WDTV Live and Samsung TV

Community Archives WD TV Live Networking
1

Hi,

I have a Samsung UE40D6500 TV wirelessly connected to my router.
WDTV Live connected by wire to router. (and by HDMI to another TV (Pioneer))
Western Digital 1TB HardDiskDrive connected to WDTV Live via USB.

The Samsung TV is not seeing the video files on that harddisk.
Shouldn’t the Samsung TV see these files as it is on the same network?
Am i setting it up wrong?

2

Are the Samsung TV and the WDTV set to the same Workgroup on the network?

3

Do Samsung Tv’s even support network shares? I thought they only did DLNA.

4

From what a quick look around tells me, the ConnectShare is only for USB-attached files.

It seems like the USB WiFi dongle is for internet connectivity, not LAN filesharing.

5

Do you mean AllShare? That is the Samsung DLNA server.

6

They are on the same workgroup.

7

I am actually not using a usb wifi dongle. This version of the tv has wifi built in.
It is indeed called Allshare in this version.
And i have been able to do filesharing between my laptop and the samsung tv.

8

As I thought. Samsung Tv’s only do DLNA sharing. The WDTV Live is not a DLNA server, it only supports file sharing which is completely different. So the Samsung TV will not see the WDTV.

Your options as I see them are-

  1. Move the disk to your laptop and do all the DLNA sharing from there with AllShare

  2. Get a NAS with a DLNA server and share from there (Note- Samsung TV’s are very picky about which DLNA servers they will work with)

9

Interesting.  I was not aware there was a difference.

Wouldn’t solution 1 require my laptop to be on all the time to see the files?

 Solution 2: Is a NAS just like a harddisk that i connect with a wire to the router? any suggestions ?

Why does WDTV Live not act as a DLNA server? Do they have a model that does?

10

Solution 1- Yes your laptop would have to be on whenever you want to view/play media.

Solution 2- Basically yes, but a NAS is a bit more than just a Harddisk. I use an old HP Mediavault which is no longer sold. WD, Seagate, Dlink, Cisco, QNAP and numerous other vendors sell NAS devices. The only place I can point you to for more information (but it is a bit out-of-date) http://www.nas-central.org/

The WD Live HUB does have a DLNA server. It runs Twonky MediaServer as do many of the other NAS devices you will find. But I will warn you that none of the currently available NAS devices run recent versions of Twonky Media Server. I think it is a Twonky licensing requirement. And the version on the WDTV Hub IS NOT UPGRADEABLE, unlike some other NAS devices.

Now how that comes into play is that TwonkyMedia have made a lot of efforts recently to work around the quirks with Samsung devices. So my advice would be to get a NAS that is EASILY hackable so that you can install the latest Twonky server version.

Maybe go over to the Twonky forum and look around there for a NAS solution- http://www.twonkyforum.com/

I know some people have had success with the Dlink DNS-323, but I don’t have any personal experience with this device.

11

I use a Dlink DNS323 myself. It has a builtin uPnP media server that streams great to the WD TV Live. It is also hackeable if you want to install other packages on it. You will need a network cable and spare port on your router/switch to use it, but the setup/install is easy. My router is a Dlink too, they do seem to work well with the WD TV equipment.