Youtube freezes black screen in WD TV Live

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live Streaming
1

Since a couple of days ago, I am not able to play Youtube videos in my WD TV Live. It is WD TV Live Streaming Media Player (Gen 3) with 2.03.20 firmware.

The youtube app loads normally and display the video thumbnails, but then I try to play any video, the screen remains black forever. I use Youtube Leanback (the red logo one).

Everything was running OK, until a couple of days. I have five WD TV Live connected at home and the issue happens in all of them.

What can I do to correct this?

2

nothing

Youtube regularly makes changes to their API and depreciate features and services.

Since the WD TV Live no longer receives firmware updates to deal with these changes then compatibility is broken. Also, the WD TV media player range is also not an officially supported device by Youtube anymore.

The only thing you can do to correct it … is to use a supported device that can be updated to support any changes.

3

Same issue here. I think I also have the WD TV Live 3rd Gen version. Did you find a resolution yet?

I don’t know what you mean by Youtube ‘leanback’ - I assume the App is the ‘YouTube for Android TV’.

If so, then I suspect it’s a compatibility issue since the latest version released on June 15th 2020 - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.youtube.tv&hl=en_IE

So I think the question is - can we rollback to the previous version of Youtube?

The Google play store link above states that YouTube for Android TV requires Android 5.0 and above - but I have no idea which version of Android these WD TV Live 3rd Gen version are installed with.

Just to add, I tried rolling back to a few previous firmware’s (2.02.32, 2.01.86, 1.16.13) but I couldn’t even open Youtube with any of these.
The Youtube app version in the media player itself is web_20200624_00_rc00.
I assume that indicates the date of the update - 2020 06 24.
But I can’t see any option to roll this back.

Netflix is still working on it but maybe time to invest in a new product :pensive:

4

Just to add, I tried rolling back to a few previous firmware’s (2.02.32, 2.01.86, 1.16.13) but I couldn’t even open Youtube with any of these.

The Youtube app version in the media player itself is web_20200624_00_rc00.
I assume that indicates the date of the update - 2020 06 24. But I can’t see any option to roll this back.

Netflix is still working on it but maybe time to invest in a new product :pensive:

5

Youtube Leanback is the Youtube app with the red logo. Youtube Videos is the app with the black logo. The black logo one stopped working since a long time, but the red one was working perfectly. When you downgraded the firmware, did you tried to open the black logo app or the red logo one? If you didn’t try with the red one, please try again and tell us if it worked.

6

I can’t remember, but I think it was the red logo. When I tried to open the app, only black screen (one firmware was only white screen).

Maybe the only solution is to roll back from web_20200624_00_rc00 but I don’t think it is possible.

7

Miraclously, Youtube got back to live as it was before. Everthing works OK now. It seems Youtube modifies something and corrected the issue.

8

Yes, now working perfect here too. It appears that they released a new patch this week on June 30th - web_20200630_00_rc00.
YouTube must have read these forums and immediately made changes :joy: