*Official* WD TV Live Streaming Media Player Thread - Page 20

From WD....

WD Announcement for WD TV Live Hub Media Center or WD TV Live Streaming Media Player:



There is an issue parsing the file header on file types M2TS, MPG, MPEG, and TS video files containing Dolby, DTS, and PCM (above 2 channels). These files may display a "Not Supported" error message, or the files may play back without audio.



This issue is specific to M2TS, MPG, MPEG, and TS files. You can resolve this issue by re-encoding the video to use a different container type. However, we are currently working to resolve this issue as soon as possible in a future release.

Yep, and the firmware that will fix this will break something else. Been the case every single time they update the Live. These streaming boxes are very much in their infancy, hell, the Live and Live Plus never even made it to a 2.x firmware.

Still it has taken them some time which should have been better spent elsewhere like on those two subtitle bugs I've been bitching about since day 1: VobSub color palette is messed up since one color is hardcoded to white (don't ask why, there is no reason) and transparent outline of SRT subs (don't ask why, there is no reason). These are fixed in the LIVE-S but not yet backported to the LIVE despite the little time it should take.


Haven't tried scraping yet but I use

Showname 1x01.ext

and don't plan on changing that which probably means I'd have to go with self-made XML files.


I'd rather say posting on the official forum might be the logical way, as the chances of WD noticing appear higher.


Wouldn't be happening if the vendors wouldn't use their customers for exactly that. In Germany we call that "Banana ware".


It's important to do a reset prior to upgrading to get the machine to a defined state. That way a lot of problems people mention on the forums don't show up.


I have no problem with high bitrate BD.m2ts files (Avatar).

Care to elaborate with some details.

I've had the same lock ups and reboots. I've only had my player a couple of weeks and have experienced quite a few lockups and random reboots.

I've also noticed , it seems to get very hot.. for a little box of this size.. even though supposedly it isn't a very big power hog.. My first gen WD TV media player never even got warm. My WDTV SMP gets very warm.. warmer than an external hard drive

Well, you've seen my Avatar rip bitrate chart, right? I've also tested one of those chapters in their original M2TS format and had no hickups via shares or USB.

If you're using WIRED networking, any heat more than about 25 degrees above ambient is abnormal. I keep mine VERTICAL, right next to my 800W AVR, and this morning, measured the case temp at 95 degrees with an IR thermometer.

If you're using the internal WiFi, you can expect higher temperatures, maybe as high as 110, but I haven't measured that...

Yes, and as I replied to you here, the average bitrate of your MKV is much lower than the 34.8Mbps bitrate of my Avatar.m2ts rip (MediaInfo). I can play a 25Mbps BD.m2ts over SMB without problem. It's the high bitrate BD.m2ts that choke the Live-S -- but not the Live+.

Kelson, I don't think you understand what you're looking at.

Mediainfo does a MATHEMATICAL average based on total stream size in megabytes, divided by the duration in seconds, to find the average bitrate in megabits per second. As for MAX bitrate, it only reports what the ENCODER reported, and is not necessarily accurate, or even relevant.

Techflaw's report shows a MAX Bitrate of 56 Megabits per second, and a STATISTICAL average of 23,541. That report is based on actually analyzing the full stream, measuring the frame-by-frame bitrate, not just doing quick and dirty estimation like Mediainfo does.

Dividing the stream size by the number of seconds does give you the average bitrate, not an estimation.

Things to consider: the bitrate chart is only giving the rate of the AVC video, not audio, subs, or container overhead; there are also two different encodes of Avatar (the first barebones release used over 5Mbps more video bitrate than the second).

That's what I said.. A mathematical average...

To: TimA, Thanks for the link, but can you tell me why you have stopped using NFS for sharing?, to me, it seems better than SMB/CIFS or a media server.


To: stiggs, I just bought a second WDTV Live Streaming Media Player last week, the only time I ever got a lockup was when I tried to hook up an IPHONE 4 to the USB port and see the pictures, otherwise both have never locked up, or rebooted, or given me that "fatal error" screen you posted.
can you elaborate on what you were doing when you got that error screen?

It turns out the biggest contibutor to the descrepancy in performance between my Linux box and Windows XP box, when it comes to serving up NFS, was flaky Gigabit ports on my router. When I installed a new router (ASUS RT-N56U) and set up my SAGEMCOM 2864 in bridge mode most of the problems went away. and Linux was able to serve NFS just as fast as windows to the WDTV Live Streaming Media Player. also the SAGEMCOM 2864 's wireless was just as flaky, giving me only two bars in the basement (to the WDTV Live SMP) while the RT-N56U gives me full strength wireless everywhere in the house including the basement.

Edit: It seems the problem is not totally gone, I believe the cat5e cable I am using that are going to the gigabit ports of the router, from the server, are still causing some skipping. I will install Belden cat6 and then see if the problem totally clears up.

Anyone know where to download the previous firmware? Seems to appear its been removed..

That's because re-installing the old firmware will brick your WD.

And then after that you said "a quick and dirty estimation"...

I was playing an episode of a TV show that I ripped from a DVD. The episode played once I rebooted the device.

