We wait for a new firmware for Gen2

Community Archives WD TV HD
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Hehe, if you drop mkvmerge thinking it doesn’t work – you try another way (remuxing or something else), it’s perfect! And good luck to you wasting your time.But other people think the problem could be with the gadget. Thus why not to ask WD to update the firmware? that’s not a complaining or whining, Am sure, that pushing producer of the gadget I own to develop it – it’s the best way we have to pursuit.

 “Gee this last one won’t work 'cuz I compressed the headers… maybe if I compress them in this next one it will work… nope… maybe the next one?.. nope…”

Good tale. Could you imagine, just for a while, it all because of WD box? Why I shouldn’t ask WD to update soft in that case instead of trying to comb out thru forums to find a solution to fix movie file? Sure the firmware update would help.

1 Like
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tentoys wrote:

 

Why I shouldn’t ask WD to update soft in that case instead of trying to comb out thru forums to find a solution to fix movie file?

You’re welcomed to ask WD if you’d like, but 1) asking here is not asking WD, since they aren’t “officially” here, and 2) it’s a waste of time since the Gen2 has now been EOL’d as well as the Gen1. There will be no new firmware for it. Ever. Period. End of Life, and End of Discussion.

If you want to contact WD directly, feel free. Otherwise, it may be time for you to decide to either self-repair every standards-compliant file the WDTV can’t play because of its bugs, or give up on Western Digital and buy a unit from another manufacturer that will play those files without modification.

But really…complaining here is only going to get the fanboys’ shorts in a bunch triggering another of the, “It’s all your fault the device won’t play standards-compliant files” diatribes, and won’t get you new firmware for your device anyway. So far as WD is concerned, Gen2 owners are no longer important, since they already have your money. Your only decision is whether to give a company like that any more of your hard-earned cash.

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tentoys:

CS is bitter.

The Gen 2 has NOT, at least “Officially,” been EOL’d.    There’s still a chance (though remote) they might release a final one.  

While CS may label me a “FanBoy,”  I can only offer you a few choices in dealing with MKV header compression.

The whole MKV Header Removal Compression issue was never even HEARD of until July when the MKVMerge dude decided to make it the DEFAULT.   Yes, HRC is part of the MVK specification.   But if no one ever implemented it, there’s no surprise that there’s devices that didn’t anticipate it.   I personally GUARANTEE YOU that the “BEST” media streamer out there (if such a thing exists) does NOT implement MKV standard in their entirety.

Anyway, the choices:

1-  Don’t do anything but wait for WD to release a firmware fix.    Meanwhile your WD is unusable with those files.

2-  Use MKV Merge 4.0 or earlier to re-mux your files without the offending compression.   Takes a little time, but your files will now work fine with the WDTV.

3-  Use MKV Merge 4.1 or later to do the same thing, just remember to DISABLE the option.  Takes a little time, but your files will now work fine with the WDTV.

4-  Go buy another device that supports it out-of-the-box.  

So, it really depends on which tack you want to take:     Do Nothing, get nothing.   Do a little, get a Lot, or spend some money.  :)

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I think the only reason it hasn’t been “Officially” EOL’d is because WD doesn’t officially make any statements. They just don’t take a stance. Sometimes it would be nice to hear a yay or a nay from them but I think it just means they’d lose customers…which I’m sure they know. It is interesting getting one bit of info from tech support that contradicts bits of information from the next call to tech support, or stuff you’ll find on this forum. I’m pretty sure they don’t know even know what they’re doing at this point. I’ve taken a stance though, and I’m happy to make an official statement saying I’ll never buy WD stuff again.

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Ah, and in case you’re wondering, I’m bitter too. Or at least I have a bitter taste in my mouth after dealing with WD products and customer service. Why wouldn’t we be bitter?

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nijaju wrote:

I think the only reason it hasn’t been “Officially” EOL’d is because WD doesn’t officially make any statements. 

Yeah, they do…

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/legacy/legacy.asp?r=10

You’ll notice the only thing officially EOL’d is the Gen 1.

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TonyPh12345 wrote:

tentoys:

 

CS is bitter.

 

I am getting very weary of certain posters here putting words in my mouth since they don’t seem to like the ones I actually use. I am not, “bitter.” I am disgusted with the lack of support for WD products, yes, and will cheerfully warn people off of purchasing or using them (would that someone had warned me before I purchased anything from them!), but that is being helpful, not bitter. Truth is, WD did me a favor by refusing to support their device, since I now have a set-top box that plays everything I’ve thrown at it (except BR menus, which is according to the techs a licensing issue not a technical one). I won’t get into the philosophical discussion on what “support” means, but I believe strongly that I have the same rights to provide an alternate opinion as others have claimed on these boards promoting the devices…until the moderators remove me, I will continue to politely suggest there are better alternatives than throwing your money into a company who has shown it has no interest in dealing with the problems with the devices it sells.

