WDTV issues with NAS drive

Totally owning the fact that I only have a vague idea about what I’m doing here, trying to learn as I go.

Basically, I have a Seagate 2TB NAS drive and the WDTV Live hooked up - connected via cables - no wifi involved.

What I have done is connected the NAS and the WDTV via the “Media Server” option.

This is where things start to go a little sideways on me - I would say about 85% of my folders are showing up, most of the missing stuff being my TV shows.

What does show up plays perfectly, but naturally the stuff that isn’t there is what I’m actually wanting to watch.

If it matters, my NAS is organized as follows:

  • Movies

   - (Movie title)

       - Actual video file

       - .jpg for folder thumbnail (of which only some are working - I don’t really care about this)

  • TV

  - TV Show

     - Season

     -  .jpg for folder thumbnail (of which only some are working - I don’t really care about this)

          - Actual video files (soon to be all labeled SxxEzz for uniformity)

The shows that show up always the same, its random concerning which show and which don’t (meaning some are just video files, others have subfolders, some have .xml data, others don’t), and only 12 folders show up under TV, but there are well over 300 movie folders in the movie folder.

I could understand if the files were not compatable with the WDTV, but at the very least, the folders should show, right?

The next issue, that is slightly connected is that the WDTV isn’t showing the most up to date view of whats on the NAS - meaning that I went and cleaned up the folders and some of the naming or added more files, but its showing the old way stuff was named/organized or the new stuff is nowhere to be found. 

I had read that this was an issue with the NAS pushing the data out, but after 24 hours, nothing has changed. I had also read that instead of connecting as a media server, if I connected as a “Network Share”, I might get better results… 

But I can’t get it to show up as a Network Share - only as a media server. Does it matter? When I choose Network Share, all I see is 2 of our computers.

What is the dashboard (in layman’s terms), and if it’s something I should try and get, can it be used in conjunction with a NAS? When I try to hit the icon on my screen, I see a message that basically says to use a source with a media library enabled, but is that something I can run off my NAS?

So to recap:

  1. Not everything is showing
  2. Updating from NAS is slow/not happening at all
  3. Network Share vs Media Server - one is working, the other doesn’t  - what should I be using???
  4. Dashboard suggestions and can it be run off a NAS?

Much thanks to everyone for the help, please let me know if something I said doesn’t make sense or if you need more info on how I have done something.

As to the network share issues, I’d start by making sure *every* device in your home network is set to the same workgroup name.