Video plays when browsing as network share but not when browsing windows media centre

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live & Live Plus
1

Good day

When I connect to my pc via network share all my files play fine but when I browse through media center option to my windows media player says it can not play the files. I have done some google searches but could not solve the issue.

Cheers,

Matthew

2

Hi, what message do you get when you try to play the files from the windows media centre, also what file extension are you trying to play. 

3

I’ll run a test tomorrow and get the exact error message and file format of the test file.

Cheers,

Matthew

4

Ok, it says unable to play the selected file. Please see the user manual for a list of supported file formats.

The file type in the media Centre browser Window says x264, but the file type when viewing it through the network share says mkv and that is the file type.

And it plays fine through the network share.

Cheers,

Matthew

5

If I remember right, Windows has to be able to play Mkv files via Media Player, which it does not do natively. (well used to be the case)

Once you set that up it works I think.

http://www.matroska.org/technical/guides/playback/windows/index.html

6

Correct.  Even if Windows isn’t PLAYING the video, it must have the MKV package to even be able to stream it.

7

I can play the mkv file through my windows media player as well, I have the codec pack on my main pc.

Cheers,

Matthew

8

Is Media Center attempting to transcode the video to a format the WD doesn’t support?

9

I have to assume media center is trying to do something, but I don’t get any other error messages to narrow down the problem.

Cheers,

Matthew

10

I’ve been doing some more research and there may be some system settings buried behind the scenes that windows media centre is applying.

If anyone else has used their wdtv to connect to a windows media centre let me know if you had to set up some streaming file types.

Cheers,

Matthew

11

So someone suggested checking my codec pack even though things were playing fine in windows and lo and behold, it worked.

I uninstalled my ccc pack from 2010 and installed sharkies pack from this year and now I can play through the network share or media center option.

It also fixed the glitch where the play to option was not showing in windows for mkv files.

Cheers,

Matthew