(While there has been no “official” announcement about the Gen2 being EOL’d, there is anecdotal information provided by WD support to to a user mentioned in the first post of this thread. As the timing is just about right considering release/EOL of the Gen1, I see no reason to doubt that poster’s truthfulness.)

As for the rest of it, I’m not going to get sucked into name-calling, nor directly attacking other posters, nor any of the rest of it. The reader here can take from my comments whatever they will; as I see it the only real choices for WDTV  users are to purchase something else from WD that may or may not be supported into the future, or purchase something else from another company. I strongly suggest the simplicity of the latter; I leave it to others to suggest more difficult alternatives.

It all depends on whether you want to spend your valuable time working around the flaws of a device, or instead just watching some video. I chose the latter, and can tell you from personal experience it is much less stressful.

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CS…What “are” you using now by the way?..I only play DVD’s ripped to a single Mpeg2 or BR in m2ts form.

I “do” like having dvd cover thumbnails and the general ease of interface use etc. WD seem to be going away

from the original concept of cheap & simple device to stream from YOUR chosen source by going down the

expensive in-built HDD unit route.

I admit I would really like to be able to start using 3TB external drives (or the choice of my own internal one)

does your alternative brand unit allow this?

Was going to look at Boxee Box as it’s got a fair amount of power but i’d be payingfor all the on-line **bleep**e I

don’t need.

In summary my media players use is to provide movies on demand and to do so it must play mpeg2 & m2TS, digital sound is nice and as large as possible storage options as BluRay rips soon fill up space.

thanks in advance…

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Just had a nose and that ASUS HD2 looks just the ticket to me, chuck a 3TB in it and we’re away and I can have USB3 to transfer new blu across. Anyone got one?

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Angry-Button wrote:

CS…What “are” you using now by the way?

Even though I am mightly dissapointed in WD for their lack of support, it seems rude to directly promote another vendor’s product in the WD support forum, so I won’t; it’s why I have limited my direct comments to purchasing from “other manufacturers.”

That said, I have pointed to my blog where I spout off about a lot of stuff, including my choice of replacement. It ain’t commercial, so I figure that’s ok until informed by forum management, at which point I will remove the links.

My friends find it amusing that I collect radio programs from the 1920’s-1960’s, and television from the 1940’s-today. Most of the television have is SD and not yet digitized (maybe 400-500 unlabled betamax tapes in the basement, boxes and boxes of VHS, a few boxes of Hi-8 tapes I still haven’t digitized, and of course VCD MPEG-1, SVCD MPEG-2, DVD ISOs, XVID AVI, and HD MKV files on everything from CDs (used to get hundreds at a time free after rebate), DVDs, and now hard drives. Starting with the WDTV, and now with my new box, I use an SATA cradle connected to the USB port…currently have three 1T drives filled, a 1.5T drive almost filled, and two 1T drives I’m slowly copying the contents of those burned CDs/DVDs onto. (The 2.5" drive I put inside my new box is a small one I had lying around…about all I have on there are ISO files of the first season of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. DVD box set a good friend gave to me so my daughter would know there was more to Robert Vaughn than just Albert Stroller.) The cradle lets me umount then drop in different drives depending on what we want to watch, and is something I highly recommend to everyone with any of these boxes since it makes life so much easier with large collections. I got the three cradles I have free with the purchase of (non-WD!) hard drives from a certain large Internet retailer, but you can buy the things for $20-40  or less on-sale. Just drop the bare drive in and go.

I have to admit I don’t understand why you have a problem with WD, though. So far as I know, even the Gen1 doesn’t have a problem with playing transport streams. I admit, though, I generally compress M2TS to x264 MKV prefering MeGUI to Handbrake, except for keeping raw archives of the M2TS stuff shot with the Canon HF10, so I don’t play a lot of transport streams directly from hard drives…with all the other bugs, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn WDTV had issues with TS as well.

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I’ll be interested in reading your review; especially after reading the exact complaint you have with WD on that OTHER vendor’s forum about their products…

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TonyPh12345 wrote:
I’ll be interested in reading your review; especially after reading the exact complaint you have with WD on that OTHER vendor’s forum about their products…

Um…no. The exact complaint I have with WD is their speed to EOL and abandoning their customers in their haste to sell more flawed devices they will quickly abandon as well. Which you would know if you actually took my words at face value instead of reading into them what you’d prefer to argue against. I have never faulted WD, or anyone else for that matter, for the existance of software bugs - I was once responsible for a poorly-written piece of code that brought a large east-coast company to its knees for two days back in the days of 386’s and 56k modems. I have instead complained loudly and constantly about not fixing those bugs they are well aware exist, and indeed abandoning their customers with embarassingly short support lifetimes.