My WD TV Streaming player gets very hot too...hotter than I would expect.

Some .MKV's are choppy at certain scenes, and this only happens sometimes, not always (and the choppiness happens during the same scenes, if it happens). There are some files that are more troublesome than others, but there is one .MKV I have that is particularly good at showing what seems to be a flaw in the WDTV Live SMP's execution of the file. My new router has allowed me to do a real-time analysis of the data being transferred over the wired and wireless LAN's. In the screen shots below I have marked a + sign in the exact middle of the scenes where the choppiness happens. (incidentally, it did not happen this time, as network conditions were probably favourable for the file to execute flawlessly). The first scene is marked 11:14pm and the second scene is marked 11:27 pm in the screenshots. I also recorded 3 minutes before and after the scenes for comparison. What they show to me is that there is no excessive amount of data being transferred or data spikes at those points in the movie/file and the problem rests squarely in the WDTV Live SMP's implementation of .MKV playback. I am in correspondence with a Western Digital tech and will be uploading the MKV file to him as well as these screenshots and conclusions and hopefully they can do something about the problem.

If anyone has any comments on these conclusions, or if you can add to them, or refute them, please do so.

To: stiggs, I don't know what to conclude from that, other than that the device is not working as it should (obviously) but whether it is fixable with a firmware update or not is a different story. I had two .mp4's that would freeze during playback ( but not lock up the SMP, I could still exit) I ended up uploading the files to Western Digital for them to review, because the file would cause other files to become unplayable as well. Perhaps you can upload your problem file as well and see if you can make the user experience better for everybody who owns the product.

Right, and I'm still waiting for you to post a similar graph to demonstrate this.


Check out the download URL and replace the firmware number, the old file is still online.


What makes you say that? As a beta tester I've been switching a lot between firmware versions for testing purposes, going back and forth and never once bricked any LIVE player, neither old nor current.

Thank you for responding jakmal. I have seen the file stutter at the same spot through USB as well as wired ethernet, but I'm sure it happens less often.( I've also seen it NOT stutter through wireless with lower conditions than ideal). The only thing I'm suggesting is that, because there is not much more data to transfer at those those points in the file than at other points in the file AND that the choppiness happens more or less intermittently with the same scenes under the same network conditions, the execution of the file may be optimized through firmware and the stuttering problem solved.

can you tell me Jakmal what the best way to cut a clip out of the .MKV is?

It's irrelevant at this point. It's not just Avatar, I've cited a number of titles that choke the Live-S. The high bitrate .m2ts files are copied right from the \\BDMV\\STREAM folder on the original disk (DVD Fab) with no compression or repackaging. I have a Live-S and a Live+ side by side plugged into the same GigE switch pulling media from the same NAS units. The Live-S immediately chokes while the Live+ plays the same files perfectly and without the auto framerate stutter others have noticed.

Something is wrong with the Live-S firmware. The chip is certainly capable of playing the source so the choking means the SMB code can't transfer it fast enough to keep up. I saw this with the Live+ about 5 firmware revisions ago. So if you tell me that you can play the same untouched .m2ts file over SMB with no choking, that just tells me the Live-S problem has a configuration component to it. I'll make some changes and see if I can impact things.

What is your video output set as. Is it HDMI auto with auto framerate? When my Live-S is set that way I see frame stuttering on both DVD and BD source. It's not pronounced but very noticeable during panning scenes. Try setting HDMI 1080p/60 and see how that does. It fixes it for me, but the only problem is that the Live-S won't hold onto that setting and changes it to 720p.

The firmware is still immature.

To: Kelson, I'm set at 1080p/60, it only changes back if I unplug it.

luvmyDLP,

I used NFS when I ran MythTV. I do agree that a good NFS implementation is better than SMB/CIFS, but I really didn't want to play with NFS on Windows since I switched to a Win7 HTPC "solution" mainly for Cablecard. My Windows 7 Pro box has no problems streaming Blu Ray to various clients. In my house, I only experience streaming problems with the client device and not the SMB sharing computer or network. In short - No reason to try NFS on Windows.

Tim

Right now I'm having problems with my Cars 2 DVD MKV file playing back smoothly from a USB disk! It pauses quickly every minute or so. I need to do some experimenting since I'm not sure its the file, the disk, or a WDTV setting.

Also does anyone transfer files to their WDTV attached USB drive through the built in SMB server? Any problems? I'm wondering if my files are getting corrupted during this transfer.

Tim

WD has a warning on their website where they removed the Rollback package for 1.03.10... "Firmware version 1.03.10 is unavailable for roll back at the current time due to an issue discovered when rolling back to this firmware. WD recommends not rolling back to this firmware..."

Maybe it won't lead to all-out bricking, but given how WD releases "production" firmware with known, fairly serious bugs, it must be a REALLY BIG thing if they pull rollback firmware offline...

Definitely a high risk of SOMETHING bad happening...

I was just going to say, although SMB may be able to stream high-def content (under the right conditions) without issue, would'nt NFS still be faster and better for transferring files from the network to a USB device attatched on the WDTV Live SMP?