Network Share

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live Hub Discussions
1

I am able to view my PC wirelessly via Media Shares, but not via network shares, has anyone posted a full guide or tutorial to creating a network share, or can someone give me a quick walkthrough on how to do it?

I can’t view/play my MKV’s via media share, and 90% of my movies are MKV, and all my external’s and internal’s are full so i’m beginning to have to store my movies on my PC. 

Thank ahead of time for anyone’s help.

2

How to share a folder in Windows that can be viewed with the WD TV Live HD Media Player

Incidentally, if you install one of the “codec packs” that add Matroska support to Direct Draw, then the base Windows Media Server can be used to play (and stream) .mkv files.

3

you mean like if i install the ‘k-lite codec pack’ then i can play mkv’s thru hub as a media server? is that what you’re saying?

4

Don’t know specifically about k-lite, but that’s the general idea, ya.

I already had Shark007 installed, for inputting .mkv files into TMPG.  With it installed, any direct show compatible player can read .mkv.  My WMP will play .mkv files.

So, when I got my WDTV Live, and i tried out “Media Server”, the default Win7 server that comes with Windows Media Player, would push the .mkv files to the WDTV.

Now, because it’s a “hack”, and they aren’t natively supported, it’s not quite the same as playing from Net Shares… WMP won’t report the proper length, and it won’t support .mkv chapters.  But the files themselves play without a hitch.

5

so, if i install the shark codec on my pc, without doing anything else, when i go to my WD TV, And view my media share, my MKV’s will suddenly appear, and play/

I just wont be able to fast forward, skip ahead, etc, etc? i had it working before, and i recall not being able to do those things, but i couldn’t figure out what was different… and now i realize it’s because i was using a laptop that had a codec pack installed because the laptop i was using wasn’t mine, and the person didn’t use VLC…

but, install the shark codec pack-- which is basically just another version of the k-lite pack, and it will work as i stated above? is that what you’re telling me?

6

because the link you sent me regarding network shares, basically just tells you how to share folders, and i have many shared folders, but when i open network shares, it says i do not have any… but when i view it as a media server, it shows all my shared folders

so if i can just get the mkv’s playing as a media server, that will be fine with me

7

Some people have no issues getting Net Shares to work properly with the WDTV, while others spend days pulling their hair.  I don’t know what critical step some people are missing.  I’m one of the ones that just shared the files over, and they showed up and played fine, so since I never had to really trouble-shoot it, I can’t personally suggest what to look for as to why it isn’t working.  I know there are dozens of threads with users trying to help others get it to work, but I don’t specifially recall a “smoking gun” step that gets overlooked.

Anyway, don’t let me confuse you.  If you have the codec pack installed, you can still FF/REV from within WMP – you just can’t skip around from chapter to chapter (if your .mkv file has chapters).  But I just double-checked, to make sure I wasn’t giving you bad information… when I use “Media Server” to pull a .mkv file from the PC, the WDTV _ does _ have chaptering ability, as well as FF/REV.  I can go into “Options” while the file is playing, and pick whatever chapter I want, and the WDTV just goes where I tell it – it doesn’t know (or care) that WMP doesn’t like .mkv chapters.

So, other than the fact that WMP doesn’t report a length to the WDTV, the .mkv otherwise plays exactly as if it were accessed locally.

8

For me, I prefer using media server than network share because using network share makes the hub compiling but in media server, it doesn’t. I use windows’ media server to play MKVs in my pc to the hub. In my case, I use CoreAVC as my codec and then I added some registry entries so that windows media player can add MKVs to the videos library instead of other media. I think you can use any mkv codec but if after instaliing that, when you add mkv to wmp’s media library and it appears in the others media instead of videos, you need to add the registry entry to make it appear to videos library. Making the mkv appear in the wmp’s videos library is what you need to play it in the hub.

9

One last thing… I’m not saying the k-lite codec pack won’t do the trick… as far as I know, installing any direct show decoder will work.  I just don’t want to say it will work, because I haven’t specifically tried it.  The only one I’ve personally used is Shark007, so it’s the only one I can “guarantee” will do the trick. :wink: