Western Digital, you are a joke. Your products are paperweights and your support is… wait, what support? Oh yeah, it doesn’t exist. I wouldn’t touch another WD product with a ten foot pole.
This may sound harsh but it is how I am feeling right now. And I think I can confidently say that many of the customers who gave your their money to buy the WDHDTV V2 are feeling the same way. I want you to be able to prove me wrong. Show us that this is just a fluke, a lapse, and my confidence will be restored.
That being said, 4 months without support (that is a third of year folks) is way too long a gap for me to think WD gives even a tiny care about the customers they swindled. This is the official WD forum and to even see a WD representative post here might as well be certified as a miracle. Somewhere along the line WD seems to have forgotten that without customers they would have nothing.
I think the question on everybody’s mind is, “When are we getting new, quality, working firmware?” And, “soon,” is a pretty poor answer. Months ago wouldn’t have been soon enough. We want real answers. Are you working on the issues? What can we expect and when can we expect it? We are tired of waiting. We want the support we deserve. If you give us that support we will show our gratitude and continue to buy WD products. If not, we will take our business elsewhere and make sure that everybody who will listen will too. Thank You.
I am in the information gathering stage of creating my own portable media player. Researching which hard drive to get, case etc. I was leaning towards WD (hard drive and pvp) but reading such bad reviews on cnet and now on the wd forum i am seriously having second thoughts and now considering researcing different brands. Perhaps i will wait a bit longer and see how things unfold here before jumping onto another brand.
I will admit that wdtv live was a little buggy at first with my internet switch, but after i got it online haven’t had to many issues with it, except some formats (usually ones that are corrupted or .mov files sometimes) crash wdtv live. I have never had to use wd support so i can’t really comment on that, however i will say that they make great products. I have about 6 of their hard drives (4 my books 1 tb, 2 passports and i have never had an issue with any of them (4+ years and going strong) And i am very pleased with my wd player, i have the first version as well and i never had an issue, except it wouldn’t play most wmv files, other then that, it plays every file type known to man… (.mov ) may have issues sometimes… I will say that WD could relax on keeping the firmware in house they should make an api for it or something… some people like to tinker with things and improve, maybe my next player will be linux based.
Not sure what exactly he refers to as V2. But since he started this post and seems to be equally frustrated as myself.
I thought i would add some of my opinions here also…
I own 2 pcs of WD TV Live and a My Book World Ed (1TB)…And these are by far the worst products i have ever owned.
Same problems as everybody else are experiencing with the TV Live…And doesn´t seem to be any light at the end of this tunnel.
And the MyBook…jeeesus what an slow interface. And when there is much traffic going, the drive drops connection and only way to get it going again is by disconnectiing power and starting it up again.
Will never waste my money on a WD product again… Hopefully the retailer gives me my money back…
FYI…My network is working without a flaw with everything else in my home. But not WD:s. Wasted countless hours of testing and changing cables, routers, switches and different configurations etc etc.
Western Digital, you are a joke. Your products are paperweights and your support is… wait, what support? Oh yeah, it doesn’t exist. I wouldn’t touch another WD product with a ten foot pole.
This may sound harsh but it is how I am feeling right now. And I think I can confidently say that many of the customers who gave your their money to buy the WDHDTV V2 are feeling the same way. I want you to be able to prove me wrong. Show us that this is just a fluke, a lapse, and my confidence will be restored.
That being said, 4 months without support (that is a third of year folks) is way too long a gap for me to think WD gives even a tiny care about the customers they swindled. This is the official WD forum and to even see a WD representative post here might as well be certified as a miracle. Somewhere along the line WD seems to have forgotten that without customers they would have nothing.
I think the question on everybody’s mind is, “When are we getting new, quality, working firmware?” And, “soon,” is a pretty poor answer. Months ago wouldn’t have been soon enough. We want real answers. Are you working on the issues? What can we expect and when can we expect it? We are tired of waiting. We want the support we deserve. If you give us that support we will show our gratitude and continue to buy WD products. If not, we will take our business elsewhere and make sure that everybody who will listen will too. Thank You.
Have you already tried contacting Technical Support with an issue? Or are you just referring to what seems like an eternity and no firmware update? I know that our product team is working on a firmware update, but I don’t know when it will be released. If you need help, you can contact WD’s Technical Support either by phone or email.
Bill_S wrote:> Have you already tried contacting Technical Support with an issue? Or are you just referring to what seems like an eternity and no firmware update? I know that our product team is working on a firmware update, but I don’t know when it will be released. If you need help, you can contact WD’s Technical Support either by phone or email.
