*Official* WD TV Live Streaming Media Player Thread - Page 78

My DVR's are the Funai line, so +RW is easiest (-RW requires extra finalize step to read on PC). Fortunately the DVRs' high-speed dubbing capability makes the process tolerable...

CC

Those are DVD recorders, not DVR's.
Around here, DVR means something entirely different.

I'm not so sure about that anymore. See here...

http://forum.wdlxtv.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=7663

A version of Homebrew(custom firmware) seems to be able to be run from a USB stick now(if I understand it correctly, as I'm new to this box myself)

I'm confused - if the correct term for the Funai's is "DVD recorder", what's the term for devices that record DVD's but DON'T have hard drives?

Thanks,
CC

b-rad wrote the homebrew firmware for the previous WD Live version. Many people liked it, but I never installed it -- too afraid of bricking my unit. Let's hope that WD doesn't plug the hole b-rad is using in their next FW revision.

WD tightened their grip on the firmware when they added Netflix capability. It was part of the deal with Netflix, to lock down the firmware so the DRM couldn't be compromised. I recall that once we installed the FW revision that implemented Netflix, we were no longer able to revert back to a previous non-Netflix FW. WD made this plainly known so they never tried to hide anything.
Edited by Kelson - 1/3/13 at 7:54am

It's still a DVD recorder (aka. DVDR).
Just because it has a HDD doesn't change what it is -- a glorified digital VCR.

DVR's typically have multiple tuners and record the digital transport stream as-broadcast, so that playback PQ and audio of the recording is indistinguishable from the original HD/5.1 broadcast.

Thanks for the clarification - I've been using the wrong terminology for years - I wish someone had enlightened me earlier!

CC

When you briefly push the power button on the Live-SMP you are not turning it off but putting it in standby. This allows it to "power up" quickly when you want to use it. In the standby state it stays active on the network and can be located and accessed by a PC. If you enable it on the Live-SMP, any attached USB drive will appear on the network as a shared drive and allow remote file management (read/write/delete/rename/move). You can also initiate and perform file management functions from the Live-SMP menus, so you have the best of both worlds -- i.e. you want to copy a file from a network NAS unit to the USB drive on the Live-SMP.

If you push and hold the power button on the Live-SMP, after 5 sec the unit will actually power down and shut off. After a power-down it is no longer visible on the network and a power-up will entail a full reboot which takes a couple minutes. Sometimes the unit needs to be rebooted and this is a handy way of doing it without having to get up and pull the plug on the Live-SMP.

What I am not sure of is how the Live-SMP handles power management of attached USB drives when in standby. Some external HDD, like WD drives, automatically spin down after some minutes of inactivity, but other HDD arrays do not. I don't know if the Live-SMP manages power and shuts them down after an idle period or just keeps them spinning. The previous Live+ did not have a standby mode and so when it shut down it also powered down an attached USB HDD array. I've never bothered to connect that array to the Live-SMP (it's on a media-PC, now) so I don't know what it does in standby. Perhaps someone else can provide that information.

URL? So far I've been able to downgrade from any to any version. I even did a rollback that wasn't supposed to work cause I saw the notice of that too late.

My bad. I was confusing it with another media player I had, the Seagate FAT+.

Yeah, there's never been a "Non-Netflix" firmware for the SMP.

IIRC, the WD players that support NetFlix have *always* supported NetFlix, meaning, none of them got NetFlix sometime later after launch.

Can anyone tell me the cons or what they don't like about the WD TV Media Player? I am looking to stream movies from my home computer to my TV wirelessly. Would this be a good media player for that intended use?

I don't think any player is good for wireless movie streaming. Wireless throughput is too situational to be dependable. The biggest con with the Live-SMP is that it doesn't do everything that everybody wants in the way they want it done.

Try reading the last 200 posts to get a feel for what people think.

Very well said.

I have been using Sony BDROm s 790 that I immensely like but can't read ISo image;(

Anyone else find the netflix browsing to be agonizingly slow? Its kind of turning into a dealbreaker with my wife....its to the point where sometimes you press the button and nothing happen, its just very unresponsive.

