to download it so many times, and each time got so tantalizingly close – 93% – that I thought surely I was meant to have it.  But it was not to be, and I never was able to overcome the ‘network connection error’, despite seventeen attempts, interspersed with hard and soft resets, manual attempts, and everything else your support forum suggested.  

So why am I writing all this to you?  Well, as I said in the beginning, I am amazed at how poorly this device works, but even moreso at how such a device could be so engrossing as to consume a fully grown and reasonably intelligent man for so many hours with such futility.  But more importantly, I wanted to provide you with the picture below to let you know that I did in fact determine a way to gain satisfaction from your device.  I will admit it is a bit unconventional, but it is amazing how cathartic taking it down to my garage has been, and carefully smashing it to smithereens.  

Now I don’t want other consumers to be deprived of the joy of owning such an amazing device, so I hope you don’t mind that I plan to let others know about it.  And no, there’s no need to thank me – the simple act of destroying the thing that has tortured me for so long has already provided me enough pleasure.  To be sure, my victory is somewhat Pyrrhic, but at least I can rest comfortably knowing that it’s all over now. 

Regards,

Jim

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We are sorry it go to this point. Not sure if you contacted support for assistance. One of our representatives will be contacting you as soon as possible.

Thank you Robothief.  Surprisingly, I got a call this evening from a WD representative who wanted to discuss the issues I was having with the product.  I say surprisingly not because I didn’t think they would reach out, but because I never provided a phone number (or the old mailing address which he also somehow had)…

Anyway, the rep was apologetic and offered a free replacement unit, or any WD product currently for sale.  [edited]  Given my experience it will be a while before I consider a WD product again, but for those of you reading, for what it’s worth they really did try to make it right.

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I am glad to be able to help. 

Have a nice one.

I have gone through the exact same thing that this guy has.  I will be backing over mine with the car in the next week, will make sure to post a link to the video.

Thanks

Why not do it today, I’m sure it will make you feel better and then you can get on with your life.

I second that emotion.

I am in my 40s. I’ve worked with computers all of my working career and before.  I’m not big noting myself but I started out in robotics and have architected some moderately sized systems and as such I have an understanding about how computers work. Which is how I am amazed in this day and age at how badly this device doesn’t work.

At first I thought the laggy response was the wireless connection so I hard wired the network. Still laggy, unresponsive and keeps hanging. It’s not hot at all so I’m at a loss. I will take it back and either swap it for Apple TV or go back to a PC in the loungeroom which is not what I really want to do.

I haven’t even got to my own media content yet so I won’t bore you but iView constantly hangs and is unresponsive.

Good luck all other uses. I hope you’re having more luck than me

marklalor wrote:

I second that emotion.

 

I am in my 40s. I’ve worked with computers all of my working career and before.  I’m not big noting myself but I started out in robotics and have architected some moderately sized systems and as such I have an understanding about how computers work. Which is how I am amazed in this day and age at how badly this device doesn’t work.

 

At first I thought the laggy response was the wireless connection so I hard wired the network. Still laggy, unresponsive and keeps hanging. It’s not hot at all so I’m at a loss. I will take it back and either swap it for Apple TV or go back to a PC in the loungeroom which is not what I really want to do.

 

I haven’t even got to my own media content yet so I won’t bore you but iView constantly hangs and is unresponsive.

 

Good luck all other uses. I hope you’re having more luck than me

 

well network connection problems while using a wired connection is not normal…

Can the device play the files fine when using an USB drive?

You could have a misconfigured network, network issues or a bad unit

Phew, its a relief to see this post and realise that its not just me.

I have been wanting to throw this kit out of a very high window since I bought it. I was even stupid enough to buy the Live Duo as well and I should have returned both within a day but my logic was the following…

I never believe people who have bad experiences on TripAdvisor if the posting is so bad it becomes unbelievable; it could not possibly be that bad I think.

The real problem was their network / competance / patience / expectation because no company would produce kit that was so far below that which was advertised. 

I however have a great network, I have an electronics degree, I have spent 10 years writing one piece of software, I know that kit always has its weaknesses. So none of the above applies to me.

I should have realised that all the very clever people posting fixes on these forums, rebuilding the Linux distros, rebuilding the devices etc are people who love to burn time on things for their own sake. Yes it is probably possible to get it working, sort of. But really, if you have / want a life, for example if you wanted to watch your own kids on videos from the past that are stored on your MBLD and shown on yout TV Live, you dont want to spend an hour every time diagnosing the latest problem.

The Netflix thing is a joke, that has been posted elsewhere.

No 4OD, what are you thinking WD? 

No ability to add new channels as they come available, what?

But the one thing that works is BBC iPlayer. OK its an expensive iplayer device but at least I can watch things on a big screen at the click of a few buttons.

Until today, that now runs so slowly that even the device comes up with an error eventually saying “Oh well, you might as well give up on me, I just cant keep up”.

This is the final straw, its going under the hammer, and even its demise has taken me time to execute in the form of this cathartic post.

Come fellow frustrated TV Livers, liberate yourselves, get the hammer out and discover you can have a life after all.

