MAJOR BUG: HDMI Handshake Issues present in Live Hub too

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live Hub Discussions
1

Hello! WD TV Live Hub Community,

This is my first post to this community  and I must thank the community for all the tips and tricks that you have provided WD has been listening to the community users over the years and are indeed making progress with new products with new features.

BTW, I got this WD TV Live Hub Media Center  player yesterday and tinkering with it, I must say WD has indeed made some good progress in improving the User Interface,  User Customizable options and themes are indeed a good sign of progress and I am sure in few months there will be tons of themes that WD and the online community will make available making these series of Media players the best of the breed.

Now after all that praise for the Product and thanks for the community,  Let me share with you my feelings and feedback to the community with respect to WD TV Live HUB Media Center player.

The first thing I noticed that the same issue that has been a plague for the other WDTV Live Series is present in WDTV Live Hub too - Sad Very Sad

I have had experiences with WDTV Live, and WDTV Live Plus and now WDTV Live Hub and I can confirm that the HDMI handshake issue is present in the latest official FW version Release 2.02.16 (10/26/10) for the Live Hub

It is very easy to recreate the problem ( I am sure everyone who uses WDTV Live or Live Plus) also has experience the same issues in all the BETA firmwares that were sent out for WDTV Live and Live Plus.

What happens is that when the initial HDMI handshake takes place between the TV ( In my case it is Samsung HPT4254 42-Inch Plasma HDTV ) The WDTV live Hub negotiates 720p (The TV is natively 720P but capable of going up-to 1080i 60Hz) and all is well, I go into Settings and change that to 1080i 60Hz and change the the Color Space to RGB HIGH and WDTV Live Hub gladly accepts that and all is well for that instance, All I have to do to screw up this initial Handshake is to change my TV input to say " DVD" or HDMI PC, does not matter what I select, and once I come back to WDTV Live HUB vi HDMI it sometimes changes the color Space to RGB low and or drops the user settings from 1080I 60hz to 720P60Hz RGB Low, Basically attempting to re-negotiate the HDMI settings again and screws up the picture quality, BTW sometimes it drops the settings to COMPOSITE! even though it still ouputs via HDMI at a lower color space depth (RGB LOW) and lower Resolution (720P 60HZ)

This is exactly the same problem that I was experiencing with WD TV Live, and WDTV LIve Plus. I had to force downgrade the Beta firmware and put official FW 1.02.21 on the WD TV live, I am sorry, with the WDTV Live Plus none of the Official Firmware was able to do proper HDMI handshake so I returned the Live Plus promptly to the store I purchased.

It is very concerning for me that the cutting edge flagship product from WD also has this HDMI Handshake Plague.

WD Please fix this ASAP

Best wishes

2

I’m not disputing that the handshaking is an issue for you, but I do have a question…

Since all your source material is only 8-bit colour, is there any particular reason you’re trying to convert it all to 12-bit for output to your TV?

You’ll get the identical picture leaving it as 8-bit… switching to 12-bit doesn’t add colours that aren’t there… it just multiplies each 8-bit value by 16 to turn it into a 12-bit signal AFAIK – the signal still only has 256 steps for each colour register.  The 8-bit output and the 12-bit output will be visually identical.  It doesn’t seem like it would “matter” if it keeps switching back to 8-bit.

3

I am not using 12bit, Color, I am trying to use RGB High Hope this clears any confusion. My TV Does not Support 12Bit color mode anyways!

4

Sorry for the confusion on my part… “High"≠"Deep”… not enough coffee yet today, I guess. :wink:

But it does bring up my next question… since RGB low is the colour space for most TVs and RGB high is more for compatability with monitors, are you sure you need to set it to “high”?

It would seem (as a guess) that your TV is correct in its handshaking when it tells the WDTV that RGB low is the correct colour space.

5

For reference’s sake, as far as I know, the difference between “High” and “Low” is which reference levels are used for pure black and pure white.

“RGB Low” uses the standard SMPTE reference levels and “RGB High” uses PC-type reference levels.

6

IMHO, If WD TV Live Hub allows the user to set a user configurable setting to whatever he/she likes it *MUST* remember that next time HDMI handshake takes place and forget what TV HDMI or WD TV LIVE HUB HDMI re-negotiates, It is user configurable parameter and it MUST remember it even if both the units (TV or WD TV LIVE HUB) are power cycled.

My feedback to the community and WD staff is that It does not matter if RGB Color Space is Set to LOW or HIGH, The “USER Defined HDMI Settings” is not remembered by the WD TV Live HUB unit.

Also, I RGB HIGH color space IMHO provides the best picture Quality and I would like that setting to be remembered by WDTV Live HUB.

It works fine with WDTV Live with Offical FW 1.02.21, Ever since WD went with the new SDK HDMI Handshake ha been an issue.

I am sure WD Staff knows about it, I am just providing honest feedback with the BUGS that are present in the new product and really hope WD Staff reads this and fixes it.

Thanks.

7

Yes, the same HDMI handshake issues are present in the Live Hub.  

I don’t think that the EDID Handshake is used to determine Bit Depth or Color Space, though.  That’s a more generic issue that the hub just isn’t remembering the settings across reboots.  Not sure, though…

8

You’re completely right about the HDMI issue – indeed, the Live worked fine UNTIL they ported the Hub code over to it (the HDMI part, which I’m guessing was to fix any handshaking issues with Netflix).

The solution on the Hub with your Sammy is to leave it at “auto” – this should work (it does for me) but it’s not really acceptable.  And I wouldn’t hold your breath thinking WD will fix it in this lifetime.

