WD TV Live Streaming Gen 3, tried three versions of firmware, same problems

Community Archives WD TV Live Streaming Firmware
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I’ve been struggling with my gen3 box for about two months now, trying to track down what seems to be a common problem with them, but to no avail.

I thought it may be of interest to others if I posted my findings.

I did try posting in the issues section, but it never got past the “more info needed” stage, despite me editing it as requested and adding the requested facts.

I now understand that it always appeared to boot twice because they do, when not left in standby. Ok, I could get round that by never turning the power off to it, but the big problem is that locks up every time after playing one or two videos or still photos, in any format, mpeg2, avi, mp4 etc.

I’ve tried all settings and resets to stop it doing that, with different usb drives, even a 32gb pen, but it even does it with local network accessed files. This means that I need to do a full system restart evevry time I play more than one video, or try to fast forward or stop one. Still photo slide shows last for about 10 pics, then it locks up.

I’ve tried firmware releases  1.4.12 , and  1.10.13 and  1.14.09 and the fault occurs all the time with all of them.

I’ve had to go back to my old Freecom 350 wlan box as a diskless media server, and I’m now using the WD TV live just as a network server box for my 2gb Hitachi usb hard drive.  Network access from it never gives any problems.

I’m amazed that a £75 media server is so buggy as to be unusable for its primary purpose.

I’m just trying to play regular Mpeg2 files, mostly of films recorded off TV, nothing exotic, which the 5 year old Freecom box plays faultlessly, without ever locking up. :cry:

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No lockups on any firmware for me.

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So does that mean that my hardware unit is faulty ?

Looking through the forum, so many other people have reported lockups and the dreaded spinning logo ?

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I’ve now given up with it and bought a Sony BDP-S185 blue ray/dvd/media player for £75.

It can’t act as a network media fileserver, or access media files via the local network, which the WD TV live could.

However, it plays all my different format video files and picture files faultlessly, and hasn’t locked up on me once, which the WD Live did every time, after playing two or three files.

The loss of local network file access is a small price to pay for the now fully usable media player via a USB hard drive and Internet services like Iplayer and Youtube.

I’m afraid I now won’t  be buying any more WD products other than hard drives.