WDTV Live Plus Limited Public Beta 1.03.39_B (9/9/10)

Community Archives WD TV Live Firmware
81

Guy_K wrote:

 

ccdalla wrote:

Okay…I’ve now bricked TWO HDTV Live Plusses trying to upgrade to this version of firmware.

 

The first one, I figured I screwed up the process by removing the drive before it was ready (like, after it erased the flash and rebooted, but before it actually finished writing the new firmware), so I took the heat and bought a new one, but now, the same thing has happened with my new unit.

 

 Here’s what goes on:

 

I boot up the device while it’s working.

 

The menu comes up at “Found firmware update” (or whatever it says).  I press “enter”.

 

The screen then comes up with something like “New firmware version: 1.03.39_B.  Confirm you want to update?”.  I move the cursor to “OK” and press “enter”.

 

The unit spends a few seconds reading from the flash drive, then the “rebooting” screen with the little spinner comes up.

 

After 20 seconds or so, the unit reboots and comes back to the WD logo and “WD TV Live Plud HD Media Player” screen.

 

Again, the unit accesses the flash drive for several seconds (up to 20 or so), then it stops.

 

After another few seconds, the screen goes blank (in fact, the unit stops trying to feed video to my monitor, because the ‘HDMI2’ source ID comes up).

 

That’s it.  Nothing else happens.  Ever.

 

If I hold the button on the left side of the unit while applying power, it’ll come up with the “insert a USB drive with firmware to recover your WDTV.”

 

If I insert a flash drive with 1.03.39_B, it’ll access the drive for 20 seconds or so, then stop driving the screen, and then nothing.

 

If I insert a flash drive with the rollback version of 1.03.29B (1.03.29B was what was on my unit fresh out of the box), it sees it, blanks the screen, then comes up with the “updating firmware” screen after 15 seconds or so.  The progress bar comes up, and goes up to 100%, says “upgrade complete”, and displays the “rebooting” screen with the spinner, then the unit reboots.  If I leave the flash drive in the USB port, this process repeats (“updating”, progrss bar → 100%, “complete”, “rebooting”…pause…“updating”…ad infinitum).  If I remove the flash drive, the unit comes up at the WD logo, and then hangs.

 

Either the firmware upgrade process is seriously jacked, or there’s a step missing from the instructions.

 

Which is it?

 

What is the make and model of your TV? We have identified a problem that is basically identical to this that occurs with a handful of Sharp TVs. It’s an HDMI handshaking issue. You should be able to recover your unit by connecting it via composite or component, completing the firmware upgrade, and then downgrading to 1.03.29_B. We’re currently working on a solution for this issue.

 

Please send me a private message or post again here (or both) if you continue to have problems.

I too have had the exact same senario happen while upgrading to the beta. Trying to use the rollback version leaves me in an infinite loop of updating and rebooting.

I have tried using composite and component cables without any improvement.

Any suggestions?

82

"I too have had the exact same senario happen while upgrading to the beta. Trying to use the rollback version leaves me in an infinite loop of updating and rebooting.

I have tried using composite and component cables without any improvement.

Any suggestions?"

I had exactly same problem. Use the composite cable to connect the Live Plus to TV,  the component connection did not work for me neither on my HDTV. I believe that during the update process the resolution on the Live Plus gets reset to the lowest 480i resolution, and my TV could not switch to it properly  with HDMI or component cable.  I think my Live Plus even got reset to the PAL system somehow, I remember I saw black and white picture just after the succesfull upgrade, but I was able to get to the Audio-Video Settings menu in the Live Plus and set the video to NTSC. Try to update to the newest firmware first, then rollback to the older one.

83

shunja wrote:> I had exactly same problem. Use the composite cable to connect the Live Plus to TV,  the component connection did not work for me neither on my HDTV. I believe that during the update process the resolution on the Live Plus gets reset to the lowest 480i resolution, and my TV could not switch to it properly  with HDMI or component cable.  I think my Live Plus even got reset to the PAL system somehow, I remember I saw black and white picture just after the succesfull upgrade, but I was able to get to the Audio-Video Settings menu in the Live Plus and set the video to NTSC. Try to update to the newest firmware first, then rollback to the older one.

Thank you Shunja,

At your suggestion I decided to give it one more careful try. I’m happy to say I’m back in business.

