WD TV Live freezing and I think it is on its last legs

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scottr

262 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#1138758 27-Sep-2014 15:33

Hi, have you upgraded the firmware in the last few weeks? I did it a week or so ago and ever since it's been freezing during playback (which it never did before). Apparently it's a very common problem with the newest firmware.

ottenpat

73 posts

Master Geek

#1140806 27-Sep-2014 17:56

hangon: I had the same issue. Video freeze during play, from either USB or NAS. Also it often doesn't turn on with remote, had to unplug the power adapter

I was 1 step from returning it

But it was resolved by rolling back the firmware.

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5860/~/how-to-roll-back-the-firmware-on-a-wd-tv-live-hub-media-center,-wd-tv-live

I rolled back to 2.01.86, video no longer freezes, and device turn on with remote. The later could be related to the power saving setting.

Many ppl seem to have issues with the latest version 2.02.32

If your issues only started recently, then I'd suggest you try rolling back firmware first.

I have rolled back to 2.01.86 this morning and the WD TV Live is completely stable again like it always was. Files that I recently have had issues with are working perfectly again.

I am very confident that there is a real issue with firmware 2.02.32 and look forward to WD resolving that one. I will stick to 2.01.86 for now.

Thanks to everyone who help me on this one. I was almost ready to give it back to the retailer.

Regards
Patrick

zespri

414 posts

Ultimate Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#1143071 28-Sep-2014 19:04

What would one reccommend to replace a device like this with? Are there better alternatives?

JimmyH

2886 posts

Uber Geek

#1143103 28-Sep-2014 20:21

It's a good, basic and relatively cheap device.

However, there are plenty of alternatives, with various strengths and weaknesses. If you want useful recommendations on what to buy then it might help to give us an idea of what exactly you want to do with the device, what your budget is, and what your base level of technical competence is? Otherwise, it's kind of hard to recommend something that might be suitable.

zespri

414 posts

Ultimate Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#1143186 28-Sep-2014 22:48

JimmyH: It's a good, basic and relatively cheap device. However, there are plenty of alternatives, with various strengths and weaknesses. If you want useful recommendations on what to buy then it might help to give us an idea of what exactly you want to do with the device, what your budget is, and what your base level of technical competence is? Otherwise, it's kind of hard to recommend something that might be suitable.

>>what exactly you want to do with the device
- Watch on more than one TV
- Watch netflix
- Watch Youtube
- Watch avi/mp4/mkv files
- Connect to an external HDD

>>what your budget is
Let's say 500NZD

>>what your base level of technical competence is
High but kids will have to be able to use it once set up.

Cheers!

JimmyH

2886 posts

Uber Geek

#1147700 5-Oct-2014 17:32

zespri:
JimmyH: It's a good, basic and relatively cheap device. However, there are plenty of alternatives, with various strengths and weaknesses. If you want useful recommendations on what to buy then it might help to give us an idea of what exactly you want to do with the device, what your budget is, and what your base level of technical competence is? Otherwise, it's kind of hard to recommend something that might be suitable.

>>what exactly you want to do with the device
- Watch on more than one TV
- Watch netflix
- Watch Youtube
- Watch avi/mp4/mkv files
- Connect to an external HDD

>>what your budget is
Let's say 500NZD

>>what your base level of technical competence is
High but kids will have to be able to use it once set up.

Cheers!

Sorry for the delay in responding.

I haven't played with many different options. My two main players are both WD units and so far I am happy with both of them. However, they now won't do what I want in some areas (HE-AAC v2 decoding, easy metadata scraping etc), so are on the replace list.

I am testing what I eventually plan to replace my WD units with, a Minix X8-H. This is a full android-based media unit with access to the play store etc, and it seems to be a good unit, that's very powerful and flexible. It should do everything on your list, and then some, and has an optimised version of XMBC pre-installed etc. I landed mine for around $250, including the optional QWERTY wireless remote. However, it is still on its initial (buggy in places) firmware and has a few rough edges - I wouldn't recommend it for wife and kids unless you were confident that they were reasonably tech savvy and OK with confusing interfaces etc.

Others here have tried other media players (Roku, Chromecast etc) and might want to opine on whether they might be more suitable for your needs.

zespri

414 posts

Ultimate Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#1150326 8-Oct-2014 23:02

Sorry for the delay in responding.

I haven't played with many different options. My two main players are both WD units and so far I am happy with both of them. However, they now won't do what I want in some areas (HE-AAC v2 decoding, easy metadata scraping etc), so are on the replace list.

I am testing what I eventually plan to replace my WD units with, a Minix X8-H. This is a full android-based media unit with access to the play store etc, and it seems to be a good unit, that's very powerful and flexible. It should do everything on your list, and then some, and has an optimised version of XMBC pre-installed etc. I landed mine for around $250, including the optional QWERTY wireless remote. However, it is still on its initial (buggy in places) firmware and has a few rough edges - I wouldn't recommend it for wife and kids unless you were confident that they were reasonably tech savvy and OK with confusing interfaces etc.

Others here have tried other media players (Roku, Chromecast etc) and might want to opine on whether they might be more suitable for your needs.

So I actually decided to order both Roku and Fire TV and then sell the one that I don't like. That actually was a mistake. The Fire TV is still making rounds with YouShop, but Roku has arrived today. I also ordered chromecast at the same time to boot.

Roku is a huge disappointment. I think I won't be able to sell it as it's largely useless. I knew that it does not support many formats but that's mitigated by using it together with plex. However I definitely hoped to run netflix on it and it can't.

