I was happy user of the 3rd gen (WDBGXT0000NBK-EESN) for ~half a year. Since 2 weeks it makes me crazy.
What is happening:
every time I watch the movie from external HDD (I have only HD movies in MKV container) it crashes randomly without any reason. I mean - it makes “glitch” sound, turns off the HDD, the screen turns black, while the player stops responding to remote. LED is still on. After ~2-3 minutes the device restarts ourselves. As I said it happens randomly, on different files - sometimes after 30 minutes, sometimes after 3-5 minutes. In my opinion overheating is not an issue.
What I ALREADY DID while trying to solve the problem:
factory reset all settings
disconnected the WiFi network
downgraded to stable 2.01.86 firmware - I’ve read that 2.02.32 is buggy one
connected HDD to the second USB on the back
swapped HDD’s, even tried on fresh empty 16GB USB stick with just only one movie
even tried to remux the MKV with the old good working MKVMerge to remove all compressed chapters / headers etc.
Ofcourse the device is out of the warranty. Is it totally crashed or just some kind of strange software bug ?
You have done well trying all the different things I would have, sounds like it could be hardware failure and since you have tried other drives it’s most likely the WD player itself. It could be an overheating issue due to broken hardware. Does the player get warm fast when this happens? I remember back in the day when I had a Commodore Vic20 home computer it had a hardware issue and caused the device to get warm really fast and then it would crash and shut down. I eventually got it fixed, some intermittent issue I was told. I hope I’m wrong but it definitely could be a hardware issue.
Try using the device without playing any local media, like play some YouTube videos or something and see if this still happens. Basically put the device to work without playing local content.
As far as I know, the device (WD) is not recognizing if HDMI cable is connected. I mean, it can play videos without HDMI connected at all. So - as you read my post before - it if plays properly, then stops, becoming unresponsible for remote, then reboots itself and after that plays again properly… how can it be it is the HDMI cable ???
But, to be sure - YES, i did try to reconnect the cable before, in fact many times.
Good question. I only know that a friend had video judders until he swapped his expensive Oelbach cable for an Amazon basic one. And I’ve seen the WDTV not play any files till I replugged the cable once.
It crashes when it’s totally offline. This was one of my first checkpoints. Anyway, when online, I am not using any network shares, so master browser issue i should not be the case. There’s also no more active devices in the network. Just trying to watch movies from plugged hdd.
I moved the device to the other well wentilated place to be sure it is not overheating. Also opened it and replaced the 2032 battery inside, then reseted the settings once again.
Nothing helped, still crashing. It is just 2.5 years old… piece of **bleep**. No more WD TV!
hi,im reading your problems and i got the same. My WD TV Live player iv had about two years,about two months ago while watching a movie or playing music,it would go for about 15 minutes then reboot itself. It started doing it all the time,so in the end i went to the store and bought another one ,when i set it up it did exactly the same thing. So i took it back and they gave me a replacement,that also did the same thing… ive tried everything,different hard drives and usb flash drives,different hdmi cables…dont know the answer…
I have the same problem as you describe. It started a week ago, and crashes after 10~ min.
My device is about 2 years old. I tried to play files from both my WD TV Live Hub (which in my case works as my HDD), and from my PC. Still the same, I tried pretty much the same things as you, and still no change.
