Western Digital not supporting firmware 2.05.08?

[TheDude]

I see that others are experiencing a variety of bugs with firmware 2.05.08. I contacted support regarding bugs I’ve encountered with the Netflix app specifically and received the following response:

Thank you for contacting Western Digital Customer Service and Support. My name is [deleted].

I apologize for the inconvenience, I will be happy to help you. At this point I would suggest you to rollback firmware to the previous version that was working properly for you. For instructions on how to rollback the firmware on a WD TV Live Hub please click on the link bellow:

Answer Title: How to roll back the firmware on a WD TV Live Hub Media Center
Answer Link: http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5860


If you have any further questions, please reply to this email and we will be happy to assist you further.> My experience with WD support for the Live Hub hasn’t been great anyway. I get the impression the tech support people are less interested in addressing problems than closing tickets with as little effort as possible. Even so, telling us to basically not use the latest firmware version seems kind of like a big deal. Is it *that* broken?

[TonyPh12345]

They pretty much started doing that as soon as the Rollback KBA was published…   I agree, it’s a cop-out…

[TheDude]

Yeah, the poor support is a big reason why I slammed the Live Hub in an Amazon review and recommend people don’t buy it. It’s one thing to roll out buggy updates but have great support and show a willingness to improve the user experience. It’s something totally different to roll out buggy updates, have virtually useless tech support, and show complete indiffference to the user experience of people dropping $200 on these products.

[TrashWolf]

My opinion is different guys… is this the first email you received? if it was… I think the tech did the right thing, why? the person just told you the only solution for the problem, maybe that person doesn’t wanna waste your time doing troubleshooting that at the end may not work… I don’t know about you but I prefer to have someone telling me to rollback right away than having a super hero wannabe trying to solve a problem that could be only solved with a rollback… that would make me waste my precious time…

[TheDude]

My issue is that my Live Hub has been buggy since I got it and each update has been buggy as well. It would be nice if WD were to acknowledge the bugs and give the appearance of putting forth some effor to fix them immediately. When tech support brushes me off and says “well, just roll back to a previous (buggy) firmware version,” the message I get from that is: “Hey, thanks for the $200 you spent on that device. We really don’t care what your actual user experience is like.”

It’s not like these devices have unique software configurations. We’re all running the official firmware provided by WD, so if a bug exists for someone, chances are it exists for just about all of us (with minor variations due to various configuration differences, of course).

[lemonkid]

My First WD media player was the first they built. It did not have too many bugs. Should I trash my new one and roll back to the old?

[streeeotch]

I bought the Live Hub about 2 months ago and did not have any major issues with it. I then saw the latest firmware which talked about the parental controls so I figured I would try it out. Not a good idea.

Since then, Netflix has been freezing the whole device and only removing the plug would make it usable. So, I did what everyone else is suggesting and reverted to the last firmware. Well, much to my surprise, the issue still occurs. This NEVER happened before the new firmware and now it appears that it may have totally ruined my hub altogether.

I am trying new things so hopefully it is not lost. Just wanted others to know this.

[ZX10_Media_Guy]

my .02

IMO, we need to consider carefully when writing negative reviews to “spite” or “punish” WD while under certain circumstances it may be necessary to resort to this, on the flip side it could be like cutting off our own noses to spite our faces … heres why:

Writing bad reviews out of spite especially could cause sales to diminish which could lead to less incentive for a company to support their product, in the case of Western Digital and the WDTV Live Hub they have clearly and are continuing to support the unit, they might not jump or move as fast as we’d like at times but never the less they are a good brand and they do stand behind their products. 

Obviously they need to remember that the ‘little guy’ is their life blood, especially in this economy so i’m sure they’ll continue to listen as long as requests and bugs are addressed in a civilized and reasonable fashion.

footnote:

BTW, i wonder if others are aware that the NEO TV 550 supports blu-ray menus? maybe WD can work on that for us as well at some point. - I think i’ll put that in my sig …

[PixelPower]

ZX10_Media-Guy wrote:

 

footnote:

BTW, i wonder if others are aware that the NEO TV 550 supports blu-ray menus? maybe WD can work on that for us as well at some point. - I think i’ll put that in my sig … 

WD staff already answered this in the Idea forums a while back: the older Sigma chipset in the Live units does not support full BD menus.

The NTV 550 supports BD menus because it uses a recent Realtek chipset that was designed to support BD menus.

The comparison is apples and oranges; WD can’t add something that the hardware won’t support, unfortunately.

[ZX10_Media_Guy]

Thank you PixelPower, my bad … I didn’t realize that,  i thought/assumed  it had to do with Java. - I’ll update my sig.

[TheDude]

ZX10_Media-Guy wrote:

 

Writing bad reviews out of spite especially could cause sales to diminish which could lead to less incentive for a company to support their product, in the case of Western Digital and the WDTV Live Hub they have clearly and are continuing to support the unit, they might not jump or move as fast as we’d like at times but never the less they are a good brand and they do stand behind their products.

• • *> I reviewed the product on Amazon and most of my review is actually pretty glowing, but I still don’t recommend people buy it at the current price with the current bugs, unsatisfactory tech support, and lack of support for Amazon On Demand. That’s my personal opinion and isn’t written in spite. I just wouldn’t recommend non-techies drop $180 on a device that doesn’t work as expected when there are other devices that may do more for around the same price.> I hope you’re right about WD standing behind their products. Both times I’ve contacted tech support with issues about the WDTV Live Hub, I’ve received dismissive responses that seemed more for closing the tickets than addressing my issues.

[ram1009]

ZX10_Media-Guy wrote:

my .02

 

IMO, we need to consider carefully when writing negative reviews to “spite” or “punish” WD while under certain circumstances it may be necessary to resort to this, on the flip side it could be like cutting off our own noses to spite our faces … heres why:

 

Writing bad reviews out of spite especially could cause sales to diminish which could lead to less incentive for a company to support their product, in the case of Western Digital and the WDTV Live Hub they have clearly and are continuing to support the unit, they might not jump or move as fast as we’d like at times but never the less they are a good brand and they do stand behind their products. 

 

 

Obviously they need to remember that the ‘little guy’ is their life blood, especially in this economy so i’m sure they’ll continue to listen as long as requests and bugs are addressed in a civilized and reasonable fashion.

 

footnote:

BTW, i wonder if others are aware that the NEO TV 550 supports blu-ray menus? maybe WD can work on that for us as well at some point. - I think i’ll put that in my sig …

 

 

I think it only fair to mention that this Netgear device will only function properly with a LAN made up completely of Netgear devices.  Also, Netgear support (I’m told) will only support 100% Netgear device networks.  Seems pretty short sighted to me and I wouldn’t be surprised if the FCC considered this a violation.

 

 

[PixelPower]

Should be mentioned that Anandtech consider the current NTV550 firmware too buggy to review.

Big question mark over when / if Netgear will attain Netflix certification for it as well.  Disappointing, since it seems like a really capable unit if they iron out the bugs. Same could be said of WD and the Live Hub, except WD has rather limited HD audio codec support that will never be “fixed”, plus only stereo licenses for AAC, WMV and FLAC transcoding…

WD do support the 2.05.08 firmware, rollbacks are worth trying as part of the troubleshooting process.  Also, an overkill reset is often all that’s needed for weird post-update quirks.