AVS › AVS Forum › Gaming & Content Streaming › Networking, Media Servers & Content Streaming › Western Digital - WD TV Live Media Player (WDTV2)
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

Western Digital - WD TV Live Media Player (WDTV2) - Page 53

post #1561 of 7079
10/20/09 at 1:49pm
How about try a different usb cable first? That's cheaper.
Reply
Reply

Gear mentioned in this thread:

post #1562 of 7079
10/20/09 at 2:23pm
Anyone able to get a wireless solution that will handle streaming HD content? I am running standard smb shares on my mac (10.6.1) over an N network through my AEBS and just doesn't fly. Stutters like Mel Tillis.
Reply
Reply
post #1563 of 7079
10/20/09 at 2:42pm
@taboot

I'm using linksys wusb600n streamed hd yutube and hulu "the office" with no problem from vista 64 laptop with playon....just got it so not a lot of testing yet.
Reply
Reply
post #1564 of 7079
10/20/09 at 2:53pm
I remember about 20 yrs ago when the original generation of portable CD players had started using "buffer memory" technology to prevent skips and stuttering in music playback due to bumping/shaking the player.

I wonder if this type of "buffer memory" would work with HD wired and wireless streaming. Even though I have a wired network, some large HD files still stutter and drop-out. These same files play perfectly from an attached usb drive.
Reply
Reply
post #1565 of 7079
10/20/09 at 2:55pm
@taboot-

ROFL!!! "Stutters like Mel Tillis"!!!!!!!!!!

Wanna make book on how many people on here know who Mel Tillis is?

I love it!!!!
Reply
Reply
post #1566 of 7079
10/20/09 at 3:09pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Synozeer View Post

Anyone else having trouble with their WDTV Live not seeing their USB drive? I bought a brand new My Passport Essentials 500GB that I plugged in to the WDTV and it only detects it half the time.

After unplugging/plugging it back in and going through the menus, it eventually appears. Maybe it takes several minutes to detect it (which I'd find hard to believe for an "approved device")?

I'm tempted to return the drive and get a different brand if this keeps up.

You might want to try a reset on the WDTV. You'll have to reconfigure any setting changes you made.
Reply
Reply
post #1567 of 7079
10/20/09 at 3:12pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sirkassad View Post

My apologies for not going through the 50+ pages to see if this has been addressed but I read on one post that someone had better luck streaming a .mkv from a PC media server than streaming from his Dlink NAS.
I am ready to pull the trigger on the WD Live but also want to get either an HP MediaSmart Server, or a NAS.

Can anyone comment on if large .mkv's will stream better from the HP MediaSmart or a NAS? Both will be connected wired, not wireless.

Is there a link that explains what the differences are between streaming from a NAS and streaming from a media server? I am assuming the NAS is simply displaying a file on a share, but is that any different that what the MediaSmart is doing? If I may venture a guess maybe the WD has to do more work to a media file if it just sitting on a NAS than if it is being 'served' by a Media server... and that extra processing is why the movie may stutter when being streamed from a NAS.

Or possibly the DLink 323 NAS wasn't made for streaming .mkv's? Maybe a better performing NAS would do the trick like a Netgear, Synology, or Buffalo?

My guess is - and this is only an educated guess - a WHS (HP Mediasmart) will be faster. There are two ways to get the .mkv to your WDTV Live - 1) Transcoding via Media Server (using the WDTV "Media Server" or 2) SMB share (using the WDTV "Network Share"). As of now, I don't think .mkv's can be played via the Media Server so that leaves using SMB (or NFS if that can get enabled since there is less overhead and it is faster) and not using transcoding (which I don't like because it's very processor intensive on whatever hardware the file is stored).

If you take a look over at smallnetbuilder.com, you'll see that WHS has very good read/write speed, mostly because it's not a true RAIDed NAS. It actually a pretty cool system to be able to add a drive of any size to either add to your total drive space or to create redundancy - sort of a pseudo RAID 1.

I'd go with WHS - and if you have a PC laying around with 2GB of RAM and a decent P4 processor, you can build your own.
Reply
Reply
post #1568 of 7079
10/20/09 at 3:23pm
Picked one of these up at Best Buy the other day. First type of media streamer that I am gonna own.

Trying to get thumbnails to show up properly for some movies. I did have 2 movies see the thumbs in the same folder, but they are the only 2 that have the thumb on the .mkv file within the WDTV.

I have several .mkv files with corresponding .jpg files with same exact name and it is not picking up on the thumbnails.

I do not know what the heck I am doing wrong. I searched for a couple days to see if I could find a solution. I have tried to resize them, tried different pictures..........

Any ideas?
Reply
Reply
post #1569 of 7079
10/20/09 at 3:31pm
Yes. It's a bug - (or they never implemented the functionality from attached USB drives to the "Network Share" option) and hopefully they can fix it soon.
Reply
Reply
post #1570 of 7079
10/20/09 at 3:54pm
Someone earlier in the thread asked this same question, but I could not find an answer to it.

