Without going itno Business Practices tyhat would upset stockholders, lets just look at what Seagate did. They announced a new product in January. It’s not out yet but we knew it was coming. Companies announce new products all the time without shortening the sales cycle for existing products. Many people will never use the Netflix feature so it’s a moot point to them. The product annoucement would not have changed their decision one way or another on which unit to buy. Besides this is not listed as a replacement, but a higher tier. Being a Channel Partner and reseller I’ll take up my issues with that department reguarding lack of notification. If i feel slighted imagine how retail customers will feel.
Indeed, Netflix is only for america, the rest of the world probably isn’t going to consider this a worthwhile feature.
Also the “plus” version is more expensive than the … “light” version.
That DVD (menu support) alone would probably shut me up LOL. I’ll still buy the new unit for Netflix.
There’ll be a new update to the WDTV Live firmware later today - no word on what it contains. But what do you want to bet its not menu support but something odd… like the ability to display all subtitles in italics if you press the “1” key for 10 seconds.
Just wondering what they’re holding back. 5 months from now will we need to buy the WDTV Live Plus Ultra?
Well, that’s progress. Any piece of hardware you buy right now will be obsolete next year. And a good company tries to be the first to make their own hardware obsolete, instead of waiting for their competition to do so.
Actually its not progress its the opposite, and something we should work to change - one of the big environmental threats of the planet is exactly this - that everything is produced to only last a short time and then we need to buy new junk all the time. Consumerism and consumption is a far greater threat to the planet than global warming.
What the humans need (if they wish to survive as a species) is to start making products which can last for decades, where you don’t all the time need to buy new. (This is not new btw, this is been known for decades, but most people just put their fingers in their ears and chant “Profit” really loudly)
Yes that would require one hell of mind set change, and given the battle over climate change, that’s going to be a battle which will probably take centuries to get through - everybody loves their fat profits.
I am severely annoyed, disappointed and incredibly angry right now.
I don’t see how some of you guys are like, “Oh well, it’s business” or “Stop crying about it”…?!
Why shouldn’t we? The big discussion is: is it hardware or is it software? It does not matter!
Why?
Well, software is bad enough. If all this is some kind of software change; then they strung us along for 4 months or so, saying it might possible-- all the while they were developing it for a new box!
Hardware is even worse. If it is new god-**bleep** hardware, then we know why certain bugs, firmware upgrades and general support for the Live has been sh-t… Gee, they must have their resources for the new box that would have to been developed concurrently with the original Live. Otherwise how can a ‘hardware box’ come out 8 months after the original?
I somehow got this vision in my mind about how this went down:
About 4 months ago:
WD tech “Ok we got Netflix and DVD menus working. Bout time to release this firmware.”
Marketing “Wait, How about we call it a Plus and sell it as a new version? All we need to do is add ‘Plus’ to the label and we can have enough units manufactured to sell with the new label in about 4 months”
WD tech “What about the existing box? They have been waiting for a update?”
Marketing “Ok, give them something but don’t include the Netflix and DVD menus or any other cool stuff. And put a halt on any new firmware for the existing box once the Plus is out.”
Just wondering what they’re holding back. 5 months from now will we need to buy the WDTV Live Plus Ultra?
Well, that’s progress. Any piece of hardware you buy right now will be obsolete next year. And a good company tries to be the first to make their own hardware obsolete, instead of waiting for their competition to do so.
Actually its not progress its the opposite, and something we should work to change - one of the big environmental threats of the planet is exactly this - that everything is produced to only last a short time and then we need to buy new junk all the time. Consumerism and consumption is a far greater threat to the planet than global warming.
What the humans need (if they wish to survive as a species) is to start making products which can last for decades, where you don’t all the time need to buy new. (This is not new btw, this is been known for decades, but most people just put their fingers in their ears and chant “Profit” really loudly)
Yes that would require one hell of mind set change, and given the battle over climate change, that’s going to be a battle which will probably take centuries to get through - everybody loves their fat profits.
It may be the de rigueur, but its not noble.
What it comes down to, for me at least, is the way this is playing out. The device is less than a year old, but already being replaced due to some sort of DRM chips missing from the original model. WD has been silent for 3 months on firmware updates and all of a sudden sneaks this new device into stores under everyone’s radar. I don’t think it’s wrong to want better communication from a company with an active community such as this. If it truly is because of hardware DRM why the current box cannot be upgraded, then they should communicate that, and in a better way than “it needed different hardware provisions”.