9

Oh, I wasn’t debating the fact that there’s HDMI issues… I was just thinking that if it was reverting to “Auto” all the time (due to the HDMI issues) that the TV could be negotiating the RGB Low setting as being “correct”… that the bug isn’t necessarily setting it to “Low” itself, but the TV’s telling it to pick “Low” after the WDTV has forgotten the old chosen setting and negotiated a new one.

10

The solution on the Hub with your Sammy is to leave it at “auto” – this should work (it does for me) but it’s not really acceptable.  And I wouldn’t hold your breath thinking WD will fix it in this lifetime.

Mike “ex-genius” Kelley

Well I tried your suggestions, It still does not get 1080i/60Hz RGB High using AUTO settings, I will have to manually set it each and every time I power off the TV or change TV Inputs, It sometimes defaults to COMPOSITE or some arbitrary resolution (Most of the time it is 720P/50Hz RGB Low 8-bit Color)

The most annoying part  is that, I watch some movie on the WDTV Live HUB, Pause the movie, try to check on news on the TV by changing the TV input , and when i go back to the movie, the WD TV Live HUB looses it’s HDMI settings and defaults to COMPOSITE, I will have to go to the settings menu and change it to 1080i/60Hz *AGAIN*.

This is very bad BUG. Does any one have link to download the original firmware 2.02.15 that WD ships with the WD TV Live HUB somewhere that I can download? - I just wanted to see if that made any difference.

Thanks!

11

They didn’t ship 2.02.15.   They shipped 2.01.05, and it’s no better.

12

They didn’t ship 2.02.15.   They shipped 2.01.05, and it’s no better.

I thought so, but just wanted to give it a try…

Oh well, I just wanted to see if anyone has some other FW to try, Once you upgrade to the latest currently available for download, there is no way to get back to 2.01.05 that was originally shipped. I was just hoping if someone has that old firmware to download.

Thanks!

13

Is the GPL Code zip file found here: which has WDTV_LiveHub_GPL_package_2.01.05.zip file contains a Launcher firmware for wdtvlivehub_2.01.05 is that same as the official FW that was shipped before I upgraded to the current FW 2.02.16

I feel that the Launcher FW is different from official FW can anyone confirm this?

I just need to try  2.01.05 old firmware for multiple reasons and issues that I am having. Granted that HDMI handshake issue may not have been fixed in 2.01.05 release, but I just need old FW for comparison of bugs fixed or bugs introduced.

14

NO.   The LAUNCHER FIRMWARE is NOT the “Regular” firmware.

DO NOT LOAD IT.   It will permanently disable some (unknown) features on the hub.

15

:angry:

Chicken or egg situation until the next firmware is released and we will never know when the new FW will be released either wherein the HDMI Handshake issues will be hopefully resolved for WD TV LIVE Hub, or what were broken when they went to 2.01.05, ***bleep*** it I shouldn’t have not upgraded to the latest release FW

Oh well, Ever since Release 1.02.21 (3/30/10) for WDTV Live product there has been *NO* stable release for the entire product line with respect to HDMI Handshake issues My patience is running out… with respect to HDMI handshake issue.

Sorry dear WD Community, It is *DEAL BREAKER* for me, Time is running out too… Time to return the WD TV LIVE HUB and get my hard earned dollars back before it gets too late to return.

Thanks for all your suggestions and comments - Greatly appreciated!.

16

I contacted WD support on this regard, I got reply from WD Customer support that 

“your issue has been forwarded to the WD TV Live Hub Engineering for review” … “If there is a resolution it may come in the form of a firmware update”…

“She will be coming around the mountain when she comes… Hee Haaa” … She will be coming around the mountain when she comes… Heee Haa…

:smileyvery-happy:

17

I understand that as of  (12/30/10) FW Release 2.03.24 the release notes does not mention about any HDMI handshake issue fixes, but my observations are

1. IT is still broken, It still sporadically reverts to RGB LOW color Space and or detects my TV as 720P/60Hz RGB Low

2. The new Auto Frame rate feature is known to force 8-bit color as per the release notes, However, this has broken the 12-bit color mode completely (Even if you do not use the Auto Frame Rate feature) ,BTW, Firmware  2.02.19 used to automatically revert back to 8-bit when “Not Supported” message used to come on my TV, but with FW 2.03.24 it just takes it and does not do anything and stays in 8-bit mode.

Hope someone from WD  reads this. 

18

sry if the question offends, but why would you want to use RGB high/enhanced and/or 12Bit?

ALL dvds and blurays are 8bit and YUV.

only content that you produce yourself has 4:4:4 or such things.

if you think that your tv looks better with RGB high and 12Bit,

then you’re not a cineast, because thats not what the director had in mind.

19

No offense taken, But IMHO my Samsung HPT4254 42-Inch Plasma HDTV Videos looks even better (Better blacks) when used with RGB High, BTW my TV does not support 12-bit color anyways and I am not really keen on that, I just wanted WDTVLIVE HUB to remember user defined settings which sadly it does not and it is a BUG

— Best wishes —

20

Yesterday I tried this (and it works)

I had the same problems with the resolution of the hdmi-output and i reset the wd tv live hub in the system settings. After the reboot I set the hdmi-output to 1920x1080@60Hz and switched the hub of.

Now it works perfekt for me! Also after a “coldboot” remained the hdmi-setting at 1920x1080@60Hz!

Greetings from Cologne (Germany)!