The whole unit is slow not only Netflix. I was at my parents house fixing their Internet connection,and I noticed the UI was really slow and unresponsive at times.

It came out on top in my research when I bought it 2 months ago, mainly because of MKV capabilities. I hear that Roku has improved in that area, but the 2 USB ports on the WDTV are still a big plus for me. One device I would also be researching today is the Samsung BD-ES6000 to get BD & streaming on 1 HDMI port, plus the web browsing features. With new devices coming out and old ones getting updated firmware it's a challenge to put together an up-to-date comparison of features...

CC

The BD-Exxxx series are listed as being Cinavia compliant -- as are all new BD players. Stick with media players without a BDA license for content streaming.

One thing I noticed is that if you have a wireless keyboard plugged in, the unit is pretty responsive. The remote control response is pretty crappy, I agree!

Yikes - it never occurred to me that a combo device would impose BD protection on streamed content! That being the case, it's hard to imagine anyone buying it. Thanks for dispelling my potential buyer's remorse!

CC

If you get one of the 2010/2011 models you can easily load custom firmware that removes cinavia protection: http://forum.samygo.tv/viewforum.php?f=18

Do chapters actually work for you on the WD? How do you skip?

Ive been struggling to find a way to play HD videos on my SMP with chapter skip. I finally decided to try MKV and the files do wave working chapters but I still can't get the player to skip.

Options -> View Chapters

Thanks! I did try that before but for some reason it worked this time. Unfortunately it doesn't tell you which chapter you're currently on. Why don't they just make use the forward and back skip buttons???

>>> Why don't they just make use the forward and back skip buttons???

Because THEIR way is "Easier!"

That would be too obvious and user-friendly. We can't have that.

The chapter skip buttons do work with DVD.iso, but not reliably. Skip forward works well but skip back has some problems. Sometimes when coming back to a DVD.iso using the Resume feature, neither the skip buttons nor FF/RW will work.

I prefer to use the skip-to-time feature for BD rips. It has always worked reliably for me and gets me to exactly where I want to be.

I literraly read through every page of this thread(very time consuming hehehe)

New to the whole SMP and NAS world. Have a few questions

This will be my setup:

WDTV >> 5port 10/100 switch >> Router >> NAS - all wired

The wife got me a Seagate GoFlex Home NAS (2TB) for Xmas. I got it all setup on my network and am currently sharing movies to my Xbox(all are .AVI files since Xbox doesn't play nice with other file types)

My WDTV will arrive tomorrow so hopefully everything will go smooth.

Now, I'm using a Mac - so hopefully someone else here is using a Mac for all their stuff and can help

What is a good Movie Sheet maker(like ThumbGen) for the Mac? I saw some movie sheets a few pages back and that is exactly how I want mine to look like.

When converting my media, I will be using MacX DVD ripper pro. I did a test run last night with a DVD and ripping to MKV took almost 40 minutes(Setting vid bit rate at 1400/core 5.1 audio file size ended at 1.75GB for a 90 min movie). Is this the best file type to rip to, or is there another that will keep roughly the same picture quality/audio quality but be faster? The software can do pretty much any file type.


From all the posts I've seen, the majority of people have their files setup as such:

Movies
-->Movie A(Folder)
---->Movie A.fileextension

Where each movie has it's own individual folder on the NAS. Is this the best way(need to know before I go converting all my movies)

Ahead of time, thank you for any responses/help on my questions.

You've the same exact Seagate Goflex Home Hard Drive that I have. I can not seem to get the shares to allow recursive folder shares eg: Separate Folders for EACH Movie Title. It seems to only allow a root folder and you have to put everything loose inside..???

* Have you or anyone else figured out how to get the Seagate GoFlex Home to Allow sharing Root Directory WITH Multiple Separate Movie Folders????
I even tried putting all media in the virtual 'public' partition and still will not share Root Folders with sub folders for separate movie titles..

* If the Seagate simply will NOT do, are there any other external ethernet Hard Drives that WILL allow proper folder structure to be shared for movies in separate title folders?
Perhaps the Western Digital?

Thanks and sorry for semi-hijack/off-topic....