Problem accessing USB drive from PC via Network Share

[yampy]

Hey guys,  So i have an interesting problem I haven’t yet been able to tackle the symptoms being this;

-My external USB HDD is shared and can be access by many computers in the house

-WD TV Live Plus sees this network share and can access and browse it, pull up file info and stuff

-WD TV Live Plus cannot play anything on this network share; it starts then freezes then exits back to the browsing screen.

-WD TV Live Plus can play the same file only if it is sitting on my C: drive (not any other drive)

-I do not wish to employ DLNA as i HATE it for various reasons and wish to stay with network share.

Now here is the peculiar part;

-I dual boot into Snow Leopard (OSX), share the external NTFS USB HDD  (preferences->sharing->file sharing->Windows (SMB) sharing) and then the WD TV Live PLUS can access the files on the external HDD and PLAYS them without ANY problems! (so it works in MAC)

Im running Windows 7 x64 Professional and Snow Leopard 10.6.7

WD TV LIve Plus Version is LATEST (just updated a few hours ago)

I guess now the obvious part;

HELP!!! PLEASE!!!

[yampy]

Update

-Switched External USB HDD to use eSATA Port instead (because i noticed streaming to my other mac via USB 3.0 had the same result as trying to play on WD TV Live Plus (starts and closes)) and it WORKS on WD TV LIVE Plus via network share.

-NEW PROBLEM  the WD TV LIVE Plus plays the 1080p mkv file for a minute or so then goes choppy…Any clue?

[yampy]

Update 2;

I downgraded to version 1.03.49B and the jitter/stuttering is gone!!!

So my problems are basically done…BUT i would like to figure out how to get the HDD working over USB rather than eSATA because…well preference LOL!

Will update if i fix but it seems to be a windows issue because my other macs in the house have trouble streaming from usb as well

[yampy]

K so the idea is DO NOT try to acces network share on a device thats plugged into a remote PC via USB it simply  WONT WORK, unless someone found a way to make it work, otherwise the WD TV LIVE Plus will open the file and immediately go back to the main menu (for some reason USB works in OSX, but not in windows 7 x64… any solution to get network share working via USB will be much appreciated

[Scandy]

I know this does not help you too much, but I have a lot of movies stored on external USB drives and I have no trouble playing them using network shares. I also have a Live Plus. I connect the external USB drive to my main computer and select to share the drive on the network. The WD box is in a different room and connects wirelessly with my main computer. I have no problem streaming ripped DVDs this way…so it does work. (However I am using XP, so I don’t know if Windows 7 causes the problem).

I am not sure if you know this, but every firmware after 1.03.49 has had a stuttering problem playing movies ripped to VOB files (in the VIDEO_TS directory). If you are trying to play VOB files, you have to either re-encode them into1 large ISO file, or downgrade your firmware to 1.03.49.

[yampy]

i just started running 1.03.49 and its great, as for the USB problem its definitely windows because my mac next door has same problems streaming when drive is on USB (its a RAID tower) maybe that has somethign to do with it and its also NEC’s usb 3.0 driver…which probably **bleep** lol

[RoofingGuy]

yampy wrote:

K so the idea is DO NOT try to acces network share on a device thats plugged into a remote PC via USB it simply  WONT WORK, unless someone found a way to make it work, otherwise the WD TV LIVE Plus will open the file and immediately go back to the main menu (for some reason USB works in OSX, but not in windows 7 x64… any solution to get network share working via USB will be much appreciated

Like with Scandy, this doesn’t help you much, but I’ve never had any issues whatsoever with USB drives plugged into a Win7 PC and then shared to the WDTV Live.  Granted I’m only on 32-bit Win7 Home, so there’s a possibility that that could make a difference.

Until the PC croaked a couple of weeks ago (for unrelated reasons) I didn’t have any drives connected locally to the WDTV… everything was connected to the PC and then shared.  Everything I had (.avi, .mkv, .mp4, .vob, .iso) had played fine, and for the full duration.  Nothing like the issues you’re encountering.

[jhamilton115]

I am having a similar problem. I am using a new WD Live Plus (just upgraded to latest firmware) and attempting to access shared content from a Thermaltake BlacX Duet that contains a Seagate 1TB and Seagate 2TB drive and is connected to a Windows 7 64bit PC via USB.

The WD Live picks up the PC as a “Media Server” and will play all my videos, music, pictures, etc that are stored in the 1TB drive of the BlackX without any issues. I can then navigate through all my ripped DVDs on the 2TB drive using the Shared Folder browse function on the WD Live and acutally play the movies (VOB format) however the play is choppy to beyond the point of being able to watch it. 

In an attempt to diagnose the issue I connected the BlacX directly to the WD Live via USB and was able to play back all my ripped DVDs fine however it only recognized the first drive in the BlacX (the one with ripped conent) and not the second drive with all my home videos, music, and pictures. Based on previous comments I will try to connect the BlacX via eSATA and see if it makes a difference but I’m not getting my hopes up. The whole reason that I got the WD over AppleTV was its ability to play VOB files over the network without having to transcode them.