WD HD Live Plus Keeps Flickering

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live & Live Plus
1

Just purchased the WDHD Live Plus. I keep getting an error message “unsupported signal check your device output.” I have my device connected to a 4 switch HDMI switch box that runs to my Yamaha av receiver. The HDMI out of the receiver runs to my Sony 46" LCD. I also get this flickering where it takes up to 10 minutes or so to get the WD logo. I purchased the unit to stream Netflixs for the most part. But after three trips to Micro Center and Best buy to swap out USB wireless devices ( I have a linksys one now that is working fine with my linksys N router), I’m almost ready to give up and take the device back to Best Buy and the HDMI cables and USB wireless device. Could it be that I have a bad WDHD LIve device? The reason I say this is I have a WD Media Player hooked up to my system that works fine. I have 50 or so movies that I are on a WD passport hard drive that’s connected to the the media player. I also have the media player running through the same HDMI switch box that I have the WDHD Live connected to but a different port.  I can eventually get to the Netflixs screen and see the movie choices, but when I select a movie to play, I see the red line to suggest the movie is loading up then the screen goes black and a bunch of flickering takes place. When I go back to Netflixs later, I can see where the movie has played and I can select restart, resume etc. I thought this was a good unit, but I’m believing that this device is bogus. I also when to Youtube and again I get this flickering and no consistant feed and no sound. Please help if you can.

Sincerely,

DWill

2

There are at least two issues here.

First of all, the Live does HDMI handshaking between it and the display it’s attached to.  Running it through both a switcher and then a receiver (and then the display) is causing issues.  I would try changing the HDMI display type from “auto” (the default) to whatever resolution your output device supports (go to video/audio settings and choose HDMI and then choose a specific resolution).  Hopefully that will at least stop your error message.

The Netflix issue is similar, but may not be fixable right now.  If you are playing standard definition material you should be okay, but there are known issues with HD material and this sort of handshaking.  All parties involved are aware of it and are working on it but if this is your problem (that is, you can play any standard material just fine) then you need to decide if you want to wait for a fix or try another device.

3

Mike:

Thanks for your response. I will take your advice and try what you have outlined and let you know how I pan out. I’m also going to try the HD WD Live going direct to my receiver by passing the HDMI switch to see if the problem lessens as I want surround sound and subwoofer to get that “I’m at the movies but in my home” type effect. 

4

Don’t forget to set the audio output type to “digital” if you want to pass through DTS and/or AC3 5.1 surround sound (which by all means you should do – I can’t imagine a movie experience without surround sound).