Hi all,
I’m also having a frustrating issue with network shares, hoping someone has a suggestion to try:
Background:
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WDTV Live SMP gen. 3 I bought used ~6 months ago; it had and still has firmware 2.01.86 on it.
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WDTV is used only to stream video files of various types from LAN network shares.
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Files are on a Mac, which shares them out using both AFP and SMB.
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WDTV connected to LAN wirelessly on 802.11n network. Router is a high capacity Asus RT-N66U; Fileserver Mac is attached to same router.
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Initial discovery and connection to the network shares from the WDTV always works (although a bit slower than from a computer, ~20secs instead of 2-3), and browsing and streaming videos starts fine, however:
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About once every hour of streaming on average (variance is considerable), streaming will interrupt with the “source no longer available” error message. At this point, the WDTV will no longer see any network shares;
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Using the the network test option will report that it’s connected to the router and the correct IP address (the WDTV gets a pre-allocated static DHCP address). However, the only way to get it to see the network shares again is to re-scan for wireless networks, manually select the SSID and re-enter the SSID passphrase, and then manually re-browse network shares. Power cycling the WDTV doesn’t help. Sometimes even re-doing the network scan isn’t enough, and the router needs to be rebooted.
Interestingly, Once the file whose streaming was interrupted is accessed again, the WDTV does recognize that it was interrupted (even if it had been power-cycled), and is capable of resuming from the interrupted point.
- This sounds like it isn’t the same issue some folks were encountering earlier in this thread, since it doesn’t require a Windows share to happen.
None of the below factors make any difference:
– Whether the WDTV is accessing the files as a Mac (AFP) share or Windows (SMB) share (and I’ve tried disabling one sharing method on the Mac and only accessing via the other)
– Two different Macs, one running OS X 10.6, the other 10.8
– Whether the Mac is connected to the router via wired gigabit, WiFi 2.4GHz 802.11n or WiFi 5GHz 802.11
– Whether there is any other traffic on the WiFi or gigabit wired LAN
– The size, resolution, & type of the video file/codec (happens with AVI, MKV, MPG); happens with 480p files as well as larger formats.
After the WDTV has disconnected, other devices (other computer, tablet, etc.) have no problems accessing the same shares & files, so it’s not a simple (W)LAN issue; I doubt this is a router issue… This router is used for some extremely heavy workloads (only gets rebooted once every few months), and I’ve never had issues with multi-100-GB file copies across these file shares.
This is extremely frustrating – I have two 6-y.o. twins, and the main purpose of the WDTV is streaming LAN content for them (I don’t keep a TV in the house, just a projector attached to the WDTV). I now have to take into account 10-20min of futzing with settings and angry kids every time they want to watch a couple of cartoons.
The problem has been there ever since I got the WDTV, but I’m only tackling it now.
Anyone have any ideas? Particularly someone who’s using a Mac for the network shares.
– I’m willing to downgrade firmware if someone has a specific version they can recommend.
– Not willing to run any kind of media server software on the Mac. That goes against the KISS approach of having a streamer in the firs tplace, and the overhead IME is considerable (the Mac is a work machine as well)
– Willing to do a moderate amount of network traffic / protocol analysis if it’ll help & someone cna point me what/how to look for.