New Release - Firmware Version 3.04.17 for WD TV Live Hub (5/7/12)

[tm224]

First time I have encountered a serious problem with any of the recent firmwares. I have all my media on the root of my drives no folders and they are ISO. With new firmware I pick a file and it reboots the WD everytime. So I have to go back to 3.03.16

[TonyPh12345]

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DeVicious wrote:

besides the fact that constant changing of filters is no very user friendly I have obviously tried this filter several times but it is not finding any TV shows...

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If it's not finding TV shows, then they're not tagged "correctly."   I "quote" that because WD has never posted specifications on the XML, so one has to learn what the WD is expecting by inference.

I've not used thumbgen before so I can't comment on how it builds XML, but based on what you're saying, I assume that it is NOT using the TV-show XML schema, which is definitely different than movies.

My XML Fetcher tool supports TV shows specifically, and does the TV metatags correctly to get proper filtering and sorting when using the TV Show Filter, and HAS done so since November '11.   But what the WD is doing with the additional info in the XML schema is now coming to light.

I wouldn't swear that it wasn't doing that in the 3.03 firmware.

I agree with you that the <TITLE> tag generated by the the WD's scraper could just as easily prepend the EPISODE # with as many leading zeros as necessary to assure that the title is sorted correctly.

But that appears to be not what WD has in mind.

Using the TV Filter, the WD appears to :

• GROUP by <series_name> tag (regardless of folder structure.  There's some interesting benefits to this logic.)
• GROUP by <season_number> tag  (though, for more than 9 seasons, the SEASONS don't sort correctly...>
• ORDER NUMERICALLY by <episode_number> tag, not Alphabetically.

Using the TV Show filter, the TITLE has apparently NO BEARING on the sort order.

You could then TITLE your episodes something like:

West Wing:  Pilot

... and it will still show up in "The West Wing", "Season 1" folders, and be in the first position .. REGARDLESS of how the file is named, which can be very useful.  By extension, one could do some really interesting things with the SERIES NAME and TITLE tags and get two totally different navigation paths depending on what mode you're in.

I need to play with this some more to verify my theories, and if they're correct, I'll be releasing an update to the XML Fetcher to add some additional features based on that functionality.

One thing I have not figured out yet is how the logic for THUMBNAILS works when the "folders" it displays aren't real folders at all; they're virtual groupings based on XML data.

[TonyPh12345]

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tm224 wrote:

First time I have encountered a serious problem with any of the recent firmwares. I have all my media on the root of my drives no folders and they are ISO. With new firmware I pick a file and it reboots the WD everytime. So I have to go back to 3.03.16

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tm224:

Out of curiousity, are you attempting to RESUME DVDs when it crashes, or are they fresh starts?

[DeVicious]

@TonyPH (we posted at the same time, I keep my answer anyways for people to learn about the issue)

i made some test runs and the TV episode can only be recognized by using the build in scraper since no other software is using these metatags. The smart thing to do would for the library to read the season and episode from the filename.

This means no external movie sheet will work and no content will be found

The hub generates this kind of meta tags

<title>Name Of Series 1 - 8 Name of Episode</title>

<series_name>Name Of Series</series_name>

<episode_name>The Straw In My Donut Hole</episode_name>

<season_number>1</season_number>

<episode_number>8</episode_number>

this comes with a list of problems in itself besides being incompatible to movie sheets.

Season and Episode have no leading zero when in single digits

Which means each series with 10+ seasons will sort like this 10,11,12,1,2,3,4....

Episodes are sorted 10,11,12,1,2,3,4

I have not tested this thoroughly if the hub sorts that out but it is illogical and ignores standard release naming.

A standard release is named s01e08 (with leading zero)

The problem continues in displaying the file name it first puts the name of the series then the season # then the episode # and then the title, which means you have the longest title in the history of the digital age.

The library is not sorting by the metatag <episode_number> which would make perfect sense and could be implemented into Thumbgen by sending an sweet Email to him, it actually is sorting by the title....

which actually would create a title like this (real life scenario)

"Two And A Half Men 9-13 Slowly and in a Circular Fashion"

possibly this doesnt matter as it doesn't come with a movie sheet anyways but in order to make movie sheets work I would have to use this crazy long title which will NOT fit in any movie sheet i know of.

For the sake of the argument and being completely in sheeple mode and willing to scarifice my freedom of choice when it comes to designs.... if this filter would be adjusted to a more logic sorting method it would still require me to hit the filter button anytime I switch to another media format and all of that is unecessary and less complicated if the hub would sort by Folder & Filename because based on the standard naming the episode is always named

"seriesname.s01.e01.mkv" regardless how many episodes / seasons  name of the show and whatnot written behind the episode info, it is always sorting it right because this is how any computer in the world is sorting files and the easiest way to deliver a user friendly version is by giving the people what they know instead of creating an nearly impossible scenario to figure out. Anyone with external generated movie sheets can not use the TV filter. That is a lot of people and all of then would have to sacrifice their standards in some way.

[DeVicious]

lol seems we posted at the same time Tony :-)

[TonyPh12345]

DeVicious:  Looks like you and I were typing at the same time;  check to see if you missed my post a few up from this one.

[TonyPh12345]

**bleep**.  Did it again!    But you're faster with the POST button than I.

[DeVicious]

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TonyPh12345 wrote:

DeVicious:  Looks like you and I were typing at the same time;  check to see if you missed my post a few up from this one.

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lol we posted even that at the same time (my belly hurts, so funny)

[DeVicious]

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TonyPh12345 wrote:

**bleep**.  Did it again!    But you're faster with the POST button than I.

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and now that too

i am a girl

[DeVicious]

anyways Tony, it appears to me that we're talking about the same thing, if you'd use moviesheets you'd consider it a bigger problem as you do right now.

To me this sorting filter is useless, they all are

if I could sort by folder / filename i would fix that and it would be my responsibility to use appropriate scene release names

on top of that it would fix the sorting order with music tracks

"01 Madonna - Like A Virgin"

(batch renaming by id3 tag of 1000 files takes 30 seconds with Tag Scanner, track number appears as prefix in the file name... bingo done)

Movie Franchises:

can be renamed to

Twilight 1

Twilight 2 New Moon

Twlight 3 Breaking Dawn

the title in the xml file still shows correctly but I can't be bothered to remember the original order of 4 pointless vampire movies or 8 Harry Potter Movies, how am I supposed to remember all that?

If sorted by filename i think about it for a split second and never think about it again

It is the most logical way to fix these problems and it cannot be ignored because no matter what there is no better solution to this problem, there really isnt.