*Official* WD TV Live Streaming Media Player Thread - Page 63

Is there a new version of this player with wireless and capable of 7.1 audio?

No.

The Live-SMP has built-in wireless. I don't know about 7.1 though. It bitstreams DD TrueHD and DTS Core so I would think it would output 7.1 to your AVR if that is what was included on the BD, but my AV system is set up as 5.1 so I can't say for sure.

Corsair is a high end computer component manufacturer. They make things like cases (the enclosure the computer sits in), power supplies, RAM/Memory, and high end storage devices. I happen to own a couple of their high end cases and other devices myself. Good products. Your son knows his hardware.

As for the Sony S890 BluRay player, it is no substitue for the WD TV Live. I was going to replace the DVD player in my bedroom with a DLNA capable BluRay player and tried the Sony figuring it would be the most compatable. The device would play maybe half my library, frequently dropped the connection, and was just overall a poor choice. I ended up taking it back to Best Buy and reconnecting my Oppo DVD player. My co-worker recommended the WD TV Live box and I bought one and have never looked back. Works rock solid for what it does.

I will further point out, the Sony even dropped Netflix. This is on a 12M Uverse internet connection, hardwired to the modem using CAT5E.

Ok, so I finally picked one of these up. I got everything set up with my network drives and my media content. I have played quite a few movies without issue, but I have an issue with Avatar. The movie will start but within a second it will freeze and get stuck. I can get back to the home screen but in order to play any movie after that, I have to restart(hold power for 3 seconds). It starts the 20th Century Fox animation, I can hear the audio then it freezes. I can play that file perfectly on my Boxee, my PCH A-210 and my PC, so I know it's not the file. I can also play The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo just fine on the WD(just to show high bitrate files work fine as it 40 gig and Avatar is 36).

Avatar was ripped with MakeMKV as a straight 1:1 BluRay rip. Any thoughts I why it would freeze 1 second into the movie?
Edited by Chuck_IV - 6/14/12 at 9:20pm

Guys, I bought the WD TV Live Streaming (WDBHG70000NBK-NESN) some time ago but didn't really like the changes they made to the UI so I sold it to a buddy of mine.

However, I"m rethinking the decision and would like to ask a few questions.
There are a few features that I miss on the regular WD TV Live Plus.

First, one of the things I don't like on the Streaming unit and I think I asked here but never got a reply on that.

When I have a list of files, in Streaming, I see TWO columns vs ONE in the older unit.
This is all good unless you have LONG filenames, in which case I have to wait till each
one of them starts scrolling to see what I'm looking at.

Here are things I miss on the Plus unit that I would like to know if they are available on the Streaming unit.

1. On the Plus unit, unless you're using the MUSIC mode to listen to music or the VIDEO mode to watch
video clips, even if they are music clips, you miss out on many features.
This always irritated me and I always wished for a simple mode, kinda like the file management or like
on a regular computer. You find the file/directory you want to play and just play it and if there IS video, it
shows up and if not, you just get the sound.
Also, if I play through the music option, I can back out of the song into the list while it continues to play,
I can't do that if I do the video mode.
Is this doable on the Streaming unit?

2. I have lots of files and I tend to organize them well with lots of sub directories and folders.
This means that often, it can take quite some time to dig down to where I want to be, ESPECIALLY
if I'm watching a video file but want to go into music mode and into the music folder.
Is there an option to have certain folders and/or MODES set up as shortcuts or something?

3. How about bookmarking a spot where you left off and I dont' mean IN the file itself, but the location?

4. Is the streaming unit as stable and bulletproof as the plus unit?

5. Can you go to the MENU/HOME and make changes and then go right back to where you were
rather than having to go through the whole process of finding the file you were playing?

6. When you pause or fast forward or anything, you see the progress bar at the bottom which covers
a big part of the screen. Is there a way to get it to go away faster than the 5 seconds (or whatever)
it takes now before it disappears?

7. Any way to go back just a few seconds with one click like you can do on a dish DVR?

8. Why is it so flaky REWINDING compared to FAST FORWARDING?

9. If the WD doesn't do all this, is there another player that does that offers the same simple UI,
reads same amount of file types and is as bulletproof as the WD and yes, I do think it is a very well
made unit and I've had very few problems with it.

Thanks for any replies

George
Edited by guiri - 6/14/12 at 11:39pm

Select content source..

Select content source: Windows Share

It's taking many, many.... many attempts to connect. The problem has been getting increasingly worse the last month or two but now I have to push the Enter button 50, 100 times or more before it connects. I'm running the SMP wired and the network connections check out okay. I've done the usual: restart, reset, and nothing's changed on my computer, Windows 7. Yesterday, after many attempts I went down to Linux Shares and got the red X, as expected, then back to Windows Share and it connected. Didn't work today. I normally power the SMP off at night and don't want to have to leave it in standby all the time. That doesn't resolve the problem, anyway. Anyone know why it's behaving like that? Thanks!

