[EDIT - conclusion]
The Netflix HDMI issue was not solved. But, we have decided to keep the WD Hub and will not be sending it back. After talking about it, we concluded it is the absolute best at what it does. I don’t think we will find anything better at this point in time and we’ve fallen ‘in love’ with it overall. The solution to our problem follows. If we do want to watch Netflix, we will use component video instead of HDMI. As one of the posters mentioned below, there will be no noticeable quality hit using component video for this medium. We have concluded, the small compromise in convenience of switching inputs will not be a deal breaker. I am personally glad we are keeping the WD hub, we really do like it a lot
[ORIGINAL unedited follows]
First of all, kudos on the WD TV Live Hub; it is a great device. However, we have Netflix/HDMI issues. Everything works except Netflix. I bought this to replace a Panasonic Blue Ray player. I never had any issues with Netflix playing over HDMI with the Panasonic device; It always worked. Our TV (a Panasonic tbm2ax01801) is able to handshake with Netflix on other devices via HDMI. But, we were dissatisfied with the Panasonic blue ray player because it started to break down after 1.5 years; auto rebooting / quitting out of Netflix movies, etc… On the WD Media Hub, all internet services such as you tube work. We can also use the Netflix queue; view recent items, Netflix suggestions, etc… But, when we attempt to play actual content from Netflix, we see the following… Loading progress bar, black screen (2 seconds), snow (2 seconds), actual move content (1 second), snow (2 seconds), actual move content (1 second), and so on… I have spent over 8 hours scanning all message boards and this seems to be a problem with many of these WD units. Composite cables are an unacceptable solution due to aesthetics; my entertainment center is a TV on a wall, a glass shelf, and this device. During my research, this seems to be a problem others have experienced so I assume there is no solutions on the horizon… I place the primary blame on the MPAA but, it is within WD’s grasp to fix this problem; technical resources need to be thrown at the issue. Alternatively, there should be a compatibility page on the WD site along with places where these units are sold. Either a global stmt such as “Does not work well with manuf XYZ”, or “Does not work well with HDMI spec version x.xx” etc. That all said, I will unfortunately return this. Other than this one issue, this device is outstanding. On a side note, I’m a programmer and will say your guys have done a brilliant job with this device. The only thing I would add is a few suggestions. 1. Enable the customization & removal of items from the main user shell. If we were going to keep the unit, we wouldn’t want to see so many of the items such as RSS, Games, WD special offers, etc…). Although the green, red, yellow, blue, 1-10 hot buttons would have taken care of much of the navigation. 2. Make it so the web interface to the device can control every function including entering account log in info for services, removing and modifying interface items, assigning hot buttons, etc… PS: I primarily blame the MPAA for this inconvenience. Their paranoid copy protection schemes will never stop the pirates who are much smarter and have more time than the mpaa. But, this paranoia inflicts huge quantities of frustration on paying customers. WD and Netflix must also take part of the blame for not spending the resources on these issues and not being very clear about what exactly is the problem. For instance, what HDMI spec does it work with/not work with. etc…
