I purchased this WD TV less than a month ago and it consistently and without fail freezes up within a couple minutes of simply opening my Video folder. If I just boot up and stay on the homescreen it doesn’t seem to freeze, but as soon as I open a folder, it’s freeze time. I recently received an exchange thinking the original one was a bad unit and right out of the box I have the same issue. :(
To clarfiy: If I open my Video folder (from my local external hard drive) the entire system will freeze up and nothing can be done until I reboot the device. If I open a video file right after booting up, the video will start, but within minutes although the video continues to play, I have no control over anything and can’t pause, fast forward, rewind, change videos etc. and I either have to play the video through, change the input on the TV or unplug the WD TV to turn it off.
The WD TV is well ventilated, I tried several factory resets, tried new batteries and now two new WD TVs., but absolutely nothing works and I can’t avoid the system freezing. Before I return both devices for a full refund and go back to my WD TV Live, I wanted to see if there was something that can be done to solve my issue.
FYI there is only one original firmware for this device that I’m aware of, so there is nothing to downgrade.
Thanks! I tried numerous other movies, but not other hard/thumb drives since I’ve used this 2TB external harddrive with practically every other WD TV version out there without issue. Plus it freezes up if I just open my movie folder and take a couple minutes to choose a movie. Do you really think it’s the harddrive or do you think it would make a difference if I connected the harddrive to the front USB port?
I did a scan (there were errors, but they were fixed), I also tried the front USB port, I made sure my external drive is set to never sleep and everything seemed great until I actually tried to play the first video. Now the video is playing with the circle arrow in the middle of the screen with no way to pause, stop or do anything to the video unless I want to unplug the WD TV to reboot it.
I don’t know how long I’ll be able to put up with this.
I have the same problem on WD TV Live. It worked great for couple of years. Recently, though, I get the “arrow of death” - frozen round arrow while audio and sound are playing from WD passport connected via usb. The unit does not respond to the remote. U have to unplug and reboot.
The oldest box has no problems, it plays fine. But the newer two boxes (2013 onwards) exhibit this. I just purchased the latest box and that exhibits the same problem. It appears that there is something in the box that has changed. I have tried without network and often encountered the same problem, though I can not yet swear to it.
Strange thing is there is not change in the network or anything that I can pin point. Your help will be appreciated.
The tech support, when I called yesterday, said she never heard of this and provided an rma to replace the latest device. I am planning to return to place of purchase for full refund.
That’s exactly my issue when it didn’t flat freeze up in the video folder. Best of luck!
UPDATE: I tried everything and WD customer service was pretty useless, so I decided to cut my losses and returned the WD TVs to Amazon for a full refund. Thank goodness Amazon pays for return shipping, so all I’m out of is some time and a bit of frustration.
Plus the new WD TV wasn’t drastically different from (or better than) the Live Streaming and the remote didn’t change at all. The only things about it that I’ll slightly miss are Miracast (which seemed to work pretty well) and the simplified customizable home screen, but with my Chromecast and use of favorites on the Live Streaming, I will survive.
Considering I’ve had just about every iteration of WD TV since it first came out, I will cross my fingers and hope that the next version has drastic improvements, fixes these issues and offers better/more services.
