I recently bought the WDTVLIVE and connected it to the TV and to the wireless Router with a UTP cable. Starting a notebook with Vista Home running on it the notebook it was autodetected immediately and I could set-up media sharing. Sharing photos from this notebook was no problem. Sharing a video dropped the network however after a while. A other notebook running Vista Premium only saw the WDTVLIVE in the computer section of the Window Network as a computer. In the Network and Sharing Window it was not possible to share media to it. I could start videos but the network dropped after a while also.
I spend a lot of time surfing on the Internet but found no solution. Suggested changing workgroups or opening ports in the Firewall or changes in the registry did not give any solution.
Opening both notebooks and looking to both services running on the computer I discovered some differences.
I changed the following services on the Notebook with Vista Premium from manual to automatic and changed under the tab Recovery on all stops should restart the service. All three running locally. (Control Panel - Administrative Tools)
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UPnP Device Host
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SSDP Discovery
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Window Media Player Network Sharing Services.
After restarting the notebook the problem of sharing media to it, was solved. In the Network Window the WDTVLIVE now was seen as a device and sharing was not anymore a problem.
But the problem of dropping the network was still there for videos.
Then I decided to see what is happening on my network with the Window Network and Sharing Center Window open when I was streaming video to the WDTVLIVE. From time to time Private Network automatically changed in Identifying Public Network and changed back to Private Network. In Public Network is media sharing disabled. No wonder that the network was dropped in the WDTVLIVE.
At a certain point I came to the conclusion that it was a kind of time-out problem of my wireless network adapter in the computer. To solve this problem I did the following.
I went to the Device Manager in the Control Panel. Then to the wireless network adapter. After clicking on it I went to the Advanced tab and opened it.
I changed the Property: Roaming Aggressiveness to Value 5: highest. After clicking OK a Window opened for choosing a type of Network. I choose for Home.
After restarting the computer I have less problems with disconnecting the WDTVLIVE from the network. Dropping the Network happens still from time to time. I watched a whole movie without disconnecting the network but starting an other movie gave the same problem again.
Now I also changed The Network adapter (see above) from the Property: Ad Hoc QoS into Value: WMM enabled. Until now this is working good. No drops of the Network yet. Watched 2 movies now without dropping the network.
The other notebook running Vista Home which also have another Wireless network adapter inside with other Properties had also the problem of dropping the network.
I changed the services as above which improved the performances but did not solve completely the problem. Only after changing the Property’s of the build-in Wireless Network Adepter it works also without any problem.
These Property’s are changed to enabled:
Carier Detect
IEEE802.11h
Smart Scan
Conclusions:
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How to optimize your Wireless Network depends on which Wireless Network Card is build-in your notebook.
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You need to change some services in Windows so it will restart the services all the time.
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Then even on a Wireless Network as mine (type 54N - the slowest) the WDTVLIVE can work good.
Hope this will help other users or gives them some idea to solve the problem on their own network and computers.
