*Official* WD TV Live Streaming Media Player Thread - Page 55

Yes, they'll play, but they will NOT be in 720 or 1080... they'll be in 480i (if you're in NTSC land) because that's all composite video does.

The WDTV SMP doesn't support component video.

I don't consider it a poor design choice -- a design choice, yes, but not a poor choice. Everybody has their personal preferences. I have no use for media walls and other silliness that takes ages to scroll through a collection one screen at a time. I like simple alphabetical title lists and appreciate having two columns to fit as many titles on the screen at once as I can. I use simple title names and even if they are longer than 34 characters I don't need it to scroll to know what the title is. My only beef is that if I'm at the top of a column, pressing the up key does not jump to the bottom of the list but to the icons on the top right of the screen. You may consider it a poor design choice because having two columns does not fit your personal preference, I do not. One could blame WD for not implementing an infinitely customizable UI -- but that would be rather silly; the product would never make it out the door.

Kelson,

I have excellent news! I am now able to play ALL of my video content perfectly. While the MS DLNA server doesn't support MKV, the Tversity server does. Now everything plays properly. I even tested with the extreme x264 sample that peaks at 75 Mbit (avg 38 Mbit) and it played perfectly.

Chapters work. Subtitles work. AC3/DTS/Multichannel FLAC works. It's not transcoding either - I explicitly disabled that. It's just streaming the MKV, and since DLNA apparently works on the WDTV SMP, all of my stuttering and A/V sync issues are gone.

@jason,
That's good news. Many people insist that DLNA is faulty, but that has not been my experience. I think many of the "free" DLNA servers are faulty. My NAS units have built in DLNA servers that have worked perfectly with the Live+ and now the Live-SMP to stream BD.m2ts files. I never mess with MKV so I had no way of testing them with .MKV when this discussion started. When I started looking at PC DLNA servers for my media PC I went through Serviio, TVersity and Twonky with little success. Then I found Mezzmo -- it's not free, but it is supported and I found it worked the best. If you start having trouble with TVersity, give Mezzmo a try. Here is the first of a series of three posts I wrote on the experience.

I still prefer the simplicity of the original WDTV's GUI.


Same here. I already listed this on the beta board but to no avail.

It doesn't matter that you disabled "transcoding." It still transodes the audio to a format that can be played via DLNA.

From TVersity website:

Futhermore, DLNA only supports the following:
Imagine: JPEG, GIF, TIFF, PNG
AUDIO: LPCM (2channel), MP3, WMA9, AC3, AAC, ATRAC3plus
Video: MPEG2, MPEG1, MPEG4, WMV9

It appears that many of the DLNA servers are outputting formats that aren't officially supported. For example the profile for the WDTV in Tversity includes support for DTS decoding. It shows support for PCM and WAV output, but it's not clear whether it's limited to 2.0 or can do multi-channel PCM/WAV output.

Kelson's linked posts indicate that he has successfully enabled bitstreaming TrueHD and DTS-HD MA using the Mezzmo DLNA server. In fact, Mezzmo can transcode TO a huge number of formats including FLAC. See here.

If the audio is being transcoded to PCM, why does the WDTV still show the audio track as FLAC?

Unrelated question: If I want to play a movie from a BDMV folder structure, do I have to select the M2TS file or is there a way to have the WDTV play the longest playlist? If you have to select the M2TS directly, I suppose there's no support for seamless branching.

Jason: Support for BDMV (and ISO) is spotty, at best. There's no choice involved; the WDTV just tries to figure out the longest stream, but even then, I don't think it's using the playlist. I think it just plays the largest M2TS file.

As a matter of course, I just use TSMuxerGUI to create an M2TS file based on the playlist that SHOULD be used.

@jason,

My experience parallels WDFan. There is no way to "play" a BDMV folder structure with the Live; each press of return just drills down another folder level. You cannot select the playlist, the WD has no idea what to do with it. You can only select an .m2ts file from the BDMV\\STREAM folder for playback. If the folder structure is contained in a BD.iso file, the WD can handle an iso file but all it does is drill down to select the biggest .m2ts file in the STREAM folder. This is not satisfactory for titles authored as seamless branching. Although you can use TSMUXER to select the appropriate playlist and remux it to join the segments into a single .m2ts file, I and others have had a problem with TSMUXER and audio synchronization when the number of .m2ts segments to be joined was approaching 20 and beyond. Clown_BD does a much better job at joining large numbers of .m2ts segments (using "eac3to") without any audio synchronization problems. Clown_BD also has the advantage of identifying subtitle tracks that contain forced subtitles and generating a separate forced-subtitle track. The WD Live players don't handle forced subtitles either so having Clown_BD generate a separate forced-subtitle track means you can tell the WD Live to play that subtitle track when the movie starts and thus get all the forced subtitles you would otherwise miss.

