Guide bookmarked for lazy Sunday afternoon. /hat-tip
Still not sure why it would start doing this with no changes made on my network though.
Toolman has is right. As long as WD are making money they don’t care about what is said in these pages. Money Talks and BS Walks. No more WD product for me,
manfriday you are right!!!
I filled out a service request because of these network drops.
After THREE weeks they answered me and asked me to update the firmware. ;-(
After another week they told me that the bug is known and that they are working on it …
The main functionality of the WD TV Live is not working since months, I will return it next week.
It seems that WD needs such kind of preasure to care about their customers!!!
damc5
I can’t believe WD is doing NOTHING about this widespread persistent problem of network disconnects… I WOULD’ve bought WD TV without the LIVE… had i known their so called “LIVE” function DOESNT WORK… oh, sorry it works for 5 minutes or so… tsk.tsk.tsk… TOO BAD WD… TO BAD for us too…
damc5 wrote:
manfriday you are right!!!
I filled out a service request because of these network drops.
After THREE weeks they answered me and asked me to update the firmware. ;-(
After another week they told me that the bug is known and that they are working on it …
The main functionality of the WD TV Live is not working since months, I will return it next week.
It seems that WD needs such kind of preasure to care about their customers!!!
damc5
Good for you, damc5! And at least WD acknowledge the problem. At this pace, it’ll be 10 years before it’s fixed.
The prerelease seems to have better network support. I’d be cautiously optimistic about the next official release…
However, if you have underlying network issues that you’re unaware of (or in denial about), no firmware will help you.
No one should have to go through all the trouble of altering 15 things on their network setup just to get this one device working. WDTV Live is an out of the box consumer device that should require minimal settings. The box isn’t working as intended no matter what you say.
Workgroups - I run a W2K8 R2 server… I have a domain not a workgroup so that’s dead in the water.
Turn off sharing on WDTV Live - That’s done doesn’t work
Check if my router is supported - Yes it is
Why should I have to use wireshark to check the packets to diagnose the problem? Is the average consumer willing to go that far just to get it to work? Another thing is if this box is running “standard linux samba” then it should be able to connect PERFECTLY with my Windows 2008 R2 Server.
If WD TV Live was so perfect than it should have worked fine with MY network. I’m by no means an ■■■■■, I’m a network engineer but this product isn’t worth my time fixing if I have to alter MY network which cost me time and sleep. I’m about to return this device to the store and get back my 120 dollars.
You are a network engineer, yet not interested in figuring out why a device on YOUR network is not working. You sound more like an apple customer than an engineer. Your network and server setup are fairly unique in most homes and you need to be willing to understand why a device that works perfectly in so many others network is not working in yours. I have a fairly complex network at my home: a QNAP NAS serving all my music, photos and videos to three pc’s, three ROKU Soundbridges, a Mediagate MG350 in the bedroom and a WD TV Live in the living room with a theater system setup. My router is a Dlink DIR 655 serving the MG350 and the ROKU’s wirelessly, and the other devices wired. I have zero issues with my network. I have issues with the WD TV Live, BTW, it does not fast forward correctly with some videos, and does not start where it left off correctly, but no network problems… Al
aljimenez wrote:
You are a network engineer, yet not interested in figuring out why a device on YOUR network is not working. You sound more like an apple customer than an engineer.
- *> I think that’s intended as an insult,TNIYM.
> Too bad most consumers aren’t interested in the kind of trouble-shooting that aljimenez seems to enjoy as recreation. Me, I just want something I buy for enjoying TV to work when I plug it in… unless, of course, I’m getting paid to unravel someone’s mess. As a software designer and author, I think I should charge WD a typical rate per hour for the amount of time I put into trying to make their product better. Heaven knows, they didn’t give me any help.
BUMP
Fix this WD, seriously. The whole point of this device is to STREAM!!!
[text deleted]
I have the most stock standard network setup at home, EVERY device i have used and installed in my network, be media streaming devices, xbox’s, ps3’s, HTPC’s (running XBMC through Samba), Xbox 1 through samba, all work flawlessly.
WDTV Live simply DOES NOT WORK. Dont try to sugar coat this ridiculous device. TNIYM posted exactly how it is.