PS. I have not posted this to get the WD freebies, for the sake of my sanity I never want to see another WD device, ever.

WDTV SMP, the destroyer of time.

Robothief…honestly, I love what the WDTV is supposed to do…but I owned one for 7 months, and I restarted, reset , and reconfigured it so many times, only to accumulate issues, that it got really creepy. I bought the device in the US and brought it to Argentina…It worked well for a few months, but then it started acting weird. 1st, taking forever to index USB HD everytime it turned on, then starting to loose image (hard reset required), then not picking up the network videos when hitting play (power removal required for it to start working again).

With the new firmwares pumping in, some of the issues vanished, some new arised or swifted into something else.

Until suddenly, the network playing thru windows shares of any video files (which is the main reason I bought it), became impossible, as sttutering happenned every 10 seconds for any type of video files.

Finally, after a lot of reasearch, I downgraded the firmware to the original *out of the box* firmware. Now I can see videos, but for some, cannot fast forward, rewind or select to go to an especific time. Also, I cannot resume playing, cause it never brings the video, and I have to start from 00 every video. I guess I can live with this, but honestly, I do not know what kind of QA testing is done every time you release a new firmware, but clearly, it is horrible. I cannot understand how with every new firmware that is released, more trouble than solutions are deployed…

Sincerely, a WDTV fan, that is not that much of a fan anymore.

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I understand your frustration.

I have passed your information to one of our specialist to contact you and help you with your device.

Thank you for your patience.

I should have read these posts before buying thei Piece of ****… worked well only for 2 weeks now this thing  has become  very very slow. have done few resets nad has not helped,

WD  PLEASE tell the user base that ther eis a problem that you are working on it at least… (I have used WD products for 12 years and this thing is making me wonder whether ED is starting to go backwrds.)

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I can verify everything on this thread. Have worked in computers for 20+ years and I cannot get this god-awful thing to work. It’s slow, it freezes, it does my head in. I’m sorry I bought it. Netflix and YouTube are unusable yet they work perfectly on every other device in the house. The hub’s ability to read my brand-new hard drive seems to depend on the day of the week.

Right at this moment I’m waiting for the hub to jump up the one level from the YouTube root menu to the hub menu. 2 minutes and counting.

WD please give us some hope and let us know you’re working in this! Otherwise I have to go and find my hammer.

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I also have one of these gems.

Bought it about 7 months ago and I must say that this is the WORST product I have ever seen.

I have always been a supporter of WD products but this device has turned me away from WD FOR GOOD!

I will be hard pressed to buy ANYTHING from WD again. I’m sorry WD you have lost a long time customer.

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Wow, I pictured my WD box in a smashed state so many times since I bought it! I had tried to convince my wife that this was a good product but with daily device resets (power off/on) due to constant freezing, slooooow scrolling, netflix crashing, my wife has come to hate WD and makes a point of telling everyone we know when we mention our TV.

I had bought this box thinking it would be an improvement over my 1st gen wd box but I am shocked to see such a mediocre product has made it passed quality control.

I will surely not purchase wd again!

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Catharsis,

      That was awsome. I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed reading feedback as much as I enjoyed what you wrote, and the photo just made it that much better.

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Is it just me or is anyone else having horrible problemd with HULU! It stutters, it freezes, sometimes it only loads audio wih no video.

Is it jusr me?

Is there a fix?

What device are you using?

It’s actually been helpful to read this thread, and the hundreds of posts about slow/freezing activity. I bought mine almost a year ago, with a 3TB Passport, intending to move my library to the external, sit it down next to the TV hooked directly through this box, and have access to my media library. That was the dream. Like the other commenters here, I’m enough of a techie to know when I’m screwing up and when the product is, and this was utterly incapable of doing the job.

What does the WD Live need? :
The ability to deal with failure to play a file much much MUCH faster. A greatly increased processing speed in every respect. The ability to upgrade and improve its codec/format library. This thing is almost useless, and freezes/crashes 8/10 times I try to use it. The cheapest 5 year-old laptop can find, access, and play files with a hundred times the speed, success rate, and reliability of this device. A new laptop like my wife’s Asus with HDMI output is the true amazing solution to the problem this device was supposed to handle. Keep in mind that this is all wired, easy stuff. No network, no streaming, no wireless: read the WD drive you’re plugged in to and play the file, or tell me QUICKLY that you can’t. That’s all.

The WD is slower than any device should ever be, slower than I could have believed possible. Every time the 3 TB Passport is reattached to it it takes over 15 minutes to rescan the drive and give me browsing options. Every time it is asked to play a file it can’t (all formats it supposedly handles, but apparently codecs it doesn’t know–and of course, all files a computer using Media Player Classic can play effortlessly), it takes over 30-60 MINUTES to finally give up and either let me try another file, or (just as often) freezes so hard I have to unplug it and wait while it not only boots up but laboriously reads every last file on my external drive again… which amounts to a good hour just to try to play a file. It’s incredible, and gives me endless rage and headaches, so I put it away after fighting with it for months. Life’s too short.

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