I've got a NAS (ReadyNAS NV+). It shows up in the "Network Shares" list, but every time I try to connect to it, I get the "no media found in current folder" message.

I've got three shares on the NAS. All 3 are set to use CIFS/NFS/AFP. There're no passwords on anything, and every other device on my network can see and access the shares fine.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Reply
Reply
post #1571 of 7079
10/20/09 at 3:57pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by blueribb View Post

I remember about 20 yrs ago when the original generation of portable CD players had started using "buffer memory" technology to prevent skips and stuttering in music playback due to bumping/shaking the player.

I wonder if this type of "buffer memory" would work with HD wired and wireless streaming. Even though I have a wired network, some large HD files still stutter and drop-out. These same files play perfectly from an attached usb drive.

All video players use read ahead buffering. It's probably just a matter of increasing the size of the buffer to allow for bigger bitrate spikes.
Reply
Reply
post #1572 of 7079
10/20/09 at 4:26pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by fccwizard View Post

Has anyone been able to use 480i over componet? It looks like it only supports 480p.

I tested with my CRT preHDTV (no digital input) with 480p and 1080i 60hz - two modes allowed by tv - works perfect. 480i was not in the menu list (480p is better if it is supported)
Reply
Reply
post #1573 of 7079
10/20/09 at 4:43pm
Does anyone know if the lack of 480i is a firmware limitation or a hardware limitation? I guess I won't buy this player until I get a new TV, which will be a long time since I prefer a CRT over LCD or plasma.
Reply
Reply
post #1574 of 7079
10/20/09 at 4:49pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by wokwokabc View Post

All video players use read ahead buffering. It's probably just a matter of increasing the size of the buffer to allow for bigger bitrate spikes.

Using bitrate viewer shows the Planet Earth video to have bitrate peaks (on a GOP basis) of over 90,000 kbps. On a second basis the video is over 40,000 kbps for several seconds during the flock of birds sequence where it gets jerky over the network.
Reply
Reply
post #1575 of 7079
10/20/09 at 4:59pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by wokwokabc View Post

Using bitrate viewer shows the Planet Earth video to have bitrate peaks (on a GOP basis) of over 90,000 kbps. On a second basis the video is over 40,000 kbps for several seconds during the flock of birds sequence where it gets jerky over the network.

I've shown bandwidth figures of 61mbps over NFS with the wdtv live, higher if you include the tcp overhead. File I cat'd to /dev/null was 8,533,654,681B and took 1158s (19m18s). Hasn't choked on any HD content I've tried, but I also don't have any uncompressed blu-ray rips.
Reply
Reply
post #1576 of 7079
10/20/09 at 5:05pm
Recently get a WD Live and after a bit of struggle it,s playing fine but I have a questing regarding playing video file in full screen(16:9) with out black bars. Earlier when I played my video files on computer connected to LCD TV through HDMI in VLC player by default most video files(H.264 720P) played with black bars on top & bottom but I could remove those bars by selecting aspect ratio(16:9) in VLC player.
Is there any way in WD Live I can play those files in full screen(16:9) without black bars on top & bottom.
Reply
Reply
post #1577 of 7079
10/20/09 at 5:19pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by b-rad.cc View Post

I've shown bandwidth figures of 61mbps over NFS with the wdtv live, higher if you include the tcp overhead. File I cat'd to /dev/null was 8,533,654,681B and took 1158s (19m18s). Hasn't choked on any HD content I've tried, but I also don't have any uncompressed blu-ray rips.

Have you tried the Planet Earth video linked to in the following post?
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...7#post17329247
That file chokes during the "flock of birds" shot when played from a Windows share.
Reply
Reply
post #1578 of 7079
10/20/09 at 5:22pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by wokwokabc View Post

Have you tried the Planet Earth video linked to in the following post?
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...7#post17329247
That file chokes during the "flock of birds" shot when played from a Windows share.

downloading and trying now, will edit post in a bit.

--edit--

:-O Plays it perfectly fine, not a single skipped frame

debian nfs -> wdtv live

16 ref frames too, nice chipset.
Reply
Reply
post #1579 of 7079
10/20/09 at 5:22pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by techno_smd View Post

Recently get a WD Live and after a bit of struggle it,s playing fine but I have a questing regarding playing video file in full screen(16:9) with out black bars. Earlier when I played my video files on computer connected to LCD TV through HDMI in VLC player by default most video files(H.264 720P) played with black bars on top & bottom but I could remove those bars by selecting aspect ratio(16:9) in VLC player.
Is there any way in WD Live I can play those files in full screen(16:9) without black bars on top & bottom.

