New firmware for wd tv gen 1

Community Archives WD TV HD
1

we need a new firmware for my wd tv gen 1 cos of the following reasons:

we need a new firmware for my wd tv gen 1 cos of the following reasons:

        1. most movies that are ripped now are at mkv extensions they have better ideo and sound quality than avi or any other format.

        2. when a movie says the audio has a word “DIGITAL” beside it… there is no sound… whether you set the sound to stereo or digital…

        3. using mkv tool is really a bothersome… most players just copy it and then play… just like the S*******************

        4. playing movies especially MP4 and MKV turns the video into green pixels in which you have to stop the player to play and then resume to fix it… never encountered it in other players…

        5. while playing the movie there is no search time… you have to forward it then play… very annoying for long movies…

        6. there are minors issues of waving screens and etc…

we need a new firmware for my wd tv gen 1 cos of the following reasons:

        1. most movies that are ripped now are at mkv extensions they have better ideo and sound quality than avi or any other format.

        2. when a movie says the audio has a word “DIGITAL” beside it… there is no sound… whether you set the sound to stereo or digital…

        3. using mkv tool is really a bothersome… most players just copy it and then play… just like the S*******************

        4. playing movies especially MP4 and MKV turns the video into green pixels in which you have to stop the player to play and then resume to fix it… never encountered it in other players…

        5. while playing the movie there is no search time… you have to forward it then play… very annoying for long movies…

        6. there are minors issues of waving screens and etc…

i have a question for you…

we need a new firmware for my wd tv gen 1 cos of the following reasons:

        1. most movies that are ripped now are at mkv extensions they have better ideo and sound quality than avi or any other format.

        2. when a movie says the audio has a word “DIGITAL” beside it… there is no sound… whether you set the sound to stereo or digital…

        3. using mkv tool is really a bothersome… most players just copy it and then play… just like the S*******************

        4. playing movies especially MP4 and MKV turns the video into green pixels in which you have to stop the player to play and then resume to fix it… never encountered it in other players…

        5. while playing the movie there is no search time… you have to forward it then play… very annoying for long movies…

        6. there are minors issues of waving screens and etc…

i have a question for you…

why wont you release a firmware for wd tv using the wd tv firmware without the network support???

we need a new firmware for my wd tv gen 1 cos of the following reasons:

        1. most movies that are ripped now are at mkv extensions they have better ideo and sound quality than avi or any other format.

        2. when a movie says the audio has a word “DIGITAL” beside it… there is no sound… whether you set the sound to stereo or digital…

        3. using mkv tool is really a bothersome… most players just copy it and then play… just like the S*******************

        4. playing movies especially MP4 and MKV turns the video into green pixels in which you have to stop the player to play and then resume to fix it… never encountered it in other players…

        5. while playing the movie there is no search time… you have to forward it then play… very annoying for long movies…

        6. there are minors issues of waving screens and etc…

i have a question for you…

why wont you release a firmware for wd tv using the wd tv firmware without the network support???

you said it yourself

we need a new firmware for my wd tv gen 1 cos of the following reasons:

        1. most movies that are ripped now are at mkv extensions they have better ideo and sound quality than avi or any other format.

        2. when a movie says the audio has a word “DIGITAL” beside it… there is no sound… whether you set the sound to stereo or digital…

        3. using mkv tool is really a bothersome… most players just copy it and then play… just like the S*******************

        4. playing movies especially MP4 and MKV turns the video into green pixels in which you have to stop the player to play and then resume to fix it… never encountered it in other players…

        5. while playing the movie there is no search time… you have to forward it then play… very annoying for long movies…

        6. there are minors issues of waving screens and etc…

i have a question for you…

why wont you release a firmware for wd tv using the wd tv firmware without the network support???

you said it yourself

“The main functional difference between the WDTV HD and the WDTV Live and WDTV Live Plus is that the Live and Live Plus are capable of connecting to a network (and the Internet) for media playback, whereas the WDTV HD has no networking capability and only plays media from attached USB devices.”

we need a new firmware for my wd tv gen 1 cos of the following reasons:

        1. most movies that are ripped now are at mkv extensions they have better ideo and sound quality than avi or any other format.

