The decision to provide Iview service by WD appears to have a sales basis.
My main reason for the purchase was Iview compatability. As a shift worker the loss of this service has been inconvenient.
While I believe there will be resolution provided sometime, the commitment shown does not appear to match that of some of WD’s competitors, people will drift away and purchase other devices. I am looking at upgrading my TV now to a smart model which also offers SBS on demand and other Australian services .- Now if they were to add some additional Australian services when they repair the Iview issues then that would go some way to appeasing my current disappointment in the WD brand.
Sydney Australia, 6 June 2012 - Western Digital®, a world leader in external storage solutions and maker of the popular WD TV media player family, today announced the addition of the popular ABC iview service to its current models of WD TV® Live™ and WD TV® Live Hub™ products. Committed to providing the greatest variety of entertainment for its customers, WD responded to customer feedback calling for iview compatibility. The highly requested service joins an already impressive range of premium content offerings including YouTube™, Spotify™, DailyMotion, Vimeo®, PlayJam, Picasa Web Albums™, TuneIn Radio and MLB.TV®, as well as the recently announced AOL HD™ and Red Bull TV™ service.
“WD continuously listens to its customers, and is always looking for ways to add the entertainment options they want,” said Craig Davis, Director Sales & Marketing, Retail Division, Western Digital Asia Pacific & Japan region. “With today’s addition of the ABC iview service, a free internet content service offering full-screen video on-demand, the WD TV Live and WD TV Live Hub players provide ever increasing entertainment options to the Australian market.”
Pleased to announce that I receieved an email from WD support today.
“All issues with the ABC iView have been resolved from their end and our media players should work fine with this service without requiring any updates. If you are still experiencing issues with the iView service, please reset your unit back to factory settings by holding the reset button underneath the unit for 5 seconds with a paperclip or pin, the unit will reboot within 2-3 minutes and the service should be accessible afterwards.”
Haven’t been able to verify the result but Thankyou WD Support (in advance).
Does anyone with any pull monitor these forums, or is this just a place for users to gripe about the lack of support offered by WD?
Can we expect any word, officially or unofficially, that WD will be offering a fix for this iView problem?
“Passing on the information to support” is a rather lacklustre attempt at pushing your company for a resolution.
It seems we live in an age of buck passing and zero accountability. WD blames iView (correct, it is their ‘fault’ because of the SSL vulnerability change, but you have a responsibilty to fix your end to keep it compatible with the service that you used to lure buyers to your product. It was mutually beneficial at sales time, now you should support your product.)
In the end, I think it’s rather poor that this has gone on for so long. It would be (I believe, without having intimate knowledge of the firmware code) rather simple to code a fix for this.
This hasn’t put me off WD for good, it’s still an excellent media player, even if I did roll back the firmware due to the UI slowing down greatly, however it seems a very poor time for WD to be dropping the ball on support. There are myriad new generation media players that really starting to lift their game and offer serious competition to WD live steaming, and when it comes time for an upgrade in a year or so, I hope WD has taken a good look at these forums for feedback.
Can I suggest engaging a little more on the forums would be a great start?
Zero communication won’t help customer loyalty any more than bad firmware will.
Does anyone with any pull monitor these forums, or is this just a place for users to gripe about the lack of support offered by WD?
Can we expect any word, officially or unofficially, that WD will be offering a fix for this iView problem?
“Passing on the information to support” is a rather lacklustre attempt at pushing your company for a resolution.
It seems we live in an age of buck passing and zero accountability. WD blames iView (correct, it is their ‘fault’ because of the SSL vulnerability change, but you have a responsibilty to fix your end to keep it compatible with the service that you used to lure buyers to your product. It was mutually beneficial at sales time, now you should support your product.)
In the end, I think it’s rather poor that this has gone on for so long. It would be (I believe, without having intimate knowledge of the firmware code) rather simple to code a fix for this.
This hasn’t put me off WD for good, it’s still an excellent media player, even if I did roll back the firmware due to the UI slowing down greatly, however it seems a very poor time for WD to be dropping the ball on support. There are myriad new generation media players that really starting to lift their game and offer serious competition to WD live steaming, and when it comes time for an upgrade in a year or so, I hope WD has taken a good look at these forums for feedback.
Can I suggest engaging a little more on the forums would be a great start?
Zero communication won’t help customer loyalty any more than bad firmware will.
Final question: When can we expect a fix?
We moderators monitor this forum every day. It’s our job. Any product issue we encounter, we pass along to support. Support verifies that it is an issue and then passes it along to the product people. In the process of doing all this, we may need to contact the users for more information, replicate the issue, or get logs. It will always take time. If it turns out that there needs to be a firmware update to fix it, that will take even longer.
All I can say is that support has passed this along to the product people for them to look into. It’s an issue and it’s being taken serious. I cannot give you a timeline on when it will be fixed. All I can do is repeat that we haven’t let it fall through the cracks to be forgotten. Once we know something that we can report, we will let you know.
Hi I am new to this so if I am in the wrong place or am posting incorrectly, sorry. My WDLive also can’t do iView any more and on checking the firmware update it says it is up to date with 2.02.32 but elswhere on this forum it suggests that the latest firmware to fix iview is 1.02.17. Is that correct, is it really a later version, does it work and if so why doesn’t the WD live automatically find and download it?. Very disapointed this has taken so long as iView is about the only streaming content worth watching. Very disapointed that SBS, 10play and 7plus are not going to be added. The lack of Australian content makes the box much less useful.
It will always take time. If it turns out that there needs to be a firmware update to fix it, that will take even longer.
All I can say is that support has passed this along to the product people for them to look into.
It would be great if Western Digital was able to move swiftly in rectifying this iView SSL/TLS issue.
Rather than a firmware update, would a patch be feasible? If it were, it should be easy to create and beta test.
I’d have no trouble getting you the email addresses of 10 beta testers!
Could you suggest the patch idea to your product people, perhaps along with a gentle reminder that iView has not been working for the entire Christmas / school / summer holidays here in Australia?
There are currently no issues with ABC iView with any of our products. We’ve had reports from a few customers regarding this matter but this is usually resolved with a firmware update or a factory reset. If you have tried this and this does not resolve your issue, it is likely that the device is defective and will need to be replaced. To process a replacement for yours, we will require your phone, address and serial number of your product and we’ll be happy to process an RMA in order to replace the unit.
Sincerely,
XXXXX
Western Digital Service and Support
____________________________________________
Thanks for trying Bill.
It appears the service and support team aren’t very coordinated, and that this issue only has a slim possibility of being fixed before the unit becomes end of life.
It’s a great little unit but unfortunately isn’t as well supported as it could be.
Folks - I’ve been tracking this for ages. I should qualify that this is only as I understand it, but I believe it’s accurate:
Yes, it’s a problem with the WD TV Live firmware only - it occurred in Nov last year when ABC updated their security protocols. The firmware of a number of devices was updated to match it (PS3 for example) but the WD TV Live was missed.
WD have agreed to an update and there was actually a post on the ABC site late Nov apologising for the problem with this device and advising that WD were working on a firmware fix that would be available in December.
I mailed WD support a few days ago asking about it, as clearly said fix has not arrived, and received this:
“I apologize for the inconvenient you have experience with the applications on your WDTV device. We are currently working on a solution for this issue as its been reported by some of the users, we will keep you informed of the progress.”
When I pressed for a specific date/timeline, the response was:
“Unfortunately we don’t have an specific time frame for the ABC I-View issue.”
Atrocious spelling and grammar aside, it appears they do know about it, they are working on it, but we’re just going to have to wait to get it based on WD tech’s priority list I guess.
Hope that helps everyone that’s been as frustrated as I was and also spent hours investigating and pulling our networks apart to try to figure out why this thing didn’t work any more, only to find it wasn’t anything to do with us.
I’ve bought another device now as WD doesn’t support Plex anyway. I reckon if iView still isn’t working by the end of this month, I’ll go find something else that’ll do that too and just ditch the WD box as I’m over this. My once beloved WD TV Live boxes will be more use to me as doorstops soon …
They’re not working on a fix Dave, they have no idea what they’re doing. How can someone who can’t grasp proper grammar code properly?
Without having intimate knowledge of the code, I’m guessing it would be a rather trivial matter to change it from a SSL to a TLS handshake.
I mean how hard can it be?
I would expect that a large company like Western Digital would have the resources and skills to manage and fix an issue like this in a timely manner. Once reports start trickling in of an issue, it’s up to support to provide the information to the relevant department and have them act on it.
I would expect that 2 weeks is an acceptable timeframe for a fix to be released once the issue was clearly identified, which was mid November, about 2 weeks after the switch occurred.
It’s now late January and the issue hasn’t been resolved, and worse, the support department seems to be unclear as to whether this is an issue or not.
With cheap boxes like Chromecast and android mini tv sticks becoming more mainstream, and much more well supported, I doubt my next purchase will be a next gen WDTV.
They are a great unit, but need to be much better supported in order to compete with the new generation of media players available nowadays.
Well … an update after posting my note last week … and one I didn’t honestly think I’d ever be posting.
WD support contacted me privately, said they were sorry I was having such trouble with my devices (I have two of the older gen WD TV Live Streaming boxes) and have offered under their RMA program to replace them free of charge. They’re even sending a FedEx courier to pick up my old ones so I don’t have to pay any postage at all either way.
Amazing.
I’m still pinching myself to see if it’s real but they’ve sent me RMA certificates already and I’ve been promised a call from FedEx in a few days to pick up the old ones for replacement.
WD support - it took you a while - but thanks for looking after a long time customer at last. Much appreciated.
I look forward to using iView once more on the next gen devices when I receive them!
I’ve been waiting watching this thread patiently and had ALL but given up on WD (I’m in the same boat as you and My I view with WD TV Live hasn’t works since November - real pain since that was the main motivation for getting it in the firat place!!)
Do you have a contact email to WD Support so that I (and perhaps others in the same boat ) can email WD directly and that way perhaps circumvent the long wait for WD to act by its self if at all?
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