Unlike a lot of other users experiencing issues with getting their WDTVLive units to recognize their computers, I have an interestingly puzzling issue. I can get my WDTVLive to scan and display my W2008R2 server and shares every time, but it seems like nightly, I’ll have to restart my WDTVLive to get it to play any videos. I will be able to browse the shares just fine. It lists all of the contents of the shares and allow me to hit the play button but when I try to play anything it will just stay stuck on the loading arrow infinitely forcing me to restart the unit.
After a restart, it works fine. It seems to be a nightly thing.
Do you shut your Windows server off at night (or does it automatically sleep)? Does the server’s IP address ever change (as already asked)? The SMPs can have issues if the server disappears for a while or changes IP address. Sounds very suspicious that this happens each night.
Thank you for the replies. The server stays on all of the time and never sleeps and it has a static IP set. The only “interruption” I can think of is that I do use a VPN (OpenVPN) connection from time to time during the day on the server. But it is still accessible while on the VPN. Also, when I reboot my SMP it seems to work fine without needing to do much else. Occasionally, I will get the “last content source disconnected” error but it immediately shows up when searching for it.
Thanks for the reply. That’s not the case in my setup. After doing some more testing I find that the issue is a little more random than I first thought.
I used both of my WD TV Live SMPs regularly todayd and found that if I watch a series of a show, it will disconnect randomly somewhere in between telling me that the content source was disconnected.
Throughout my use I may have been able to watch 3 or 4 episodes then stop and then when I came back I would be able to browse my shares just fine, but when trying to play I just get a spinning arrow until I restart the system. After restarting the system, SOMETIMES it tells me that the content source was removed and sometimes it doesn’t.
Currently, the only thing to remedy my issue is going into the settings and selecting a Device Restart or unplugging the unit.
I have tried scanning for a new content source while this “freeze” is happening without any success. I tried changing it to a Windows Media Player Media Server source and tried playing some of the “Wildlife in HD” videos or the “Landscape” videos without any success. The only thing I can do is restart the device to get it to play videos again.
