I got this device because my Media Center Extender just couldn’t handle streaming my DVD and BD conversions (although it works fine with recorded HDTV programs, go figure). I read up on the device and it looked like the right solution. My desktop PC (Windows 7-64) has several hard drives in it, one of which I use for all my converted discs. I connected up the WD Live Plus and after putting its Mac address into my router it connected to the network fine. I can see it on the PC and I can also see my network shares on it. The are several problems.
I can’t see all my files in My Movies folder on my E: drive and it doesn’t update (newly added files don’t show up and some old ones don’t show up). Depending on how I navigate, sometimes I can see the folders, but when I select them I get the “No Media in Current Folder” warning or only half of what’s in there shows up. This mostly happens when using the Network Shares browser. When using the Media Servers browser I can usually see the folders, but not all the contents are displayed. Some of the missing files are mpg, mkv and mp4 files, which I know are supported.
Many of the files that do show up play without audio regardless of whether I am using the digital out to my 5.1 receiver or the HDMI audio into my HDTV. I encode my files with AAC and AC3 5.1 soundtracks and I’ve gotten some to play with both types, so it isn’t a codec issue. I did make some tests using .ts format and they play and sound great, but when I tried to add a few more to try different encoding settings and formats, they won’t show up in the library on the device.
When I play recorded programs from Media Center on the device they stutter and stall. Not a big issue as I don’t think the format is supported and I still have my extender for those, but it would be nice to eliminate the extender if I could.
I really want to keep this device, but it is driving me crazy not being able to figure this out. I do not have the logon problem so many others have and stuff on my C: drive is readily accessible. I’ve tried resetting the device twice, but nothing changes. I have the latest update and my network works fine on the other 2 computers connected to it. Any ideas? Thanks.
Been playing around with different settings and suggestions from other threads. Now, I can no longer see anything on my network as a Media Server when I could before. Using the Network Shares browser I can see my desktop PC, but sometimes it shows only 7 folders, others it shows 12 and ocassionally it shows all 14. Still, when I select a folder I know has medis files in it, I get the “No Media Found” message BS. I can see now why every one of these things at Fry’s was in an opened/returned package. What a frustrating POS device this is.
In looking through the settings I noticed where it asks for a Workgroup name. Since Windows 7 no longer uses Workgroup names in favor of the Homegroup architecture, I wonder if there’s an issue of compatibility here. Since the majority of complaints have to do with network problems, primarily, missing shared items, it appears to me that this device/firmware is not communicating properly with Windows 7. I’m going to fiddle with it some more, but if I don’t end up getting it working or destroying it in a rage, it will be going back to Fry’s to join the others that probably were returned for good reason.
Say what you want, but my Linksys extender, while not performing as expected, never had problems with finding media on my PC.:manmad:
Well, I managed to make some progress. It appears that the main issue with sharing was related to the password logon. After resetting it to manual and clearing the info, I logged on and can now see all my Media Shares. However, I still can’t see any Media Servers, which I could when I first connected the device. I still have problems with audio on mkv, mp4 and mov files and on my mpg and ts files that do have audio it is badly out of sync. This is true regardless of wheyher I use HDMI audio or optical audio direct to my receiver. I’m going to play around with it some more, but any suggestions are appreciated.
I moved some video files from my hard drive to my external drive. The WD Live could see them all before but now it has trouble seeing the files in a folder on the external drive. It can see some, but not all. They are avi format so it should pick them up. It has no trouble playing them if I put them on a usb stick and playing directly from there.
I also found that streaming large files (7Gig mkv) from Win 7’s media player causes a big reduction in quality. of the playback. If I play the same file from the same locatioon (external drive) by using the media server option on the WD Live it’s perfect !
But i can’t figure out why it can’t see some files in that same directory. They are all shared etc