As far as formats DLNA can support: the DLNA server in my NAS units does no transcoding whatsoever; they simply do not have the processing power. Using those NAS units and a WD Live+, and a Live-SMP as DLNA clients, I have successfully streamed BD.m2ts files that were coded as MPEG-2, H.264/AVC and VC-1 for the video and AC3, DD True-HD, DTS core and DTS-MA for the audio -- just as they came off the original BD disk. Of course the WD does not bitstream DTS-MA but rather extracts the core audio and passes that through.

1) BDMV/ISO support

Thanks for the detailed response. Before I realized that there were DLNA servers that support MKV, I was planning to purchase a Dune Smart H1 which would support BD ISOs and BDMV folders with full menu and thus seamless branching support.

But, given that I can now play all of my MKVs perfectly, I don't think the price premium is worth it (I paid $93 for the WDTV and I would be lucky to get the H1 for $250; MSRP is $320). I really only wanted it for TV series because the episodes are not always named sequentially on disk. However, MakeMKV is very fast and reads from the playlists.

As an aside, eac3to also does an excellent job of ensuring A/V sync for seamless branching titles as it fixes the gaps. One of the cool things about the MKV format is that with ordered chapters you can get the equivalent of seamless branching within a single MKV video file, and it's not even limited to two editions.

I remuxed The Gladiator Extended Edition and Theatrical edition to a single MKV, and included THREE editions for "The Professional". The editions can be switched in Haali media splitter on the PC. I don't know if any of the hardware players support ordered chapters. It works great in MPC-HC though.

2) DLNA

I'm almost positive Tversity is NOT transcoding the audio. I'm trying to get definite confirmation but it appears that the disable transcoding option applies to both video and audio. It should pass the content untouched. The CPU usage is around 1-2% when streaming, and I don't see any processes that would be used to decode FLAC. Tversity uses Directshow so it should be loading ffdshow if it were transcoding which is what I use for FLAC decoding.

The videos themselves show the correct audio formats - I've tested with rips that have DTS-HD MA and FLAC.

EDIT: Yeah, it's not transcoding. I used VLC's DLNA server to play a movie with FLAC and it shows the audio as FLAC 5.1. Going to test with the Minority Report BD tonight - avg. video bitrate of 37.2 Mbit. One of my largest remuxes at 39 GB.

EDIT2: Someone on the TVersity forum confirmed that the "Never Transcode" option applies to BOTH video and audio.

I'll crank it up and give it a test tonight!

One other question - is metadata available via DLNA? (I am guessing not)

No need to test now - I got an answer from the TVersity forum. The "Never Transcode" option passes the video untouched - neither audio nor video is transcoded.

I haven't tested personally as I have the media library disabled, which I assume is necessary to scrape for info. I can't recall if it showed cover art for each film. I was probably viewing it in list mode anyhow. I did read in some forum that one of the downsides of DLNA is that you don't get metadata. However, I have no idea if that's correct.

Now that I can play all my content I have to say that I'm impressed with the WDTV SMP. The firmware bugs suck, but with DLNA everything I've thrown at the WDTV plays perfectly including rips with TrueHD, DTS-HD MA (DTS core), FLAC 5.1 24 bit audio. I was worried about subtitle support but the WDTV sees both PGS and SRT subs without issue. For $90, I don't think I could have done better. Power usage is also excellent. 3.5-4W in standby and 4.5-5W during playback depending on content. I noticed that power usage is slightly higher with an external hard drive attached.

Anyone else think the chapter selection is bizarre? Why can't you just use the << and >> buttons to skip chapters. It can just skip to the next file when you're past the last chapter in the file. This makes more sense than having to go into the options menu, esp. if the chapters aren't named, which they usually aren't for rips.

EDIT: The manual seems to indicate that the Media Library doesn't work with DLNA.

"Media Library scans and consolidates the media contents of the internal hard drive,
USB drive, and network drives into a database through which you can easily locate
media files. This feature is set to on by default."

