LERANI....

[volumnus]

I wonder if a lot of people with Netgear routers are reporting issues. I had an N600 and returned it in favor of an N900 in hopes the extra bandwidth would resolve the problems. It didn't.

[Techflaws]

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volumnus wrote:
A  lot of the posters here with a ton of posts actually work for WD.

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[citation needed]

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volumnus wrote:
It's a conflict of interest for them to admit the device is flawed.

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Don't judge people by your own standards when it's so easy to disprove you by reading my posts here on this forum. I've gone on the record as being annoyed with the constant flow of new bugs in firmware updates as well as that Marketing apparently is calling the shots, adding features rather than fixing bugs. Does that sound like someone unwilling to admit anything? Does that endear me to WD? Probably not. But it helps making the device better which is ALL I'm interested in.

[NoiZe]

I also have a Netgear router WNR3500L (and a Netgear Repeater), both with original firmware.

[billymac]

I don't know if this is helpful, but I thought I'd share. I got my SMP last night. plugged it in, tried it out with a few files. worked great--totally stoked. Went ahead and updated the firmware and it crippled it. At least that's what I thought, but I think I was wrong. While the SMP was updating it's firmware (post download), I went into my router (Netgear N300) to poke around and changed the wifi max speed from 150Mbps to 300Mbps on the wirleless settings page. I was hopeful in thinking maybe I could squeeze a little more bandwith to make up for the 1-2 bar signal I'm getting in my bedroom. Anyway, after the firmware upgrade and that one change to my router I noticed issues right away. AVI's would hardly load, no sound, choppy. What once worked just a few minutes before, now did not. Still skeptical, but willing to try anything I logged back into the router and changed the max speed back down to 150. The SMP now played the same files like it had pre-upgrade.

Anyway, I thought I would share in the hopes that maybe either A. it helps someone having the same issue, or preferrably B. WD can take a closer look at this.

[volumnus]

I dialed my router back from max 300 mbps to max 130mbps, and it greatly reduced the audio issue discussed in this thread. It seems like a problem with flow control. The SMP doesn't work well with gigabit switches either. It prefers the older, slower 10/100 switches. Maybe a firmware revision can alleviate this. Fingers crossed. Bascially the little WDTV box seems to get flooded and chokes.

[billymac]

yeah, i'm really on the fence as to what to do. wired connection is simply not an option. it's physically impossible due to the layout of my bedroom. i do have a network jack in the room, but it's behind the bed. that can't change.

i'm considering
 

-waiting for WD to take a look and address via firmware

-replacing my Netgear N300 for a different brand

-buying another N300 today to hook up in the bedroom and use as an access point to boost my signal.

how many bars do you have on the SMP? maybe increasing the signal isn't going to make a difference?

hope they get it resolved. i can watch xvid/avi's accross the wifi no problem. i watched an entire movie last night and lost audio once towards the end. hit pause and then play and it synced back up. anything with a higher bitrate or file size like a DVD iso and it chokes.

[volumnus]

Billy, I get a good, strong signal. I can watch 1080P .MKV without a blip completely over wifi if...and this is a big if....I use a media server. You should try out the N600 (WNDR 3700 v.2). It's $99 at  Bestbuy.  It's dual channel and gigabit. I hook up my laptop to the 5GHZ wifi channel and out of necessity my two WD boxes to the 2.4GHZ  wifi channel. From my laptop, I can stream one movie to my box in the living room and a different movie to my box in the bedroom (if I use a media server) without any issues.

[billymac]

were you able to stream those same higher bitrate files through shares over wireless before the firmware fix?

[volumnus]

I was never able to stream 1080P (very well) over network shares, even before the firmware update. However, I used to be able to stream 720P over network shares (perfectly) before the update, but now I can't even do that. Network shares is almost completely useless for video streaming after the update. I tried rolling back to the old firmware, but it didn't help. I'm tempted to exchange both boxes and just not do the update. Of course, as soon as I did this, WD would release a firmware fix for all of this.

[volumnus]

I get choppy video and only one to two seconds of sound and then the sound goes totally mute at max 300mpbs.

I get intermittent sound  and choppy video at max 130mbps.

I get perfect sound and perfect video at max 54mbps.

Is 54mbps enough to push 1080P .mkv. I will test that and report back.