MV4 Fil compatibiliy with WD HD Live

I have read a few comments in the forum regarding the ability of the  WD HD Live player to play mv4 files.  I am having no luck whatsover.

I am using Tversiy to stream to the WD HD Live player and running Windows 7 Ulitimate. The movie shows up at the WD HD Live player but the file format is incompatible.   Windows Media player won’t even play this file regardless if the extension is change to mp4 or not.  The WD HD Live player will not recognize either file extension. 

Can someone please tell me the procedure to get the WD Live player to recongize this format. Some have reported the player will play this file but I have found no way to make it work.  I am not transcoding the file inside Tversity.

The WDTV Live will definitely play M4V files when connected to a Network Share.  

However, that’s all it will do; play the file and nothing else; no FF/RW, no multiple audio track support and no resume of playback.  Change the file extension to MP4 and suddenly everything works as intended.  

TVersity should be able to stream MP4 files… I’ll double check later and see if there’s anything specific you need to do.

Much thanks but I have changed the extension and neither Twonky or Tversity has any problem getting the file to the WD player window but when that file is selected, the error message states that the file is incompatible.

I can’t determine if the problem rest with the WD player or a missing codec.  I am using Windows 7 Ultimate where the windows media player is supposed to play MP4 files but it won’t play the file either. This movie came from iTunes and as far as I know, itunes is the only user of the MV4 file and all of them are protected.  I did manage to copy this file and put in the directory where the WD Live library is located. 

Any help would be very much appreicated!

I think that this may be a DRM issue due to it coming from iTunes… if that’s the case you’re unlikely to get it playing as-is on the WDTV.  

When installing TVersity, did you also install the TVersity Codec Pack?  

The CD that comes with the WDTV has some sample media files on it, including several MP4 files.

Can you copy them into your media library and see if TVersity is able to stream those?

-edit-

Just to mention that I did try playing unprotected MP4 files via TVersity and they streamed fine.  

If you know the files are protected, you’re not going to be able to play them on the WDTV (as richUK mentions below).  The only way to get them playing would be to remove the protection, which is something you’d need to investigate outside of this forum.

If they came from iTunes and are protected then they will not play on the WDTV LIve. The unit does not play protected files.

Much thanks for the great information-.

I am disappointed that Apple is so rotten to the core that they would restrict media tviewing to an Apple device 

 We need a lot more technology and a lot less capitalizim.  

I  got the idea that M4V files were viewable with the WD player since severaql reported here that they were able to view them.  I maded the assumption that these were indeed protected iTunes type files sicne I have not seen that file extension used by anyone but iTunes. 

Thanks for the input much appreciated.

Bad Apple–Bad indeed!!! 

Well, in fact, m4v extension doesn’t imply the movie is DRMized…

For my own, i’ve sometimes converted Divx files to m4v format (via Handbrake or VideoHub) to load them on my iPhone…

That is true davenull but all of the content on iTunes that is rented is DRM protected.  By limiting the play to one viewing and only on certain devices horribly cripples their offering–but we’ll let them figure that one out in Apple time.