I hope you are not referring to the embarassing C200 whihc costs over £300 and which has a firmware in an even more beta state than the WD. Pound for pound the WDTV Live represents best value in its range.
You may want to take a look at the new PopcornHour A-200, for $180 it is a competitive choice. I own the PopcornHour A-110 and I’ve never had audio sync problems. I also own the WD TV Live (for a second room) and audio sync problems on mp4’s is common. This is a basic funcionality bug that WD must fix asap before they keep loosing customers.
Bad experience with this firmware version ! There’s something wrong on USB Dongle Wireless management.
Take in mind that from about 1 month I use WDTV Live with wireless N Dongle DWA-140 (Fw 1.31). It’s perfetc !! Very fast and stable with 720p and 1080p and so on … !! Great !
So, I try to update from 1.01.11 → 1.01.17 by my network wi-fi N dongle DWA-140 V1.31. It was a little bit smooth … but no problem on the update procedure. All seems to be right.
Restarting WDTV Live … surprise:
My DWA-140 wi-fi dongle don’t connect anymore to my Wi-Fi Network Router (D-LINK 2740B) !! It discover WiFi but automatic (DHCP) or Manual connection crashes. “No IP connectivity”.
Nothing was changed on my network before I upgrade WDTV Live dirmware !! (I download it by my Wifi … so it was right 1 minute before !!)
So, what may happened ??
I try to reset WDTV Live to default config … nothing … I try to reboot my router … nothing …
Last test:
I’ve downloaded the old WDTV Live Firmware to 1.01.11 … installed it by USB HD … and all RETURN UP AND RUNNING !!
Dear, WD support, checking well your firmware before release it !! A bad No-Regression testing plan, is the first cause of Marketing failure !! More than a well know simple BUG !!
Anira wrote:> I fully understand your comment, but there are people on earth (like me) which do NOT have these problems. And again: do NOT waste your time here. If you are not satisfied with the performance, resell and buy an better car.
Criticism is welcome, but stop yelling like a 5 year old child.
Michael
Its people that believe its wrong to complain that allow companys like WD get away with sub-standard products. WD already took my money know I have a license to complain!
Well my wd hd live updated but i still have these probs.
1 . I cant login to my youtube account , it will reset the player.
The solution to the YouTube login issue is eslewhere on the forum. Basically, if you had a Google Account and a seperate YouTube account prior to May '09 - you need to go to Google and synchronize those accounts and passwords. Once you do that, then the YouTube login in WDTV Live works.
Your solution does not work. I just tried it, I sync the two accounts, but the WD continues to reboot when I log into my account.
I did the update using an usb key (256mb) and had no problems at all. Everything is working as before. Took less than one minute… However, I removed the usb wifi key and the hard drive ( 1TB) before doing it
I don’t know what WD has done with 17 but I ahve a feeling that it is more than just updating the firmware upgading process - Image output quality has significantly improved with this firmware - Also people remember, this firmware is meant to replace .12, and it was never labeled a major update but a minor fix. Whatever it is, something has been quietly fixed because I have never seen such a razor sharp image coming out of this box before, even using the REGULAR composite (yellow, white, red) connectors picture is amazing, even MORE so than playing the same file through my DVD player! which was NOT the case before.
Why the hell did WD name this one .17, instead of .14 ???
Oh and this a warning to everyone who is tempted to use B-Rad’s unofficial firmware - DON’T DO IT, it ■■■■■ really bad !
.17 is safe and tested - Updating through the internet might be risky - so why go through all the trouble, put the firmware on a stick and update that way, it’s safer. The unit supports recovery for as long as the boot block has not been compromised.
My baby (she’s 7 years old) have powered on WDTV for viewing a cartoon.
All of you know well that the first menu item that is showed is always Firmware UPDATE in wdtv. In my case is normally because I’ve done a downgrade to 1.01.11 and then every power up it show this.
So, she have accidentally done a new UPDATE to 1.01.17 !! Arghhhhhhhhhhhh !!
Would be usefull that WD programmers changed this method !! Why do not view ONLY an ALERT about availability of a new firmware ??? Leaving only to an expert user to choice if update or not.
Like a simple text line in the footer or head of the screen:
- There’s a new Firmware update ! If you want go into settings and update.
The strange thing is that NOW my WDTV recognize well my DWA-140 (V.1.31) and my home wi-fi network after reboot with 1.01.17.
I don’t know if FW was changed (I’ll never know) … or if my previous update do not going well.
