WDTV crashes all the time

[whitestripe77]

Hey there!

I just got my new WD Live TV today. I was really excited to get it. So I connected it to my network to watch some movies on my NAS. Unfortunately the device crashed about 50 times during the last 3 hours. I’m not exaggerating… Almost everytime I pause a video a blue status ring appears on the screen and doesn’t go away. I have to plug the power cord and reboot. Same happens when fasting forward and so on… Problem occours when playing videos from various USB drives as well.

I’m using the latest firmware. The videos I’m trying to watch are MP4 files. h.264 and ffmpeg encoded.

Then another problem: I have some video files that have multiple audio channels. When switching between them the sound gets out of sync and the video runs like in slow motion. Most of the time also the bad blue ring appers and does not go away.

Any solutions for this? I was so excited to get this thing, but currently it is not usable at all.

Thank you so much!

Andy

[whitestripe77]

Well, it seems a lot of people are affected by the same problem as well. Read that on various other WDTV forums. As there is no solution to this problem I will return the device today and get an Xtreamer. Hope that device works better.

[Prescelli]

HI!, i have buy the last WDTVLIVE and i put a last firmware 1.02.14 but i have a incredible problem, my WD crash all the time!!

Hi have with a 2 NAS in network one dlink and one lacie but when i read the list of movies or music or photo and when WD go in a file that not recognized i have rebbot! any time!! is incredible please tell me about this problem and sorry for my bad english, i’m italian. Thanks

[dxsage]

I have the exact same situation. WD TV LIVE crashes very frequently, and I can’t make out the crash pattern still. Seems like once in a while video decoder chip stills, while menu is still usable. To recover from this I have to either disconnect the power cord or use restore factory defaults in menu. The player resets and works as it should until the next “crash”.

Using the latest stable firmware. What is it? Please help!! I thought the problem is my device, wanted to exchange it for another unit, but seems like the problem is general…

[whitestripe77]

Contacted WD, but they do not answer my emails. This is ridiculous. I really cannot watch a single video without the device crashing… So annoying.

[FuGGer]

you must have a lemon

my player does not crash trying to play mp4s…

[whitestripe77]

http://wdtvforum.com/main/index.php?topic=3734.45 A lot of guys over there have the EXACT problem as I do. So apparently it’s not just my device. Right now I feel like a betatester for a very very unstable product.

[FuGGer]

that thread refers to f/w v1.01.11

we are now at .24

anyways, i have a lot of mp4s/mkv and ive never had wdtv crash on me like you have mentioned.

maybe its your NAS…files all ok?

[Bill_S]

FuGGer is most likely correct.  WD posted this Knowledge Base article just yesterday.  Could be bad, or broken data files.

The WD TV Live reboots after showing error message: “A fatal system error is detected. The device will restart.”

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=5369

[dxsage]

whitestripe77 gave a correct link to the people having the same problem as we all do.

The WD TV Live DOES NOT REBOOT it just STOPs playing the files that it was playing fine just a while ago. “The beachball of death” is just keeps spining and the player does not play any video, music, youtube, etc. 2 things help - power disconnect or “restore to factory defaults”.

I cant make out a pattern - when and why this thing it happens. I have noticed that it ofter happening when i add new files to HD. My media library is now switched off, but this thing is still happening.

C’mon WD give us some feedback on this problem!! Tomorrow I’m going to exchange my unit for another one… hope this helps…

[thanarath]

I would suggest wired network.

Wired network is more stable, even at 100Mbps.

The signal quality is 100% true. You only need good 5Mbps constant transferring.

It will finish playing the movie. No drop out, unless power off. 

Or the movie file is corrupted in some point.

If you are on the wireless network.

( I have used wireless before, connected at 270Mbps,

6ft distant, dropped a lot, played 1080p movies) 

This is more likely to get drop out.

Even if you are using the most expensive router and USB dongle.

When you are or someone is using a cell phone, homephone, microwave,

or your neighbor is using their phone or wireless laptop,

this cause an interference in the wireless network.

WDTV Live/Firmware 1.01.24 / Wired network / Network Share. No problem.

