Not really a problem for me anymore, but thought I would see if anyone else has had this issue.
I have alot of media on externals and the WDTV plays them all Perfectly and not had a problem with that although the issue lied with being connected to the Wifi. The device would be really slow, pressing any button on the remote would take a few seconds to register on the actual device and it would hang when I tried to play Netflix or iPlayer or anything for that matter! Getting meta data would just kill the device!
Couldn’t see it being my Broadband connection, It’s not the fastest but it’s 6Mb down so should be plenty enough to do anything. Had no idea what it could be and was at my whits end but then decided to get the longest Cat 5 cable I could find attach it to the router and then the wdtv…My God it was like a diferent machine! Everything was so responsive it was unbeleiveable!
I’ve no idea how Wifi could cause all these problems but it seems to have as connecting to a wired network has made this device into what it is supposed to be.
Knowing this would work I invested in some of these HomePlug Networking plug things, although slightly confused as to weather this would work I set it up…And again Aboslutely perfect!
So Just thought I would put it out there…If people are having an issue with their device and its on a wifi network try connecting it via a cable and see what happens? Obviously this shouldn’t happen but it seemed to work with mine and now I enjoy everything it has to offer!
I bought a WD TV Live box last week because of the fact that it was wi-fi, the unit worked well for a short while then became slow, unresponsive when trying different buttons on the remote and some videos were choppy and unwatchable.
I didn’t really want to run a Cat5 cable around the house even though I had one long enough to reach from where I have the hard drives mounted in my study but I ended up biting the bullet and doing this and it works a treat now after considering taking it back for a refund.
It’s such a great unit that I told my lady that I have a new love now and she must pack her bags and leave the house as soon as possible.
Thanks for the heads up on the Home Plug networking, I hadn’t heard of these units until now and will try that in my next rental accomodation if it’s not possible to get a cable to the unit.
I have two SMPs, one wired and one wireless. They both work equivalently for Netflix and DVD streaming (from a network share). Streaming blu-ray files requires that the (n-band) wifi connected unit have a very, very strong signal to get a fast enough transmission rate to avoid occasional rebuffering. The Wifi router is a recent Dlink DIR-655. We previously had an older DIR-655 (early unit), and while it seemed to work fine with the SMP, a Macbook and one of our Linux laptops had such frequently dropped connections that I decided to replace it with a newer unit. Since everything works fine now, even these two different vintage “n-mode” DIR-655’s do not work identically.