Most of all, take care of your customers. If this box is almost identical to the old one, minus some kind of DRM chip, then there is no reason why they couldn’t offer a trade in for current customers. I understand that it probably wouldn’t be free, but why not at the very least offer existing owners a cheap trade in to the new model? If all the parts are the same, it should be very easy for WD to offer an upgrade, and take our current hardware and refurb it. That keeps WD customers as WD customers rather than watching us move on to a different product from a different company.
All, the Wii, PS3, etc. etc, all DO have hardware keys. There are several keys involved, to protect the DRM of the media they were invented for: Blu-Rays, Wii discs, etc, all have embedded keys on the media that aren’t readable by any consumer devices. That key, hashed with the hardware keys, are what unlock the media. This is one mechanism that keeps people from copying their disks.
*>
And that is working so well for them.
TonyPh12345 wrote:
ANYWAY, they ARE giving you notice! The product pages are live, but you can’t BUY them yet, can you?
Yes you can. At least people are claiming they have seen them in shops.
Perhaps. Just noting that none of the Online Vendors that I looked at (about a dozen) linked from WD’s “Buy Locally” page have them listed. The ones that do say “Coming Soon!”
Perhaps. Just noting that none of the Online Vendors that I looked at (about a dozen) linked from WD’s “Buy Locally” page have them listed. The ones that do say “Coming Soon!”
As a WDSelect Channel Partner this bothers me a little more than most peole. We got no communication regardging the new product. This is not our main line of purchase from WD through distribution as we buy bulk internal storage devices mostly. I just returned from Best Buy and while they don’t have the unit on the floor the dept head (yes I know him personaly) confirmed to me they do have it scheduled for delivery on the next truck. Plus just this morning before opening they dropped the prices on the existing WD Live on the display tp $119. One of my distributors has them with an availability date of 6/14.
My main concern with the new unit is if they upgraded the **bleep** networking to gigabit. Can’t find any white papers on it.
I suspect that the original Live will be getting DVD menus and other stuff in the next firmware release, just not the Netflix component.
The excuse for no Netflix on Live has always been down to hardware limitations but that was never raised as a potential issue regarding the DVD Menu feature.
Keep your fingers crossed guys, next firmware might be a good one! ;)
This is poor customer service precisely for the reason WD did it this way: had they announced earlier, all those people who wanted Netflix would have held off purchasing. WD makes a surprise release precisely to make sure sales don’t flag between announcement and release. This makes them more money, but only because there are X hundreds of people who would have preferred to wait for the Netflix version – X hundreds who are now, naturally, unhappy. The surprise release makes money for WD precisely insofar as it induces all those customers into making a purchase they are now unhappy about.
So all you defending this as just business: it only works insofar as it pisses off customers. Furthermore, it doesn’t even make very good business sense, since purchasers deferred by a few months are relatively unlikely to buy something else in the interim (though of course some will), so they aren’t really lost business, just deferred profit. (That logic wouldn’t hold if they’d made the announcement a year in advance, but a few months really doesn’t make that big of a difference, especially because such a tiny percentage of buyers would be aware of such an announcement.) Finally, WD defenders may not be aware of this, but most hardware manufacturers hold off even on simple hardware upgrades until a year or so has elapsed, in order not to ■■■■ off existing customers. Such manufacturers deliberately delay the short-term profits they might make via the boost in sales from an incremental upgrade in order to preserve the goodwill of repeat customers. Here too, WD appears to chosen to burn its bridges for a little short-term cash – perhaps because they see this product category as a dead end fairly soon.
I have an Xtreamer. I also had a TVix 6500A, which I sold 3 months ago because it was an End-of-life product. Then I bought a WD TV Live to replace my TVix.
Now I am stuck with a device that cannot do as much as my old Tvix could (such as DVD menus), and now my WD TV Live is already an old model just being 3 months old (I will start calling it WD TV Live “minus”).
Additionally, 2 months have passed and there is no firmware for my WD TV Live “minus”.
I really regret of having purchased WD TV Live “minus”. The only thing that would compensate my frustration would be a firmware update with Netflix support, DVD menus, decent support to AVCHD and decend quality when downsampling hi-resolution JPG images.
Yes, now I am a mad owner of a WD TV Live MINUS… :/ :/ :/
it will have an Appstore-like thing, so maybe someone can write a program to run DVDs with navigation.
I knew someone would go there at some point. I too was looking at that device… until the Netflix logo disappeared off of their site a month or so ago. There’s been some limited communication from the developers that there is licensing to work out yet, and therefore they can no longer promise Netflix on the device. It sounds like they are trying to get it on there, but the lack of a definitive answer concerns me a bit.
Perhaps the popbox lacks the proper hardware provisions to provide Netflix support?