If you're seeing black bars in VLC by default, then I suspect they are actually encoded into the video stream. In that case, it's usually the display device (TV) that senses and removes them.
Reply
Reply
post #1580 of 7079
10/20/09 at 5:26pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tonedeaf View Post

Picked one of these up at Best Buy the other day. First type of media streamer that I am gonna own.

Trying to get thumbnails to show up properly for some movies. I did have 2 movies see the thumbs in the same folder, but they are the only 2 that have the thumb on the .mkv file within the WDTV.

I have several .mkv files with corresponding .jpg files with same exact name and it is not picking up on the thumbnails.

I do not know what the heck I am doing wrong. I searched for a couple days to see if I could find a solution. I have tried to resize them, tried different pictures..........

Any ideas?

We'll assume that you have named them EXACTLY the same (the movie file and the .jpg)?
Reply
Reply
post #1581 of 7079
10/20/09 at 5:27pm
Seems like every time I turn the WDTV Live on, & attempt to listen to Pandora, I have to (yet again) re-login each time. Can't the WDTVL store this info somewhere?
Reply
Reply
post #1582 of 7079
10/20/09 at 5:43pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by crimpshrine View Post

I opened my WDTV live tonight and the Flash chip on it is a 29f2g08aad

I only see one of them.

Which I believe from what I could find is 2 Gigabits or 256 Megabytes

The RAM looks to be 4 chips of NT5TU64M16DG

I think: http://www.datasheetdir.com/go/-bxn-cnk-xvvlml.pdf

If these are 1Gbit chips, what would the total memory be on the DRAM side? Is it 1 Gbitx32 or 256 Megabytesx32 total? Not sure on that..

The NT5TU64M16DG is 64M x 16bits = 128MBytes x 4 chips = 512MBytes
29f2g08aad should be mt29f2g08aad = 2Gbit / 8 = 256MB unless there is a second one on the bottom of the board.
Reply
Reply
post #1583 of 7079
10/20/09 at 6:01pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by wokwokabc View Post

Have you tried the Planet Earth video linked to in the following post?
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...7#post17329247
That file chokes during the "flock of birds" shot when played from a Windows share.

Err, that video chokes on my core I7 920 with 6gb ram... why?
Reply
Reply
post #1584 of 7079
10/20/09 at 6:16pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by microhaxo View Post

Err, that video chokes on my core I7 920 with 6gb ram... why?

A few weeks ago I tried this video with a Core2Duo (E6600), 4gb DDR2 and NVidia GeForce 8500GT. It choked a little on the waterfall and birds scenes.

Since I upgraded the cpu to a Core2Quad Q9550, the video plays flawlessly on my computer.

Both the CPU and Video card come into play with this video.

Streaming the video through my wired network from my pc - the video plays perfectly except for the last few seconds at the end of the birds scene. It almost freezes there.
Reply
Reply
post #1585 of 7079
10/20/09 at 6:17pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tonedeaf View Post

I have several .mkv files with corresponding .jpg files with same exact name and it is not picking up on the thumbnails.

Quote:
Originally Posted by christoofar View Post

We'll assume that you have named them EXACTLY the same (the movie file and the .jpg)?

Yup.
Reply
Reply
post #1586 of 7079
10/20/09 at 6:17pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tonedeaf View Post

Yup.

Just do a system reset and they will work fine.
Reply
Reply
post #1587 of 7079
10/20/09 at 6:22pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by microhaxo View Post

Err, that video chokes on my core I7 920 with 6gb ram... why?

Do you have a multithreaded h.264 decoder? CoreAVC Pro, ffdshowmt, etc.
Reply
Reply
post #1588 of 7079
10/20/09 at 6:23pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by b-rad.cc View Post

downloading and trying now, will edit post in a bit.

--edit--

:-O Plays it perfectly fine, not a single skipped frame

debian nfs -> wdtv live

Nice! Thanks for trying it out.
Reply
Reply
post #1589 of 7079
10/20/09 at 6:23pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by pagercam View Post

The request was for XBMC like GUI, maybe XBMC will only run on x86 platforms but surely more simplistic graphics can be used to enhance the WD TV Live.

I agree. Many of us have been completely spoiled by the clean GUI of XBMC. I just can't wait until someone figures out the sweet interface of XBMC and copies it as exact as possible. XBMC rules and there is no other that even comes close as of yet.
Reply
Reply
post #1590 of 7079
10/20/09 at 6:37pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by wokwokabc View Post

Do you have a multithreaded h.264 decoder? CoreAVC Pro, ffdshowmt, etc.


I have the Combined community codec pack, i assumed that it came with multithread support. All cores are used during the playback of the movie though.
Reply
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home

Gear mentioned in this thread:

AVS › AVS Forum › Gaming & Content Streaming › Networking, Media Servers & Content Streaming › Western Digital - WD TV Live Media Player (WDTV2)