I have a new WD Live Plus with the 1.03.49 firmware. The audio is hooked up to my receiver with an optical cable, and the audio settings are set to Digital without HDMI audio.
The audio works fine while playing mkv files over a network share (mp3 and ac3 audio), and it works fine with youtube.
But when I try to use Netflix, I get no audio. I’ve tried doing the factory reset from the menu and the paperclip reset, but it didn’t help. I’ve tried removing the power, and powering it back up. I’ve tried reloading firmware. It doesn’t help.
I’ve tried all the other audio settings as well: Stereo and Digital. It didn’t help. I tried hooking up the analog AV cables and setting it to Stereo. Didn’t help.
By chance, I’ve gotten the audio to work on 2 separate occasions, once when I first set it up with the analog AV cables, and a second time with the optical cable. After turning it off and on, no more audio for Netflix, though.
I’ve deregistered and reregistered Netflix on the device over and over and over again, but it doesn’t help.
Yeah, I don’t have Flingo because I’m using the older 1.03.49 firmware. I haven’t tried 1.04.18 yet. I’ve heard so many reports of problems with the 1.04 firmware I’m not sure I want to try it.
If your use of the Live Plus is mainly Netflix and MKV files, you should try the latest firmware. The main playback issues for that are allegedly limited to VOB files. It’s worth a shot and you can always rollback to 1.03.49 if you don’t like it.
Yep Same problem but with analog audio cables, I got it to work by factory default and reregistering the device with netflix TWICE! Very fustrating, I love this thing for my many TB’s of video files but for Netflixs it’s pretty bad. I’m using the latest firmware, had the problem with the previous firmware also. I’ll wait to buy a WDhub to see if there is a viable resolution…
OK, I did some more testing, and I was able to get the Netflix audio to work through the analog A/V cables consistently. But not the digital optical cable.
So I tried updating the firmware to 1.04.18B (including resetting to default settings and the paperclip reset before and after the update). Still had trouble getting Netflix audio through the optical cable.
But wait! If I play an mkv file from a network share first, and then go to Netflix, the Netflix audio works through the optical cable like magic. Is it fixed?
No. After turning off the WD Live Plus and turning it back on and starting Netflix, no audio through the optical cable. It only works if you first connect to a network share and play a file, and then after that go into Netflix.
And I can’t remember my sequence of testing anymore to know if 1.03.49 would have experienced the same behaviour or not. I’m usually just starting Netflix when I’m testing Netflix.
This is crazy, though. It would appear that playing an mkv file on the thing does something to the audio settings internally that Netflix needs. Why can’t Netflix just work properly upon startup?
I had this problem with Netflix audio too. I updated firrmware immediately to 1.04.17, before trying Netflix.
Once I got around to testing Netflix, I discovered no audio. Factory reset solved it.
Recently I just updated firmware from 1.04.17 to 1.04.18 and the Netflix audio problem is back again.
I haven’t tried the reset yet, because I didn’t want to go through the whole process of reconfiguring my network, plus accounts (youtube, facebook, weather zip code, etc)…
I did a factory reset before and after the update, but it didn’t help the audio problem with Netflix.
Are you using an optical cable for the audio?
A lot of people seem to report Netflix audio problems with 1.04.17 if they play a file first before starting Netflix. But with me (at least with 1.04.18), it’s the opposite. Netflix audio won’t work UNLESS I play a file first before starting Netflix.
I wonder if the difference is optical vs. hdmi audio. And I wonder why they haven’t been able to get a core feature of the product like Netflix to work properly yet.
