Why the HD media player so slow reading data from hard drive?

Hi

can someone give me some advice to get my new media player working better? my equipment is

WD TV live media player

WD elements 1TB hard drive with 822GB free

46 inch plasma panasonic HDTV (not full HD)

HDMI cable

the only movies i have on the hard drive so far are holiday movies, but the media player cant even play the small 5mb ones properly. i can preview them ok in the file management section. occasionally even going through the folders causes the player to freeze for a minute or so.

also, what is firmware?

thanks,

simon

Firmware is the Live’s operating system software.