WD Player won't read WD external drive with Time Machine

I have a 1TB External WD Hard drive that I network to my IMac to play my movies/TV shows.  I recently backed up my Imac (about 500GB) via Time Machine and now the WD Live Plus player won’t read the drive. It gets stuck in “Gathering information.” 

I thought that it could be because the drive now has a lot more information, taking into account the back up files, but that don’t think that’s a valid reason. Then I allowed it 8 hours (basically went to work and back) and it was still stuck. I’ve now deleted the Time Machine back up and it again reads the drive.

Has anyone else experienced this incompatibility?  Would hate to have to have a specific drive for time machine and another for my video files. 

That’s normal and expected to happen, Time Machine files are stored in such a way that only Time Machine can access those files for security.