Bill please forgive me if I sound flipant or rude for asking this, I can assure you that my intention is not to offend…
If you could kindly clarify what would be the point of contacting Technical Support to complain about the excessively long overdue firmware update? Are you saying that if we contact Technical Support and complain about the many inadequacies of the current firmware that they will offer a solution? The only solution to the problems with the existing firmware is… newly updated firmware?! Now if you’ll excuse my pessimism, I really don’t believe that WD Technical Support with the best intentions would offer even a patch, let alone a full firmware update. So really, what is the point of contacting WD Technical Support? Most of us in this community already understand that our problems aren’t user error or hardware related, but that the firmware we are using is partly inadequate and over four months old.
That said, I do very much appreciate your contributions to the community Bill. At least as a WD representative you are communicating with us. Something is better than nothing.
If you could kindly clarify what would be the point of contacting Technical Support to complain about the excessively long overdue firmware update?
As I’m sure you know, Tech Support has nothing to do with programming firmware. So, they’re not going to be able to help you out there. What I was suggesting, based on the fact that tginn was upset because his WDTV wasn’t working, was for him to contact Tech Support (if he hadn’t already) to make sure that whatever was wrong wasn’t something else besides the firmware. Now if that’s a stupid recommendation, I apologize. There was no indication that he hadn’t already done that. And, it’s entirely possible that one common sympton can have multiple unrelated causes. It was just a thought.
As I’m sure you know, Tech Support has nothing to do with programming firmware. So, they’re not going to be able to help you out there. What I was suggesting, based on the fact that tginn was upset because his WDTV wasn’t working, was for him to contact Tech Support (if he hadn’t already) to make sure that whatever was wrong wasn’t something else besides the firmware. Now if that’s a stupid recommendation, I apologize. There was no indication that he hadn’t already done that. And, it’s entirely possible that one common sympton can have multiple unrelated causes. It was just a thought.
Again, apologies Bill, but I think you may have been reading a completely different post?? I don’t think anything about Tginn’s post suggested him being upset because his WDTV “wasn’t working”. From my understanding the entire content of his post is about the excessively long overdue firmware update and nothing to do with his WDTV not working. In fact, I don’t think he even mentioned that it wasn’t working at any point? To me personally, it is fairly obvious that his complaint is purely with regard to WD’s neglect of it’s support (firmware upgrade) for the WDTVHD 2nd Gen and it’s complete lack of interest in satisfying it’s customers basic requirements (as in the product working exactly as it is supposed to in accordance with it’s advertised specifications). In which case (as I had suggested earlier) WD’s Technical Support are not going to be able to offer any solution.
As I stated earlier though, your contributions are very much appreciated.
This wouldn’t even be an issue if you could release a firmware that didn’t have bugs in it. Some weird corner case bug here or there is fine, but the bugs we’re seeing show up during normal use.
Firmware for my PC motherboard gets release every 5 or 6 months but it’s not a big deal because there aren’t tons of bugs to fix. They could even drop down to once a year for all I care. If there were no bugs in the current WDTV firmware, I would feel the same way.
Based on your current track record, I’m afraid that 1) the next firmware release will break things that are currently working and 2) many bugs that exist in the firmware today won’t even be touched. And if that’s the case…then don’t even bother trying because releases like that make it look like you’re not trying.
I don’t know what you’re using as your current metrics, but to me (an ex-customer), it’s not about the length of time it takes to get a new firmware out the door. It’s about the total number of bugs in your most current firmware and the length of time these bugs have existed and the severity of the bugs. Yes, this is loosely related to the amount of time between firmware releases but it’s not the same thing. Based on this, many of us think you just don’t care.
Well, I believe they care. It’s just that their programming staff is busy elsewhere. HD player is a cheap device and post-sale service had a minimal weight in the product’s price. So don’t expect that a team will be working day and night to fix issues. I’ll be grateful if they do at least something.
P.S. personally I am satisified with the device rather than disappointed
That’s great. But perhaps you haven’t upgraded to the latest firmware version and tried to play an MP4 file. I’m sure they’re programming staff isn’t just kicking back ATM and working on something but I’m just not sure what it is they’re working on. If they would communicate their progress a little more I’m sure you wouldn’t see so much blatant complaining here anymore.
one might say that not providing any support for a product that is a year old is fair enough (i did ask when the 2nd gen was released but didnt get an answer) If its less than 6months then it would be nice. If a working firmware is broken by new firmware then it definately should be fixed. If it doesnt do as advertised then trading standards…refund from manufacturer