[dxsage]

  thanarath - im using a USB drive (WD My book essential) attached to the box. What could be more wired than that?

May be WD harddrives are not really compatible with WD players?

Thanks for the help guys, but Im very disappointed that WD officials still didnt comment on our problem… what’s up with the customer support…

[thanarath]

dxsage,

Have you played that particular video on your computer?

Does it also fail? OK? Or else?

Have you run the disk utility on that drive to see if the disk is fine? No bad sectors? Corrupted video files?Bad copied?

I also own two WD external drives: MyBook Studio 2TB and MyBook Essential 500GB.

Both have been connected to WDTV live and played several movies on many weekends with no problem.

[PixelPower]

dxsage wrote:

Thanks for the help guys, but Im very disappointed that WD officials still didnt comment on our problem… what’s up with the customer support… 

I think you’ve misunderstood the nature of this forum.  It’s a community support forum, so the vast majority of ‘support’ you get here is simply from other WDTV users. 

I’m not saying that WD staff never post here, just that it’s extremely rare because this is a forum manned mostly by moderators, not tech staff.  They’re friendly and very helpful and will sometimes pass on grievances higher up the ladder but in general their job is to keep the forums running smoothly.

There is (or was) some recent staff activity in the firmware PreRelease thread but that’s purely for matters regarding the PreRelease.  And then occasionally a WD staff will comment on a bug report, saying they’re looking into it.  That’s about it.

For proper tech support from WD staff addressing your specific requests, you need to contact technical support in your region (e.g. phone, email).

[Nicolai]

As i said in another thread, i had the exact same problem.

But it went away just like it came after about a week.

Haven’t done anything beyond normal usage, aside from powercycling to be able to resume watching.

Just try to use it for a few days, just keep of pause or ff/fr and powercycle after a movie if it broke and maybe it’ll return to normal for you too.

[PixelPower]

dxsage wrote:

  thanarath - im using a USB drive (WD My book essential) attached to the box. What could be more wired than that?

 

May be WD harddrives are not really compatible with WD players? 

Just had a thought (rare!), are you stacking the WD TV Live on top of the WD HDD?

How good is the ventilation near the WD TV Live?

I’m running the prerelease atm but was using 0.24 for a short time prior and it never crashed once.  If it’s not bad data as Bill_S suggests, it might just be the unit overheating and locking up.

[thanarath]

dxsage,

Last night, 03/04/2010  06:48PM

I hooked up WDTV Live Firmware 1.01.24, WD MyBook Essential 500GB Firmware 2.003 via USB connection.

Started playing (pressed play to make it continues playing to the next movies, if you press enter it will play one and stop) movies. So it played all movies in sequence until I stopped it at 03/05/2010  06:30AM.

It did not pause or stopping or hanging. All movies played back fine.

Sorry, I could not reproduce the problem you have.

[whitestripe77]

Hey there!

I returned my device yesterday. Got another media device. No WD this time. And it works just great!

Well, the link to the thread I posted earlier was posted on that forum for an older firmware. Nonetheless the problem still exists in the latest “stable” as well as in the beta version. I tried a lot of thinks: Playback from my NAS which is connected with 100Mbps does not work. Playback from a WD MyBook Studio does not work. Playback from an external Seagate neither. Tried at least 30 different files. They cannot be all corrupt. My Mac plays them fine, my new media center does so as well.

Last night I figured out that the crashes would only happen if the device was turned on longer then 5 minutes. So after watching a movie for 5 minutes every video crashed when I pushed the pause button. Again, the WDTV crashed EVERY time I pushed the pause button. That was inaccaptable.

I send an email to WD on Tuesday but did not get an answer yet. It does not matter any more anyways… I did get a private message here in the forum though…

Well, good luck to you all. My advice: Return your WDTV. There are a lot better devices out there.

[FuGGer]

bye bye…dont let the door hit you on the way out…

[dxsage]

thanarath,

Thanks for trying, I appreciate it. Actually I have exchanged the WD device for another one. Using it for 2 days already, everything is fine, but it did hang one time.

Actually it happens when I am transfering files from my notebook to the hard drive attached via USB to the box. If I start to play movie while transfer is in progress - sometimes it hangs like this.