Yon

What changes? WD hasn't made any changes to the UI on ANY of the models. ... or, do you mean, changes compared to the Plus?

1- Yes. If you use the FILES menu, ALL content will appear. You can press PLAY and it will do what you describe.
2- Yes, you can assign any files or folders as "Favorites," and use the main-menu dashboard to get instant access to them.
3- No.
4- I never thought of the Plus as Bullet-proof by any stretch to the imagination. So, I guess that I'd say "Yes," they're comparable in stability in my opinion. But I haven't used my Pluses in a rather long time.
5- No.
6- I would say the progress bar covers less than 10% of the screen. But you can click the "Close" button and dismiss it instantly.
7- No.
8- Flaky? Not sure what you mean. But, in general, it's *MUCH* more difficult to "rewind" compressed video than it is to Fast Forward. That's because the compression and encoding is in a single direction -> Forward. When video is compressed only a small portion of the "frames" are fully encoded. Beginning with a fully-encoded frame, the next frames are stored as sets of changes to that original frame. So going forward is fairly simple. Think of A-b-c-d-e-f-g-h-i-J-k-l-m-n-o-p... where the capital letters A and J represent FULL frames, and the small letters represent intermediate frames.

Fast Forward only requires the player to decode A, and then can generate b,c,d,e,f,g -- and only display, say, A,c,e,g which would represent 2-x fast forward since b,d and f are skipped.

Rewind would require the player to decode J, then scan backward in the file to find A, then decode b,c,d,e,f,g,h in FORWARD order (and store every intermediate frame in memory) but then display g-e-c-A in reverse order. All the intermediate frames must be stored in memory for reverse recall; it's much more processor and memory intensive to go backward than forward.

EVERY player I've seen, including DVRs. DVDs, Bluray players, etc... will do rewind much less efficiently than fast-forward...

Awesome and yes, I meant compared to the PLUS.

So, the CLOSE button is only on the Streaming remote then?

Is there a way to get it to default to the FILE menu if you turn it on? I don't remember what the UI looks like as I only had it for a couple of days.

Yes, I do consider it fairly bulletproof as I've had very few problems with the several units I've had.

By the way, how about this question?

"When I have a list of files, in Streaming, I see TWO columns vs ONE in the older unit.
This is all good unless you have LONG filenames, in which case I have to wait till each
one of them starts scrolling to see what I'm looking at."
Can you change this to ONE column or something (in the Streaming unit)?

By the way, since I am picky about poor grammar and misspelling 'n stuff, I just thought I'd point out that it should be
ON the unit and not IN the unit as I've written. Just in case someone else caught it and I came out looking like a dumba$$
Don't want to be a hypocrite here...

Thanks

George
Edited by guiri - 6/15/12 at 8:53pm

I have got my WD TV Live SMP yesterday. I have connected WD My Book Essentials to it directly.

One issue i found is navigating through the WD TV Live SMP's menus are a bit slow,there is slight lag when i press the right or left navigation buttons. Is that normal?

Firmare is 1.09.10

Thanks,
Simon Mandy

The CLOSE button is On-Screen when the Progress Bar is displayed. It's highlighted by default, so you just press "OK" on the hardware remote to "click" the CLOSE button.

No, there's no way to default to a particular menu. But you can enter any of the major menus with a Hot-Key on the remote, so One-Button access to most menus. For example, if I press "1", it takes me straight into VIDEOS. "2" takes me to Services. Etc.

As far as the One-Column versus two, that can be adjusted using custom themes. I think someone on the WD Community Forum has already done that in a theme file.

Hey guys

I just took delivery of this today

Im going to use it to streams movies from my windows7 PC to my room

The problem im having even though i got it set up and running, not all the movies show up

At first i thought maybe it didn't support the file formatt but some showing are avi files and some not showing are avi files

Any help would be good CHEERS

To solve my own problem, I reripped Avatar, but ripped the extended version this time off the BluRay and that now plays fine.

One question tho, on Flixster, is there a way to see more than a couple weeks worth of upcoming movies? I pulled it up the other day and could only see movies coming thru the end of June. On GTV's optimized website that I was using on Boxee, I was able to see as much as they had available(basically thru into next year).

Also, WD dropped the ball on the filters. You can filter so you can only see TV episodes, which is great, but NOT having a way to filter to just see movies to ridiculous. I hate having to work thru all the TV episodes while looking for a movie.

Thanks.
To be clear, this is available on the Streaming version only, right?

George

 

Ya, my rip of Avatar works fine also (MakeMKV ... no video or audio compression ... Full HD audio).

 

So, you have TV-Series, and Movies. Create the Library with either TV-Series or Movies (only) ... and access the other by Files. Would that work?

Edited by Tesla1856 - 6/18/12 at 12:20am

How do i login to Linux server (QNAP T212) to access videos, pictures from Media source manager? When I tried to add Videos folder, it says the source is read only. How do you guys adding the network shares? Is there any way to provide loginid/password on WD TV Live?

