Does it slow down and/or lose sound occassionally for anyone? This is really annoying b/c I have all kinds of problems pausing and FFing if I direct connect harddrive to WD TV LIVE so I need to stream over network…is there anyway I can fix this? Is this my network or the machine or what? Doesn’t seem to happen if I’m not streaming an MKV file though…
Streaming how and what?
A wired network connection shouldn’t have any issues with properly authored MKV files. A wireless connection can have all kinds of problems, depending on the network and/or the files (which is why it’s always better to go wired).
Wireless problems can be either too high a bitrate for the files, or too much other traffic (don’t ever share files using bittorrent software if you want to stream) or just bad connections (make sure you’re getting all four bars). I gave up on wireless for all but non-HD material.
If you are wired AND your files are properly authored and you’re still having problems it’s most likely a network issue – if that’s the case, post your network details and someone like our network expert Tony can probably help.
Streaming MKV video files (anywhere from 1 - 10 GBs).
When I have my external HD where all the files are on hooked directly to live machine it’s glitchy when paushing and FFing…I assume b/c the HD and the WD don’t click great…so I just leave the HD in my computer.
So I’m accessing the HD files over shared network (windows vista is on the computer I prefer to use for this)…and stream over my home network. It works fairly well…but sometimes it’ll slow down and/or lose sound…
Not the most advanced at network knowledge…what is it I should post that Tony (lol) maybe able to help me w/? I mean like I said it works, it just doesn’t sometimes (I’ve noticed that when it’s sound/video is glitchy I just hit back and reload it at the same spot it’ll fix…but then it’ll do it again usually eventually…)
So yea, is this a problem people have sometimes? Is it just when my network is slow or something?
And you didn’t answer – are you wired directly from the Live to your router? Or using a wireless adapter?
And also how are you accessing the files, via net shares or media server (I’d strongly recommend net shares)? If you are using net shares with a wired Live connection to your router then it’s most likely something to do with the way your files are authored (and I have some suggestions for that).
All wireless…linksys adapter…net share…
Yep, wireless will definitely be an issue.
For sure don’t run any file sharing (no bit torrents) while streaming video. Other than that you may just have to put up with the problems (I did for a while, then went wired and have never looked back).
First off i’m about to stream a 23gig file at 28Mbs…
My setup is wirless from my desktop to my router on a N connection I then run a long cat5 cable from router in my room out to WD in living room…Based off of my experiences so far my HD files have played Awsome…There has been like two times where the video play slows way down but I just stopped and restarted and it played great…
Will report back on playing this 23gig file…
Like Mike says, don’t use wireless for HD material, it’s just not reliable and fast enough in most cases.
However, even the wired setup can have problems when you stream high bitrates. This is due to the SMB protocol that’s being used in the Networking shares. Bluray has a theoretically maximum bitrate of 40 Mbps. Sharing files via SMB is limited to around 25 Mbps in most cases, hence can cause problems. NFS is the way to go: most users will have throughputs around 75 Mbps. However, the standard firmware can’t be used for NFS, you’ll need the homebrew one.
So I should expect faster speeds if the WD LIVE is wired and streaming off a network share from a computer that’s wireless?
That’s an interesting question. In that case the Live isn’t the bottleneck – the question remains if the computer you are wirelessly streaming to will serve enough data at the needed speed. My feeling is that it would work but Tony’s the network expert around here.
Your best bet is to just test it out – can’t hurt to give it a try. Report back here with resuls to help others if you would.
In decreasing order of reliability:
WIRED-WIRED
WIRED-WIRELESS
WIRELESS-WIRELESS
The latter is pretty rough. Since Wireless is shared medium, a wireless PC streaming to a wireless WDTV will likely have issues unless BOTH ends are N, the Access Point is N, on 40MHz channels, and no one else is on the net. :)
I don’t have any empirical data to prove this though…