<< Dear, WD support, checking well your firmware before release it !! A bad No-Regression testing plan, is the first cause of Marketing failure !! More than a well know simple BUG !! >>
Curse your firmware updates.Really funny.
Question: Why a firmware is prepared?!
Answer : To make the things better, of course.
Question: Why WD LIVE prepares a firmware?
Answer : To make the things worse.
What silly people you are! Why you are making new firmwares? Why you still fail to prepare a complete firmware with no subtitle issue, no wireless network connection issue, no audio/video scync issue.
All bad experiences for the unsufficient firmware encountered by WD Livecommunity indicate that the REAL BUG is not in the device or firmware but in the TECHNICAL STAFF itself in charge of software and support of WD LIVE.
So poor and untalented staff do not fit to a so famous company like Western Digital.
at last firmware i was losing my network shared folders rarely but i can reach my tiversity all the time, after firmware update (i m not %100 sure it is releated with this) i cannot see any network source at all, neither network shares or media servers,
another thing i have 640 gb WD external HDD when that one is plugged (usb) and i start WD Tv live it reboots in 2 secs and shutsdown just like an elictricity cut, if i try that for 10 times that happens 10 times, if i unplug externall drive boot WDTVLive and plug USB Hdd there is no problem, (USB Hdd has its own power)
* I bought Hdd after fw update so i dont know it could work before fw update.
So both of them are very Major failures in my opininon, for the 1st failure fix it and for the 2. one if that is a common problem you may add 10 secs delay to USB ports during the POST so that delay may save device and other USB devices can be seen after 10 secs, just an idea,
Its a shame we can’t do polls on this forum because it is clear this new firmware has divided us. To me and others this firmware installs fine and (whether pyschological or not) the device seems more robust. Others seem to have endless troubles and are quite vociferous in their opinion.
We have such diverse connection methods it is hard to identify common root causes. Of course, ideally a device should connect regardless of the background configuration (if advertised to do so) making this a mute point but it is clear that a wide variety of set ups inlcuding wireless, direct networking, powerline networking and NAS/direct PC connections are causing the hardship here.
The amount of fixes listed in the release notes is disappointing. Heh, fixes. I mean ‘fix’. I’ve definitely experienced some audio sync issues with AAC and even on some rips with AC3 with the .11 firmware. DTS has worked perfectly. I was hoping a 6 version jump from .11 to .17 would have addressed those issues. So, it’s a bit disappointing. Hopefully the next firmware update is right around the corner and will address these widespread and critical issues.
Despite the single fix, I seem to have noticed a few unconfirmed things. 1.) I’ve definitely experienced more loss of network connection than before the .17. I’ve also only owned the device for less than a month so this is no indication that the .17 update caused the issue. However, the first time I ran into the issue was on the same day as the update was released so it’s a bit peculiar. 2.) Audio output seems to be boosted. I used to have to turn my receiver up to 28. Now it’s quite fine at 20. Again, I have only performed limited testing on this point, but it seems better.
I’ve been ripping a lot of my DVDs lately and they’ve been playing flawlessly on the WDTV Live. The basic parameters are:
Using Handbrake (Windows)
Built-in High Quality Profile
MKV container
Between 1280 and 1638 constant video bitrate (might be a little high for some)
I just bought the WD TV Live Media Player & updated to 1.01.17… While it is - in theory - a great piece of technology, its incapability of keeping AC3 sound in line with the picture of a XVID/MP4 movie makes it close to worthless for me. Not even my 5 year old cheap no name DVD Player caused problems like this… Am I too stupid and overseeing THE solution somewhere? Help is highly appreciated.
Update to Version 1.01.17 went fine. I had stopped using youtube from WDTV a long time ago because of the device reboot issue so Cant tell if it has been fixed now.
I am now using playon for youtube and many other things. The only caveat is that my PC has to be on all the time and the streaming is little slow.
Only if WDTVLive had some way to adding opensource plugins to the device to extend its capabilities. The hardware seems to be much more capable of doing, only if the software team of WDTVLive can come up with pluggable feature architecture and open their API to the world.
Mine was mostly workring ok on 1.0.11 but I seemed to have to pull the power once in a while so there were bugs for sure. I turned it on and it told me there was an update available. Installed without issue so well done on not bricking my device
Almost exactly the same thing happened to me as crobinso2006 , except I was on a static IP and had to change to auto detect to get it to work on the network. Now it seems to be fine. It has been working for over a week without having to do a hard reset.