        2. when a movie says the audio has a word “DIGITAL” beside it… there is no sound… whether you set the sound to stereo or digital…

        3. using mkv tool is really a bothersome… most players just copy it and then play… just like the S*******************

        4. playing movies especially MP4 and MKV turns the video into green pixels in which you have to stop the player to play and then resume to fix it… never encountered it in other players…

        5. while playing the movie there is no search time… you have to forward it then play… very annoying for long movies…

        6. there are minors issues of waving screens and etc…

i have a question for you…

why wont you release a firmware for wd tv using the wd tv firmware without the network support???

you said it yourself

“The main functional difference between the WDTV HD and the WDTV Live and WDTV Live Plus is that the Live and Live Plus are capable of connecting to a network (and the Internet) for media playback, whereas the WDTV HD has no networking capability and only plays media from attached USB devices.”

so it means they are still identical in some ways and plays the same way… Legacy or not its still a product that needs attention…

we need a new firmware for my wd tv gen 1 cos of the following reasons:

        1. most movies that are ripped now are at mkv extensions they have better ideo and sound quality than avi or any other format.

        2. when a movie says the audio has a word “DIGITAL” beside it… there is no sound… whether you set the sound to stereo or digital…

        3. using mkv tool is really a bothersome… most players just copy it and then play… just like the S*******************

        4. playing movies especially MP4 and MKV turns the video into green pixels in which you have to stop the player to play and then resume to fix it… never encountered it in other players…

        5. while playing the movie there is no search time… you have to forward it then play… very annoying for long movies…

        6. there are minors issues of waving screens and etc…

i have a question for you…

why wont you release a firmware for wd tv using the wd tv firmware without the network support???

you said it yourself

“The main functional difference between the WDTV HD and the WDTV Live and WDTV Live Plus is that the Live and Live Plus are capable of connecting to a network (and the Internet) for media playback, whereas the WDTV HD has no networking capability and only plays media from attached USB devices.”

so it means they are still identical in some ways and plays the same way… Legacy or not its still a product that needs attention…

thank you very much

2

All good points.

However, I believe the fundamental difference / problem between the Gen 1 and the Live units is the Sigma chip inside them.  

WDTV Gen1	Sigma 8635 
WDTV Gen2	Sigma 8655
WDTV Live	Sigma 8655
WDTV Live Plus	Sigma 8654
WDTV Live Hub	Sigma 8654

It’s not possible to just use the code from the Gen2/Live units on the Gen1.  

It requires more man hours porting it over than WD are willing to spend on an EOL product.  

The WDTV Gen 2 is much closer to the Live (same Sigma chip but no network hardware).  

Despite that, it’s still getting the cold shoulder from the firmware team.

If you check the Live forums, you’ll see the firmware team already has its hands full dealing with a bunch of new bugs introduced in the last “stable” release.

My advice would be to sell / gift your WD Gen1 and look either at a newer WD unit (although given your experience with Gen1 I’m guessing that would be no?) or a competing media player.

You could also investigate the WDTV Gen1 homebrew scene.   WDLXTV for Gen1 seems to add network support and some nice other features.  However, at its core it’s still based on WD’s firmware and the playback issues you mention are probably still present…

3

I agree 100%

I don’t understand how WD let Gen 1 units “die” after being in the market for a short time. Mine (Gen 1 too) is not working well, sometimes plays a movie sometimes not. I have not figured out what the problem is.

MKV movies that I used to play on my unit, not sometimes play and others don’t.

E

4

e1375 wrote:

I don’t understand how WD let Gen 1 units “die” after being in the market for a short time.

It’s no different than any other manufacturer of anything.  Think of cars.  If they make a model, and everyone wants different features, then the auto manufacturer goes with consumer demand and makes what the customer wants… they don’t keep making the flop model that everyone disliked the features of.  And after they stop making the car, they don’t just keep making replacement parts for it until the end of time… at some point they make the decision to drop support.

It seems quite probable, that a year after WD stopped building the Gen1 (after trying to sell it for 2 years or so), they decided the engineering time necessary to work with coding for a whole different series of processor wasn’t cost effective.

If you don’t like the car analogy, think of the video game console world… look at all the consoles that weren’t exactly what the customer base was looking for, and were dropped.  The game companies may have supported the discontinued models for a short while, but they give up on dead platforms.

Yes, there are some remaining bugs, but the Gen1 does everything it did when it was released (plus it does a few new things with newer firmwares)… it’s just that people voted with their wallet – they wanted things like DTS support and networking support, so they purchased other models… when people stopped buying the Gen1, WD stopped making them.

MKV movies that I used to play on my unit, not sometimes play and others don’t.

There’s many threads dealing with the issue and how to resolve it.