What can we expect in the next firmware release?

[WHS_User]

I’m interested to know what will be in the (hopefully) soon to be released firmware update. I’ve had my wdtvlive box since February & I love it. I currently have it connected to  a HD TV using HDMI - it works like a dream. I have an IOMEGA 1TB Hard drive attached to one of the USB ports - that works like a dream too, although it would be nice to be able to use DVD menus. I also have the box wired to my fully wired network, this is where the fun begins. I used to have WHS running with a handful of XP machines (I have a large family) streaming from the WHS box was excellent, except no thumbnails (A minor irritation). Picking up network shares was also a piece of cake. In the past month things have deteriorated somewhat - my WHS box keeps on rebooting, so I don’t use that anymore, but I have ‘upgraded’ all the PCs at home to Win 7 Pro (32 bit) - and I’ve had all the same problems as everyone else, but still, after a long day at work writing software & grappling with network issues there’s nothing more enjoyable than doing exactly the same, but to not get paid for it…

All in all I think the WDTV Live is the best bit of kit I have bought for a long time, but it has a few niggling features that will hopefully be fixed in the new firmware. But what about changes to the functionality in the new release? It’d be great to see the i/f from the Hub, possibly bigger thumbnails… I’ve been trawling through everyone’s posts regarding problems with the BETA releases, but I see no mention of any new features.

As a firmware engineer myself I would like to send a big HI to the WD guys - you only get posts when things go wrong.

For the price the WDTV Live is a bargain & fills the gap until I can afford a DLNA TV.

[zaphod42]

You might take a look at the following document:

http://support.wdc.com/download/notes/WDTV_Live_Release_Notes_1_03_43_V_LPB.pdf

Search for the keyword “added” in the document.

That is, what we have to expect in the next official release…

Cheers,

Zap

[PixelPower]

I suspect the only major change will be “HDMI fixes”.

All the recent firmware betas, for the Live and Plus, have revolved around fixing annoying HDMI handshake issues. The new Hub also suffers from this.

So the next round of firmware for all devices will likely be a release to fix HDMI.

Until that gets resolved, we’re probably not going to see any new features or other bug fixes.  

The exception to that would be for the original WD TV Live; the next official stable release will likely roll in the extra features seen within the current Beta that were ported from the Plus (e.g. DVD menus, Mediafly).  They’ve been in the Beta a while, so it might not be apparent that they’re “new” to the Live for some users.  :)