My WD TV Live media player has stopped playing MKV files for some reason. I know that it has managed to play them in the past, but for some reason it is not now. Does anyone know how I can resolve this?
Cheers,
Reboot it by pulling plug, wait over 5 seconds, and plug back in. (do not reset to factory defaults.)
Does it play none now, or just some newer ones?
I see this issue randomly, get a “this file format is not supported” message. The only solution is to either unplug as noted above (but actually give it a few minutes), or just let the box sit there for a few hours. I think it may have something to do with the way it reads your disc.
I’ve had it happen immediately when starting up a brand new box, thus my thought above.
Yep, a common ailment of WDTV of any models. Something in file “confuses it” and a reboot of WDTV is necessary.
Never happened with MKV files (or MP4,AVI,WMV etc) on my old WDTV Live Hub (Firmware 2.07.17)
must be lucky … i guess 
You were lucky. Happens much less on my Live Plus as firmware evolved, and I stayed with one of the latest versions for years now. A video file would play fine, select another of same type of file. and it would say it could not play this kind of video format. (It just played one like it, WTF.) would have to reboot player, and when it came back up, I select same video and it played fine. (my WDTV is wired to network, too.)
Never happened either with the folks WDTV Live ( Gen2 [2009] ) either … that i gave them
(not Wired … offline)
and now that i think of it … Never happened either with my WDTV (Gen1)
(which of course, is offline … because it has no Lan or WiFi)
Maybe it’s not Luck after all 
Have seen quite a few posts like from diagoro’s above, but not a big deal. Let’s move on.
yes i agree,
let’s ignore your “Yep, a common ailment of WDTV of any models” statement …
because it doesn’t affect everyone 
And yet it’s still an issue for me, that WD have never been able to fix (along with “memory low messages” and pink screens).
The “move along” comment is rather rude. I’m glad this isn’t as much of an issue for you (whereas it kills my box until it magically works again). But telling someone else to quiet down (in a forum like this) comes across as obnoxious and petty.
This comment was not meant for YOU, nor was it rude, or “obnoxious and petty”. I was taking your side all along, because I said my WDTV had sometimes refused to play a certain video type (e.g. MKV) and for no apparent reason it gave me same message as you get. It seemed to have happened to enough others, too, so I said it was a common ailment. Joey disagreed that it was “common” since it never happened to him, and made another comment after the first one that it was not common. Well, that is his opinion, and mine is different. Which is fine; we are both entitled to our opinions. Anyway, it was not productive for helping you for us to go back and forth about if it was “common” or not, so I finally said to him,
“Have seen quite a few posts like from diagoro’s above, but not a big deal. (implying to continue going back and forth about it being :common” or not). (Joey) Let’s move on."
Hope this is all cleared up now.
My apologies than, it was the way I read it. I’ve seen a lot of comments like “story is over, move along and stop commenting” in social media. Really absurd when it’s in a forum/facebook, etc. Perhaps it’s grown to be a bit of a personal pet peeve. Sorry I took it out of context.
Good that we understand my intent.
Yes. it seems we will just have to accept this quirk of the player, because we are never going to see an update of an old product’s firmware. As for my Live Plus, I have chosen not to use the most current firmware, but rather a more stable version FW, two-back from that one. My unit hardly acts up like this these days. Likely for the firmware, but also I make my own digital video files; I do not get them from torrents and such. So, I know my files are made as correctly as I can make them.
If your WDTV Live is not playing mkv or video file at all, the problem is on one or more newer mkv video merged with one the latest version of MKVmerge. When the WDTV Live try to open one of those files, it hang, and can’t play anymore no one files, even if it is power off. The solution to restart the playing function is to press 1 second the reset button when the WDTV is on. Then install (or uninstall from pc MKVmerge version 4.xx), and install a previous version (3.30 for example) open the files that is not playing and save them with another name (for example *.(1), like MKVmerge show). And now try to play this new file, and they and the older MKV are working again. Important, don’t try to preview or play of a non ok mkv file: the WDTV will hang again. Made the same procedure with MKVmerge if the newer files has no audio ouput from TV.
WD TV Live only supports to play MKV files encoded with the codec of MKV (h.264, x.264, AVC, MPEG1/2/4, VC-1).
I have read all the information and wrote this post, you can find the comprehensive solution at here: Play all MKV video on WD TV Live at will.
hello, i have been using wd tv live for a long time to watch movies and series using kingston usb of 7gb. on it I switched the series I planned to watch in 1080p resolution. I was constantly watching in that resolution, so I didn’t use wd tv for a year, and when I decided to watch it again, it said that it was impossible to watch the selected file and look at the allowed formats in the user manual. does anyone know what the problem is. if he knows please tell me.
you need to investigate the codecs used in your video file. eg. software like mediainfo will show you.
if the video you’re trying to play uses HEVC, X265/H265 video codec then it won’t play on a WDTV.
1 Like
Thank you 