No, really it can't. I did all the song and dance with Getflix, blocking the google dns and opendns etc, it did not help. The netflix channel is simply not in the list. The *require* you to provide a credit card to activate your roku, and since it's a nz credit card I think they just limit the channels available on server side. My old and worn wdtv live now appears more favourable.

Getting the bloody roku to run was also an exercise. It won't run without doing firmware update, and it simply refused to do the firmware update with error 011. Googling did not help a whole lot, until I saw an advice to change dns server to openDns. It did the trick and firmware got updated and I was able to activate the device. What happened I think is that Slingshot uses the dns trick getflix/unblockus do, and return ip of a proxy. But firmware upgrade might be performing on a different port that the proxy does not know how to serve.... or something.

Anyway, I've spend the whole afternoon with the roku box and I think that I'll have to shelve it. Might end up putting it up on trade me for one buck.

Chromecast on the other hand I quite liked. It is simplistic, yes, but what is designed to do it seems to do well. And it's cheap. The set up was a breeze and netflix casting from both pc and iPad was not a problem. I also understand that plex support chromecast so I can cast stuff from plex as well but I have not tried this yet. I'll report back when I do.

Now having one chromecast in the lounge and the other in bedroom probably would be sufficient, but I'll have to rely on plex for the local hdd content, which means that I need an always running PC. I was hoping to avoid that. And because of transcoding this PC also needs to be decent spec. Mine is but I was hoping to run something cheaper (both in power consumption and hardware cost).
I remember that like 5 years ago streaming in the home wireless network was painful. I mean lagging and all. So I'm a little bit afraid that this plex streaming thing is a non starter. I'm guessing I'll find out soon.
Also kids will need a way to start streaming somehow, they don't have iPhones/iPads neither access to the plex PC so I'm not sure how to set this up... hm...

When in 2-3 weeks the fire tv arrives I'll also have a play with it and let you know the results if you wish. If I can make it play netflix, then may be it will stay in the lounge and the chromecast will go to the bedroom (where I'll start plex/netflix from my iPad and wify from her iPhone).

This is one of these things where you won't know until you actually try. I'll keep experimenting. I'm surprised that the current WDTV live setup that I have actually is not that bad comparing to alternatives. I do not have netflix on it, and that's why I'm pushing for change, and it's overall glitchy, but no more glitchy than what I've experienced with roku today.

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zespri

414 posts

Ultimate Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#1150513 9-Oct-2014 10:31

It just occured to be that getflix has nothing to do with roku. I will try unotelly tonight and see if it helps.

zespri

414 posts

Ultimate Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#1150857 9-Oct-2014 18:15

zespri: It just occured to be that getflix has nothing to do with roku. I will try unotelly tonight and see if it helps.

Unotelly did not help. If anyone knows how to set up roku 3 with the latest firmware for netflix feel free to let me know.

zespri

414 posts

Ultimate Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#1150909 9-Oct-2014 20:09

zespri:
zespri: It just occured to be that getflix has nothing to do with roku. I will try unotelly tonight and see if it helps.

Unotelly did not help. If anyone knows how to set up roku 3 with the latest firmware for netflix feel free to let me know.

Okay, I seem to have wrestled the roku 3 into submission. Mainly with help of this very helpful guide: http://help.unotelly.com/support/solutions/articles/9488-setting-up-unodns-on-your-roku-us-

It does not look like with Slingshot "Global Mode" you actually need unotelly to run the netflix. It seems to work fine without. The firmware check though does not work so I'm guessing I'll have to do the DNS dance every time roku decides it can't go on without a firmware update.

Interestingly Roku plays videos from plex seemingly without effort, while WDTV Live lags terribly on the very same video. So this is an improvement.
I'll see how the next few weeks go with roku, but frankly I don't think it can be recommended in new zealand, whether you technically savvy or not. It feels a bit like living under the sword of damocles - you never know when the whole things stops working because they implement yet another geo-restriction measure.

zespri

414 posts

Ultimate Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#1158064 19-Oct-2014 20:38

So Roku sucks. Don't buy it. If you don't want to heed this advice, then by mine, I'll sell real cheap.
While it is kinda functional, and kids enjoying angry birds it has, netflix does not play about one forth of all episodes with a cryptic error message "try again later". I was not able to find any rhyme or reason to what is played and what has trouble. The same title can play ok one time and then refuse to play another. There is NO problem like that on the TV.

I do not enjoy Roku community either. The forums are quite active but there is a lot of guesswork there and crazy theories. This means that the company support is low. Many people have the same problems, being asked over and over again with little or no help from the company. Some people report back conversations with the Roku helpdesk and it does not seem to be that great either.

So to sum up:
- Spend a lot of time and had to jump through a lot of hoops to set 1) get the box run past the mandatory software update and 2) get the netflix up and running (finally succeeded)
- Netflix is really flaky, refuses to play about 1/4 of all titles including once that it played before
- Community support / company forum support is lacking

I got Amazon Fire Tv this week, and so far experience is very good. Netflix app has the old interface that is not as nice as the modern one and does not have the subtitles option, but this is so far is the only complaint. Also I really liked their new parental control feature "free time", but this is something only someone that has 3 kids can appreciate =) Another downside inability to play from usb hard drive, but this is nothing plex can't help with. Ah, and no support for NZ time zone. You have to chose american samoa and this probably will break when daylight savings change. But these are all minor for me.

I've been running Amazon Fire Tv from this last Friday and so far having much better and smoother experience than with Roku.

Roku in my opinion is really not suitable for NZ. So if you want to get this piece of... hardware... off my hand, name your price, I'll be very cooperative =)

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