Return it and buy something else then. And stop calling people you don’t like what they post names… Al
Like I said this is a simple out of the box device meant for regular consumers. That means you can walk into a Best Buy or Walmart purchase it, connect it to your home network and with a few adjustments on your computer stream your movies.
If I wanted to go through the trouble with setting up a complex device, I would had built a HTPC but I opted to skip all that work and went with something a bit more simple. Even if I try to diagnose these problems and put up a tutorial of how I fixed it, it might not work for everyone. Sugar coating this product by saying it works because you’re running it from a NAS means little to me. You do not have a complex setup like my network here. I have 5 computers running here with a Windows 2008 server running a DHCP, WDS, and Exchange Server. My server is running it’s shares perfect within my environment. I can stream to my PS3 and Xbox360 fine. The only reason why I purchased this device was to stream MKVs which the latter doesn’t support.
Now if you want to insult me by saying I’m not interested in figuring out why a device on my network isn’t working, thats fine. However if you read what I wrote on my previous post, I’m not going to spend my free time to troubleshoot something that is suppose to work out of the box. I’m not buying a multilayer switch here where I’m required to configure. Heck even if it was as simple as that I would gladly telnet or use the console and start typing in commands to set it up.
So lets say my network is more unique than other home networks. Fine… Lets see here… If you want to put the blame on Windows 2008 then you’re wrong. All network shares disappears when I get disconnected including my Windows 7 computers and Ubuntu boxes on the list… DHCP is working fine and I can ping the device just fine. Bottom line is this has nothing to do with how MY network is setup but how the device browsing service works when it’s looking for computers and how it maintains a connection with it’s host. Lets not put the blame on anything else. If one of the programmers want to look at the network stacks and figure out whats going on be my guest. Thats not my job that’s someone from WD’s or some that has the interest to. Try to insult me all you want because it just seems a bit childish to do so.
I don’t think anyone should insult anyone else about this or any other issue. I don’t think it’s appropriate to defend the product, either.
Check out some of my recent posts on “When will the networking issues be fixed???”
We may actually be making some progress. If we get some workarounds that solve problems, they have the potential of giving WD engineers some hard evidence of what to fix in firmware updates. That would be a real value for these forums. OK, OK, some folks need to vent a little too. I, for one, am willing to overlook that if we get some real fixes.
Years ago, I worked in high-tech, back in the days of masked ROM for firmware. Boy, in those days, you really had to get the firmware bugs out, because fixes were darned near impossible. Now, with all our firmware in flash, it makes it all too easy to release code that isn’t ready for prime time. And the competitive pressures of the market make it almost unavoidable. We call that unintended consequences. We are all now the beta testers and evaluation team for WD, and every other manufacturer who puts firmware on flash. And they all do.
So here are our choices. Be the unwilling beta-testers, or wait until the products are finally solid. Oh, another consequence of the speeded up design cycle: just as the last bugs are being worked out, the product will become obsolete and unavailable, as some new whiz-bang product (with its own fleet of bugs) is released in its place.
Cheers!
DHS
DHS, you probably put your finger on the reason why WD has been so disinterested in fixing this problem. Their next generation unit is on the drawing board, more than likely. Besides, I’d bet the WDTV Live works just fine with one of their Passport hard drives.
I have read a few posts here and have yet to see an employee of WD say something about this problem.
I spoke to the level 2 tech today and couldn’t give me a straight answer. He told me to try using the ethernet cable rather then wireless usb. And since I can see my Media Servers and not my network shares, he told me to move all my file into the Windows Library.
Since I only purchased this unit last week, should I just return it an buy an O!Play instead? It doesn’t seem to have a fraction of the problems this device is having.
Dante1
It’s not surprising that they would try to shove the problem off on your gear, rather than own up to it themselves.
I won’t tell you what to do, but if you decide to return the unit, then call WD back and tell them. Might get a little attention.
nice post! I ALSO have not seen any WD employees post and give us an update of whats going on with it? Whats the point of these forums if they are not going to post?
If I can help I will, maybe implement a debug LOG in the next firmware so we can enable it and submit these somewhere on the WD site?
BUMP
WD has community managers that monitor these sites. Unfortunately they’re not the technical staff that design or program these devices.
BTW Beta firmware worked fine for the past few days until tonight… Back to the drawing board.
