WD TV Live plays first video but locks up on others until hard-reset

[Codenix]

Hi folks, I'm hoping someone may have encountered this problem previously,

I've been a happy WD TV Live user for about 8 months, until las week when out of the blue I started having problems playing videos.

My device is networked via the ethernet (CAT5e straight into my switch), and my media is all shared from a Vista box, although I have confirmed that this problem extends to media played from USB-connected drives as well.

I can sucessfully play, pause, ffwd, rrwd and stop the first video I select (mostly avi, some mkv - format doesn't seem to have an impact on the problem), but if that first video runs through to completion, rather than returning to the video list, the tv screen remains black. In this condition, pressing the 'back' button returns to the video list.

If I select another avi or mkv file and either press 'play' or 'enter', the screen goes black, and I see the spinning blue disc logo, but the media never starts playing. Pressing 'stop' doesn't do anything, but pressing 'back' will return me to the video list.

A soft-reset doesn't help - ie. nothing will play, however unplugging the power and restarting DOES allow me to play another video.

Further testing has revealed that when the unit is in this media-phobic mode, it won't play music either, although photos seem to display normally.

After trawling this forum I have checked for the library db files in my shares (but they aren't there since they're shares, not usb-connected drives), ruled out heat as the cause, and have even updated to the latest beta firmware 1.03.43_V in the hopes this may help - all to no avail, as the problem persists.

It seems very strange that this problem has developed out of the blue, and that it doesn't occur if I actually STOP the first video before it comes to the end. If I STOP the video, I can then play other videos, no problem, until I let one play through to the end.

Sorry to ramble on - I just wanted to make sure I privided as much detail as possible to avoid 'did you try this' questions.

Regards,

Lucas.

[Ardvark · Accepted solution]

Sounds like something went wonky with your unit. Try a hard reset, and if that doesn't solve the issue RMA it. You might want to try another hard drive with it first, just to make sure that the issue really is with the unit.

[Codenix]

Thanks Ardvark. As it happened, I continued trawling the forum and came across another suggestion to hard-reset with the recessed paper-clip switch, then reset to factory defaults, which I did, and that seems to have fixed it.

I wasn't aware that the reset switch was different to the 'reset to factory defaults' option in the settings menu, but you live and learn, and I'm very grateful to have found a solution.

Thanks again, on behalf of the many users you seem to have helped on this forum

[Codenix]

I may have spoken too soon. Today the behaviour I originally described returned, and although a hard-reset does allow me to play one video, subsequent attempts to play videos result in a spinning blue circle.

I can only assume that since this worked quite happily for most of the year, something may have gone wrong with the hardware, perhaps a dry-solder joint or something, which has maybe effected its memory or something.

I will now try to find the receipt and *hopefully* get it swapped for a new unit.

Lucas.

[mkelley]

It might not be a bad unit.

Be aware that playing a "bad" MKV file will do exactly as you describe (make it impossible to play other videos even if they played fine before until you reset the unit).  If you are telling me you do not have any MKV files then I might believe your Live is defective, but if you have ANY MKV files you need to examine them to see if they are "bad" (and by bad I mean they have video and/or audio track compression).  Either that or after you reset your Live play any file BUT an MKV file.

[pmamatsis]

Dear Codenix hi,

   i am having the same problem as you describing in your post BUT when i switched off and then switched on my TV box

   it can re-produce ALL other files without any problem at all.

Best regards,

Panagiotis.