  1. This time I started with power off.

  2. I loaded the downgrade software onto the USB and connected to USB1 on the side.

  3. connected via composite (NOT component)

  4. turned on power and let the upgrade run.

  5. No joy. The update cycle would finish and reboot and then repeat ad infinitum.

  6. Put Beta version onto USB stick and plugged into side usb1

  7. reapplied power and let upgrade run.

  8. upgrade completed and rebooted to the normal WDTV live plus screen!

SO the 2 important points seem to be

  1. connect using the composite cable

  2. Use the BETA firmware image to complete the upgrade.

I am now able to upgrade or downgrade freely and have done so several times without incident. I have switched back to HDMI without problems. I don’t know what went wrong with my upgrade the first time but if it helps my TV is a Sylvania Model #LC321SS9 B

And for what it is worth the problem I was having with lip syncing on MP4 files seems to have cleared up.

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direct download link :

http://vuplus.bermoodateam.com/Files/wdtvliveplus_1.03.39_B.zip

good luck

85

Yesterday I was streaming Pandora for the first time with the updated firmare and while the music continued to stream, the menu froze and i was unable to nagivate or turn off the unit.  I had to unplug and restart the unit to get any menu navigation back.  Happened again today.

I have an LG 55LH90 TV and a Denon HVR590 receiver connected via HDMI.

Anyone else having ‘freezing’ issues?
Thx.

86

OK, time to update more…

  • I am still having bootup issues using component output (from previous post)…

 On bootup (I am using component out) I see garbage on the screen - yikes !

     - I see static, purple lines and I think I can see a WD icon on the screen, but not sure…

     - After ~30 seconds, the screen goes black

     - Then I see more junk on the screen, white lines this time rather than purple

     - Then finally the screen clears and I wee the WD logo and “Bootup”, or some other text

     - From here on out the video works fine

  • YouTube and/or Pandora occasionally “lock up” as others have stated.

  • Locked meaning I must power off the unit completely as is does not respond to the remote at all.

  • It takes a LONG TIME to boot up (is it running Windows XP:wink:)

  • Picture resolution on the whole is unfortunately poor.  Better than the VMP75 and fills the screen well however.

  • Netflix goes off the top of my screen and cannot see many options  (I think the term is “overscan”, but not sure…).

  …Note, this is not the “movie” I would play, rather the actual Netflix navigation screen, where movies can be chosen.

  • Still wish there was a listing of keys which work on the Keyboard.

  • So far the ESC key, Return, normal letter keys, arrows, and PgUp / PgDown work.

  • I would like to Fast forward (possibly rewind) using the keyboard but cannot find a key mapping for it

  • Almost all (maybe all) YouTube videos need to be un-zoomed to .9 for me to see the whole movie

  • Youtube resolution on the whole is poor - can I change resolutions somehow ?

  • On my PC I have options as to which resolution to use, but cannot find such options with the WD / YouTube

  • On the whole the unit works well and is usable - much better than the Viewsonic VMP75.

  • However, the VMP75 had a fast internet media option which let me get RSS feeds for news - it was nice.

-  Go here to section 3.4

Oh, also, any way to create a separate discussion(topic, whatever) for the Live Plus to keep it completely apart form the non-Live Plus topics?  It would make things much easier and avoid such things as this:

 "2 weeks ago 

 You don’t have a Live PLUS, do you?   All your other posts are with respect to the LIVE, not the Live Plus."

That’s it for now - H

87

High_Yield wrote:

 

Oh, also, any way to create a separate discussion(topic, whatever) for the Live Plus to keep it completely apart form the non-Live Plus topics?  It would make things much easier and avoid such things as this:

 "2 weeks ago 

 You don’t have a Live PLUS, do you?   All your other posts are with respect to the LIVE, not the Live Plus." 

 

There are separate forums for the WD TV Gen1 and the WD TV Mini… but we still get people with those units starting threads here.  :)

The Live and Plus are similar enough for troubleshooting to apply to both, e.g. network issues and functional / usage issues.  There will be some cases where the difference does matter but probably not often enough to warrant a whole new forum.  

Run it past Bill if you think it’s worth pursuing though, he’s the one who’d have to set it up.

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Maydaymay wrote:

…Anyone else having ‘freezing’ issues?
Thx.

Yes, I am having freezing issues as well. See this thread:

Freezing with new firmware

89

Scandy wrote:

Maydaymay wrote:

…Anyone else having ‘freezing’ issues?
Thx.