Is there any solution to the Netflix issue of having to re-enter credentials all the time?

Dropzone: The ONLY workaround I've seen is to make sure you activate netflix at least once a day and start watching something.

You don't have to watch more than a few seconds... Just start, then leave.

Silly, I know... But when I started doing that, I never had the issue again.

Then when I went on vacation for 3 days, the night I got back: Had to re-login.

I watch Netflix on my SMP almost every day but still have to log in each day. Really getting old!

Meaning?

Well, the only solace we can take is that WD says the NetFlix fix is "Pending." I guess that means it's coming in the next update, whenever that is. The WD post linked below says "Mid April." Well, we're well-past Mid April...

http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-TV-Li...s/idi-p/275398

I don't even own one anymore but I have recommended them to several friends and family members that did purchase. I feel bad that they are having problems.

The context of my comment was playing a BD.m2ts file. Within that context, the WD players don't automatically play forced subtitles that are embedded in the main subtitle file.

Don't feel bad. They are a rock solid player with a few flaws from an established company with a solid track record of issuing a lot of firmware updates over the life of the product. There were 8 FW updates for the Live+ and there are already 6 for the Live-SMP.

The WD players score very high in the price/performance rating. I've looked at a lot of other players to add a couple features I would like and in all cases I would have to be spending at least 2X what I paid for my WD Live units to get a couple extras.

I'm having issues playing interlaced VC-1 content (specifically VC-1 1080i50) from the Life BD series. The video plays but isn't smooth and appears to skip every few seconds. Anyone else seeing the same issue?

I have no issues with AVC 1080i50 playback, AVC 1080p24/720p24, VC-1 1080p24, or MPEG-2 1080p24/1080i60. It appears to be limited to interlaced VC-1.

Interlaced VC-1 also posed problems on my HTPC. The DXVA decoders in MPC-HC, ffdshow and ffmpeg (XBMC) don't work at all. The software ffdshow decoder shows interlacing artifacts. If I use the MS decoder in WMP, playback is fine. PowerDVD 12 also works.

^ I would have kept mine if it weren't for the blu-ray mkv/iso stuttering when streaming via NFS and if moving through the Media Library was not so slow... if they would fix those things, for the money it would be hard to beat.

No one else with this issue? I have been getting it semi-regularly now. Last file was MKV with DTS-HD MA... all of a sudden it sounds like a bullhorn went off... press pause twice and the audio is back... the video never messes up. It's the only issue I'm having and I thought I could live with it but not at this rate.

I'd be checking for hardware issues... Bad or loose HDMI cable, bad HDMI port, bad Receiver, bad WD....

+1

The issue has carried over multiple receivers (Pioneer/Denon). Plus, the HDMI cables have been used on many blu-ray players, TiVos and whatnot. Seems firmware related to me since a pause/resume and everything is fine and again the video never has an issue... it remains perfect. If it was the cable I'm guessing the video would mess up as well. I could understand a streaming issue where my NAS (low-end) hiccups just enough to throw the audio timing off (the Neo reports 85Mbps tops). I'm now wondering if it's just a certain HD audio format with MKVs that the device can't handle. Typically, it happens once during a movie.

I returned the player and purchased another (along with the Netgear). I'm trying a Netgear NeoTV 550 now so it might be a while before I test it out. If this guy handled HD Audio I wouldn't bother but I need it in my dedicated room. More than likely I'll keep this in my den.

Update: I played one of the movies (MKV DTS-HD MA) that hiccuped with the WD and it played fine via the Neo. I'll test some more and switch back to the WD and retest later...

Yet another reason to go with MKV, I guess. But what do you mean by embedded in the main subtitle file? It's the main m2ts file, right? And what tool can manipulate flags in m2ts?

Clown_BD, as I enumerated in this post.

Right, but which of it's tools? I mean, is there any that has a GUI like MKVToolnix, just for m2ts? I thought TSMuxerGUI could do it but that isn't the case.

Clown calls eac3to to demux and extract the forced subtitles into their own subtitle file.
When the files are remuxed, Clown puts the forced subtitle file first in line so when I play a title that I have marked as containing forced subs, I just tell the WD Live to play the first subtitle track.

There is a tri-state button on Clown_BD that can be set to flag the forced subtitle track to be played, but I find the WD Live rarely, if ever, honors that flag.