But to address your specific interest, I have played multiple files I know to have header compression engaged (mkvinfo GUI reports such), files that failed to play properly on the WDTV Gen1, that play flawlessly on my current player. I accept that others with the same device have had issues and have reported such on the boards, but I have not yet experienced same. I have some…issues…with sections of the GUI and the philosophy behind some design decisions, but the unit has played every video file I have attempted to play, including known files that refused to play on the WDTV. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll find one it won’t, but I haven’t yet.

And the most important part is the company is still standing behind their device, unlike WD, having released the latest beta firmware a month or so ago. And, frankly, should I come across an MKV that it cannot play, I could (but probably wouldn’t) install one of a few other devices’ firmware with the same decode chip which have fixed the issue. The freedom of not being locked to only the single vendor’s firmware is surprisingly liberating, though, which I assume you know since you have so closely read that vendor’s support boards. If you haven’t, you should, especially remembering the $65 AR I spent for the device new from that humongous Internet book store, a price point even a reconditioned and soon-to-be-abandoned WDTV Live hasn’t reached. And you wonder why my WDTV Gen1 is packed away in its box in the basement?

I haven’t written the review yet because, frankly, I have been spending the time enjoying a backlog of videos (those 1T drives don’t watch themselves, you know). I hope to get around to it eventually, but to do a proper review I would have to return to the raw factory firmware, as I am currently using a user-hacked firmware with additional software.

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Plus one to the disappointed owners of the gen2 wdtvhd.

Still waiting for a firmware that will solve the problems.

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Charlie, I’m not trying to incite anything here…

This is the article I read (so you’re protected, *I* am the one posting it; if WD doesn’t like it, they can take it up with me.  ;)

http://www.patriotmemory.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3251&page=3

It’s entitled “Has Patriot Completely Given Up on the Box Office?” — it’s up to 32 pages on my display.

Now I might have misread your blog, but that’s what I gathered you were using now…

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TonyPh12345 wrote:

Charlie, I’m not trying to incite anything here…

 

    • *> (*shrug*) Possibly, but you do seem to spend an inordinate amount of time coming after me personally, when I have gone out of my way to avoid confronting you (or anyone else here) directly. I wouldn’t mind so much if you countered my actual comments instead of rewriting them to better suit the arguments you seem intent to make.

TonyPh12345 wrote:> This is the article I read (so you’re protected, *I* am the one posting it; if WD doesn’t like it, they can take it up with me.  ;)

 

It’s entitled “Has Patriot Completely Given Up on the Box Office?” — it’s up to 32 pages on my display.

 

 

First, I didn’t mean to leave the impression I was afraid to post a link; I was respectful in not promoting a specific competor’s products. I maintain it would be rude to do so on this board, and so will not; if I left any other impression, I apologize for my lack of clarity. And yes, you cherry-picked one discussion thread (not an “article,” which implies editorial control), which was started and named way back in March and eventually devolved into an unseemly argument among a few posters (something I keep trying to avoid here). You carefully avoided pointing to any other thread on that board, including those announcing the most recent beta firmware, changes in the UI, addition of user-hacked software, request from the company for user input, description of how to build a cable for ~$6 to unbrick a bricked device, etc., etc. I’m certain one could cherry-pick threads here which suggest WD provides excellent long-term support, which would be equally deceptive.

To be unambiguious, the firmware on the box I am currently using was last updated on or about October 13th, 2010 (P61-Beta), with the hacked version I am currently using (P61-Beta- (BC16+).mega.YT), based upon that beta software, released two days later on the 15th (I didn’t install it until that cheap cable arrived from Hong Kong, just in case). I leave it to the reader to determine how that date compares to the latest firmware release for the WDTV Gen1 or Gen2, and whether or not the single thread topic name you referenced has any relevance to the real world. I have already detailed my personal experience with file playback on the device, clearly more satisfactory than the experience I had with the abandoned Gen1 and others are having with the effectively-abandoned Gen2. And I say again and for the last time, the issue isn’t that there are bugs in the software, the issue is Western Digital has no intention of fixing them. Ever.

I admit to being weary of defending my comments against misrepresentation and FUD. I understand it’s difficult refuting my main gripe against WD and so you need to keep setting up straw men, but I’m finished knocking them down. I will continue to urge others to avoid WD devices because of their clear lack of support, and ignore the distractions. My problem is not now and never was with you, it is with Western Digital. Your problem…well, that’s not for me to say.

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Okee dokee…   Fair enough…  

Oh, and by the way…  I just reviewed our entire history of interaction with each other (across your prior 23 posts…)  Here I thought we were all getting along quite well until I said you were bitter,  and I think my other posts AFTER that one were fairly benign…   I don’t see how that would classify as an “Inordinate amount of time spent coming after …” you… 

Anyway, sorry if I offended you at all, and particularly if it was that deeply…