Yes, I am having freezing issues as well. See this thread:

 

Freezing with new firmware

I note that you never replied to that thread.

90

richUK wrote:

 

I note that you never replied to that thread.

 

I did try the suggested fix, but I thought that I would test for a while longer before I responded.

91

I’ve been running the beta for a couple of days now.  My biggest issue has been with turning the unit on and off.  It takes just forever to get to the menu screen, and HDMI does not come up correctly most of the time.  At power on, the WD splash screen shows up as either just high frequency garbage, or else it is not synced correctly (center of screen is at the upper left quadrant).  After this, the signal drops and then it will either come on okay after a minute or so, or (more often) not at all.  I’ve tried the 1080p 60hz and also the auto setting.  I am set to 12 bit color.  I am using the analog sound on the composite output, so maybe it’s detecting that as the active video?   When it doesn’t come up, I connect the composite until I get to the menu screen, then switch back to HDMI.  I’m afraid it’s really not ready to turn over to the wife yet.  She’d hand me my head!  Once it’s working I’ve had no problems accessing anything.  Netflix and my MKV videos play fine with no audio issues.  Able to connect to my PlayON server.  I also saw the “file maintenance” stuff.  What a great addition!  I’d been wondering how to get movies from my rip computer onto the WD without sneaker-netting my drive.  All-in-all a big plus over the WDTV.  Hopefully the developers will get most of these bugs killed before the next HW reincarnation shows up! 

92

dustbunny76, I have been having the same issue. I posted about it in a different thread:

Live Plus loses settings

I have been reading about a lot of others having very similar issues. From reading the thread about the WD Live 1.03.40 Beta it also looks like some of those poeple are having the same issue too. (I am talking about losing video settings when turned off/on, not about the length of time it takes for the unit to boot up…there is nothing we can do about that).

I agree that this is a bigger problem than you would think, because no one else in my family can use the Live Plus. When I try to explain to my wife: when you turn on the WD box the TV is out of sync, so you have to disconnect the composite input from the TV, connect the composite output of the WD box to the TV, switch the TVs input to composite, then go into the WD settings menu and change the video out frequency to HDMI 1080i (60Hz), then switch the TVs input back to HDMI, then unplug the composite input from the WD box and re-connect the input that you removed earlier so that you could connect the WD composite output. Only tech orientated people can handle something like that! Most ‘ordinary folks’ would be totally in the dark when asked to do something like that! 

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93

Problems that I have experienced with this firmware:

The biggest problem for me, by far, is that the WD box does not remember the video resolution settings (if manually set) when powering on/off. When you manually set the video output resolution, the box should remember that setting, instead the video output resolution is changed when the unit is powered back up. I manually set mine to 1080i 60Hz. About 50% of the time, when I power up, it stays set at 1080i, the rest of the time the WD box resets itself to 720p. (I really think that it is resetting itself to Composite, and it is falsely displaying 720p, as I will explain…

A second related problem is that when I manually set the video output resolution to Composite (NTSC), after answering ‘yes’ to the ‘are you sure you want to change the video resolution’ question, on the next screen it says that the video output is set to HDMI 720p (shouldn’t it say composite). After backing completely out of the settings and then again rechecking, it still says that the video output is set to 720p, even though I know that it is set to composite.

1 Like
94

Scandy wrote:

Problems that I have experienced with this firmware:

 

The biggest problem for me, by far, is that the WD box does not remember the video resolution settings (if manually set) when powering on/off. When you manually set the video output resolution, the box should remember that setting, instead the video output resolution is changed when the unit is powered back up. I manually set mine to 1080i 60Hz. About 50% of the time, when I power up, it stays set at 1080i, the rest of the time the WD box resets itself to 720p. (I really think that it is resetting itself to Composite, and it is falsely displaying 720p, as I will explain…

 

A second related problem is that when I manually set the video output resolution to Composite (NTSC), after answering ‘yes’ to the ‘are you sure you want to change the video resolution’ question, on the next screen it says that the video output is set to HDMI 720p (shouldn’t it say composite). After backing completely out of the settings and then again rechecking, it still says that the video output is set to 720p, even though I know that it is set to composite.

