WD Elements Play and Thumbnails

Hi there. I just purchased a new WD 2TB elements play. I thought I could display a nice arrangement of my movies through thumbnails. Was I wrong? Can it be done?

Thanks in advance!

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Page 42 of the manual discusses turning on Thumbnail mode.

It is turned on. But I don’t see it working
 I want to create thumbnails with the movie posters for each folder, like WD TV Live does


I think this only works for the Pictures folders and not video. How are you finding the WD EP so far in comparrison to the WD TV? Have you tried using high def video on the WD TV & the WD EP as on the latter it really doesn’t work successfully and is a nightmare to convert and get the audio to work and then when the audio does work the image is really juddery. Real shame as its such a good idea to have the player and the HD in one unit.

WDTV Live doesn’t support Movie Posters, unless you’re using the terms “Thumbnail” and “Movie Poster” interchangeably


I’m sorry, but if I search for movies on youtube, I can see people using pictures os the movie posters to illustrate the folders in which they are in. I think the proccess is called Movie Sheets


Movie Sheets are not part of the stock firmwares from Western Digital.  They have been added to custom third-party firmwares.

I don’t know of any third-party firmwares for the Elements Play at this time.

That’s exactly what I wanted to know! I already own a WD TV Live which shows all my film/TV cover art as a thumbnail when I’m browsing. All my cover art is saved as ‘folder.jpg’. However when I switch to thumbnail mode on the browse setting on the ‘Play’ nothing seems to alter. I phoned WD direct about this and they couldn’t explain why this was. They seemed to think that my device had a fault and suggested that I sent it back.

Interesting then that you are experiencing exactly the same issue as me.

Anyone else out there actually had any success when trying to display covert art on films or music on the ‘Play’?

I too have a WDTV Live and bought the Elements Play 2TB as a standalone complete solution. I have setup my MKV files with like-named jpegs so they show in thumbnail mode. Alas this doesn’t work in the EP unit.

I have spoken to the WD support and they confirm that the designers decided to standardise on the “movie preview” mode for video on the EP machine.  The thumbnails are for photos only.

Apart from this everything else seems ok, iso files play with full navigable menus.  I do not have any full HD files as yet so cannot comment on the 1080P 24 debate.

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That’s very dissapointing then as I have 100’s of films and music folders stored on there which I wanted to be able to browse as thumbnails of cover art like I do with the TV Live. It also makes it a lot easier for the kids to scan their movies and decide what to watch. Why on earth would they do away with this feature, it just doesn’t make sense?

Come on WD, what are you playing at? My unit is going back!

:angry:

It really seems this whole unti hasn’t been thought through properly and there is no word from WD on any updates. Really dissapointing and regreting the purchase now :frowning:

Likewise!

Third


Hi guys,

As you know already thumbnails are not supported with this unit and the current firmware 1.00.86.  My friend who has one took his apart already and said it Should support it with an update to the firmware.  I know WD has had multiple beta firmwares for the WDTV live and Live plus units in the last couple of weeks.  I would look for an update soon as this unit was just released.

StormRider951 wrote:

Hi guys,


  My friend who has one took his apart already and said it Should support it with an update to the firmware.

Uh, ok
  

Uh
  before someone takes that seriously, I added the text as well as circling it
 the Amlogic chips don’t really say that
 just sarcasm.

Lol, that would be quite funny if the chip did actually state that as shown.

Yeah WDTV seems to be getting a load of updates but the WDEP it seems has been forgotten about. If you can show me those updates you are refering to it would be helpful as I can’t seem to find any.

I don’t know if it’s the same development team working on both, but what I can tell you is that the WDTV Live team has been trying like mad to get HDMI to work correctly.   They haven’t had any “New Releases” since June, which was before this product even came to market; they’ve only been releasing Betas, trying to fix the HDMI bug.

Like it!:smileyvery-happy:

If they could only give us some news on anything that is going on it would be helpful as currently it feels like there is nobody on the other end responding to any of their issues and we are all in the dark. If i had at least an inclination that they are working on something or there is no possibillity that this product will work because of the chip etc etc I could then make a decision on what to do. Currently in limbo and just rtying different setting and compression formats to no avail.