Do I have to give write access to Guest users in Linux server? I prefer not to do that.

Another question is how do i play audio from network share while playing picture slideshow?

Thanks,

I don't use Linux, but my guess is that it's the same as Windows. Setup shares with a (secret) user/password for only the WD-TV box to use. Only it has full control.

 

The SMP likes to remember logins (expecially when you tell it to) but there is an option that erases them all so it will ask again.

How do u specify username and password? It is NOT asking me. As soon as i pick the IP address, it connects and come back with the error (saying read only files)

I've posted these instructions before, but here are my notes again. Just adapt for Linux. I don't have a SMP here right now to check menu options (but my brother has 2 ... just installed another for him this weekend).

 

IIRC, in one of the menus, there is an option to erase network logins. If that doesn't do it, you can always do a RESET, but be aware that erases ALL SMP settings.

 

Most people use Simple Sharing on XP (same permissions for all users, so users are not defined). So, anything you type here should work.
But on Windows Vista or Windows-7 ... here is a cool way to do it:
When first connecting to Windows Shares, the default "Anonymous" network login appears. Change it to...
User:WDTV and Password:wd , checkmark "Remember Me" and then arrow cursor to the right and select green check to continue. You will not be prompted again.
- This works because your Windows Shares should be set to allow "Everyone" to connect.
- You do this because if you later decide to use the Media Library functionality (which needs full write/delete access to the media folders) you won't have to grant all the normal network users those elevated permissions. You can just set special permissions for this "WDTV" user on the Windows Shares.

I looked for that theme but didn't find it. Would you have a link to it and also, the close option is for the Streaming unit only, right?

Thanks again

The SMP and the Hub both have it...

If you're seeing an IP address, you're picking NFS (or Linux) shares. NFS is insecure and will never ask for a UID/PW.

Sorry, no I don't.

Thanks

It can be done that way, but you would think WD would have realized that shoving potentially hundreds of TV episodes in the list with Movies would be a PITA for the user and give us not only a way to filter out just the TV, but also just the Movies. It would be nice to maybe have a way to EXCLUDE libraries as a filter too.

I just just have my movies in a folder called Movies and my TV shows in a folder called TV Shows. I then used the green filter button (only once) to FILTER on FOLDERS.
This allows me to use the media library functions and to see Movies and TV Shows as 2 separate and distinct groups.
(I also have each TV show in its own sub folder.)
Or am I missing something from what you are trying to do?

Hope this is helpful.

Regards,

Lt. Dang

In my case, I have my movies and TV across 3 different network drives due to space. It's not as simple to set up one folder for each. A simple filter for movies only would work much better and easier for the rest of the family.

If you have a dedicated PC, Mac, Linux or a Robust enough NAS then you can use PLEX media Server, add your network shares and it will catalog and sort everything for you. You would then use PLEX's DLNA capabilities to access your media thru the SMP. It should serve up the combined media to you.

Here are some links.

http://plexapp.com/

http://wiki.plexapp.com/index.php/Plex_Nine_Troubleshoot

http://wiki.plexapp.com/index.php/PlexNine_PMS_NAS

Not sure if this a solution for you but it may be worth looking into.

Good Luck.
Edited by oman321 - 6/20/12 at 9:54am

XBMC does it nicely. You can define Virtual Folders Locations. When you file browse that single Location, it fetches all files/folders and compiles into a single alphabetical list (on the fly). This is separate from it's Library function.

 

Win-7 has Libraries but that doesn't work because:

1. Locally, network locations can't be part of a Library

2. From a client, you can't connect to a Library for file browsing

 

And yes, physical drive partitions eventually fill-up. The best way I have come up with is to have numbered folders for each media type. Inside those folders, I keep files in alphabetical order. If I add another drive (and next higher numbered folders) to the "end" ... I trim files from the end of the list, and even-out the files on each drive (leaving space on each drive). Then, you are good for a while.

 

Physical	Network Shared Name
D:\Media\Movies	Media-1\Movies
D:\Media\TV-Series	Media-1\TV-Series
D:\Media\Videos	Media-1\Videos
E:\Media\Movies	Media-2\Movies
E:\Media\TV-Series	Media-2\TV-Series
E:\Media\Videos	Media-2\Videos

               

... etc. So, the Windows Shared name is really just "Media-1". At the client, it's treated like a Drive Letter and you can extend from that. Of course, I also have \Music \Pictures and others ... but those aren't shown above. These drives end up being easy to "move-around" (if you must ... not that I suggest that) and easy to backup (straight file backup or Imaging).

 

I would be interested to hear other systems people have come up with.

May I also recommend a small unRaid server? Cheap and super flexible.
I love mine

What kind of network speed does it need to play 1080p mkv files? I run cable via power lines, video is freezing after few seconds of playing the video. I think i may be getting 0.5-1.5 meg per second speed. Both ends connected directly to the home's wall jack. but my server is upstairs and wd tv is downstairs.