You are mixing up outputs. You get 3 seperate outputs from the WDTV. Composite, Component and HDMI. Composite has just two choices PAL or NTSC - there is no selection of lines with this as they are standard of 480 (NTSC) or 576 (PAL).  All 3 outputs can be output at the same time. It depends on your TV as to whether the output is supported or not. When you select composite output obviously you must be watching via the AV (composite ) output to see the difference. Likewise for the component and HDMI outputs. If you are changing the composite from PAL to NTSC and have a HDMI lead plugged in then the display may well show you the current HDMI resolution.

In short you are not ‘changing’ outputs on that menu, you are simply changing the standard or resolution of the individual outputs.

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I am not mixing up outputs. I have been a video hardware/software engineer for over 35 years, and I understand what I am doing. I realize that both the composite and hdmi outputs can be active at the same time, but it doesn’t seem logical to me that the WD setup screen would only display the hdmi output resolution, even when you are not using hdmi.

The reason that I am changing to composite is because the WD box has reset the hdmi output to an output frequency that my TV does not support (720p). It does this all by itself. I am FORCED to switch to the composite input so that I can go into the WD setup menu to set the video output resolution back to 1080i 60Hz.

While I was in the setup menu and connected to the TV using the composite input (because there was no other way for my TV to sync once the WD set itself to some other frequency on the hdmi output) I noticed that the Audio/Video screen said hdmi 720p. As an experiment, I then selected composite, NTSC (while still using the composite input on my TV). After answering ‘yes’ to the ‘are you sure’ question, the next screen still displayed hdmi 720p. This sure seemed like an error to me. When I set the WD box to composite, NTSC, why should it say that the video output resolution is hdmi 720p, when I am not even using the hdmi? (Maybe this is normal for the WD box).

After that I went back into the WD setup to manually set the video output resolution back to hdmi 1080i 60Hz. Then I have to switch my TVs input back to the hdmi input so that my TV will be running at 1080i.

As I said above, about half of the time, when I turn the TV on, it is out of sync. When I go into the WD setup menu (using the composite input at this point because I have to) it says that the video output resolution is hdmi 720p. My TV does not support 720p. I have to manually reset it to 1080i again as I explained above.

When the WD box resets itself to some other output resolution, it says 720p on the setup screen. As I explained above, when I set the WD to composite, it also says hdmi 720p. I mentioned that because I thought that it might be related to the problem. If what you are telling me is that the WD box only displays the hdmi output resolution, even when you are not using hdmi, then this seems a little bit counter-intuitive to me (but may be normal for this box?).

In any case, the problem is that the WD box does not remember the 1080i 60Hz video output resolution (that I manually set) when powered off/on. BTW, it does remember all the rest of the video, audio, photo, and network settings when powered off/on. Only the video output resolution gets changed.

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good news first: the frame rate stutter issue on H264 mov files is solved.no more stuttering.

bad news: the handshake issue is not. We can 't get neither an Infocus IN83 (1080p), nor a Panasonic PT AE900-U (1080i) to work with hdmi. After showing the wd logo both lose signal.

PLEASE make this work!!! This is for a large museum installation, with 7 players looping in sync. All works great, but not with hdmi, which is a resolution requirement for this installation. 

97

My Live+ doesn’t like the new Beta. Since I installed it, the box has locked up several times.  I have to unplug it to reset it., then it seems to work OK until the next time it decides to lock up. It never used to freeze like this before the Beta update.  I guess I’ll go back to the previous version for now.

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iggyd wrote:

My Live+ doesn’t like the new Beta. Since I installed it, the box has locked up several times.  I have to unplug it to reset it., then it seems to work OK until the next time it decides to lock up. It never used to freeze like this before the Beta update.  I guess I’ll go back to the previous version for now.

I assume that you have tried the basic remedy for these ills.

reset via the side paperclip button (1 sec push)

reset to factory defaults via the internal menu

unplug from power for some minutes (not seconds)

Sometimes after a firmware update its best to all 3 above before using the unit.

If you are having problems then its a must.

99

richUK is right. When I first installed the new firmware I was having a lot of freezing issues. Doing the reset as suggested fixed the problem for me.

100

I applied the beta version but I still have an issue playing Netflix via HDMI, I can play using component. I was instructed by WDS service tech Jeremy H to post here. I was also asked to rollback to the non beta release.

WDS Live Plus is directly connected to a Philips flat HDTV 42PF9731D 42" LCD via a HDMI cable connected to HDMI port 2.