My 2 Big Wishes, Scrolling Issues + 'WD My Book' Auto Off Support/USB Auto Off Options

[kladimere]

This is cool of you guys to ask for customer feedback to improve the model's features.

My big two wishes are:

Scrolling Issues

I find that it can be very slow to scroll through my huge music collection. It is around 300gb, on a WD drive, has around 2000 band folders, some with many GBs of sub folders. It takes around three minutes for me to scroll to a band that is in the middle of the alphabet, which is painfull when you just want to listen to a quick song.

I have tried switching to "list mode" rather than "thumbs mode" to save the unit having to process the pictures in the folders. My suggestion would be an option to either have another mode where the list has several horizontal columns, and can scroll horizontally. Or better still, an onscreen keyboard where you can select even the first letter of the band's folder. I find if I search for the band, it shows all of the songs and I can't go "up a level" like in windows to get to the main band folder.

'WD My Book' Auto Off Support/USB Auto Off

My other big request has to do with swithcing the power off USB devies that draw power from the WDTV.

I really enjoyed the last update which allowed hard drives to spin down more efficiently. I used to use a portable Hard Drive Enclosure for my music collection, which had a power switch. However I just upgraded to a Western Digital My Book 1TB Home Edition, cause I like WD products, and it looks really cool next to the WDTV, both with the piano black finish.

Unfortunately when I power down the WDTV, it doesn't turn my WD Hard Drive into standby mode like a computer would when you power it down! It leaves the hard drive constantly on!

I have to crawl behind the cabinet and unplug it from the powerboard. I had noticed WDTV left my USB sticks on too, but the hard drive uses 10 watts of power, and more importantly I don't want to wear it out, as they aren't made to be 24/7 hard drives.

Thanks for listening!

Oh yeah, I am really impressed with this product so far. It is great. It recognises all of my audio files and apart from the above, I am totally satisfied. People often talk about the remote being cheap, but I find it fine, and once actually even dropped the damn thing into the washing up sink, and after a few days carefully drying it out with batteries removed it worked fine, hehe, so the remote is fine too.

[ToJa92]

About the issue #2: The hard drive really isn't on. It's only the drive led which is on. The disk itself never spins, or shorts the lifetime of your disk(except for the led, obviously). But yes, I would really like if they could make it possible(right now I'm also unplugging my WDTV).

[kladimere]

ISSUE 2

I will have to double check that then, more closely.

I just notice when I eject my WD 1TB Mybook Home Edition drive on a PC, it will turn off the blue LED lights on hard drive, and the hard drive powers down.

However when it is plugged into the WDTV, when I power it off it leaves the LED lights on, with the WD 1TB MyBook. It is my opinion that the Hard Drive has "spun down" (thanks to latest firmware), but the drive is still "on" in standby mode, sort of thing.

It is more evident with USB sticks, cause after switching off the WDTV, it leaves the light on the USB stick too, indicating that the device is still powered.

It is great the new firmware spins down a drive, so you can turn it off safely. I just wish the WDTV would also power off USB devices.

ISSUE 1

I am still finding this to be a real issue. Perhaps I could group my music folders into A,B,C,D etc, so that I only have 26 main folders, and can at least find the bands that start with eg 'M' in under 10 minutes. It would still be slow navigating through the 100s of M subfolders then anyway. I think a horizontal list mode like windows uses for it's list mode might solve the problem. Alternatively an on-screen keyboard might help to find the band quicker, cause the Search function is too general.

[Rev Drew]

it only spins the drive down in newer firmware, what revision are you using?

[kladimere]

"it is my opinion that the Hard Drive has "spun down" (thanks to latest firmware), but the drive is still "on" in standby mode, sort of thing."

As I said above the new firmware spins down my other HDDs, I can hear it happening, however they actually have a power button on them, so all is well with other external HDDs....

I bought WD My Books thinking they be compatible, but when you power down the WDTV, they spin down the HDD ok, but do not power it down like a PC would with these My Books. These My Book HDDs do not have a power button so I am stuck.

The My Books rely on the device they are plugged into, in this case the WDTV, which does not seem to power them off properly, whereas these same My Books funciton properly and power off nicely when 'ejected' with a PC (ie, no need to crawl behind and unplug power adapter, like have to do now with WDTV).

On this WDTV, the My Book seems to spin down, but the blue light stays on, and I have found sometimes that the HDD eventually gains heat, indicating it is in more than standby more. Also when you pick up the drive you can still feel a little momentum in the drive, causing a very slight wobble... correct me if I am wrong though..

[kladimere]

a WDTV admin on another forum admits it here:

http://wdtv.uservoice.com/forums/17442-general

"The current product is not capable of completely turning off the USB bus. The latest firmware (1.02.07) will spin down drives, but their LEDs may stay on, which can make it seem like the drives are still on".
- wdtv Admin

In my opinion, I am positive that sometimes my WD My Books have some heat in them, and that the drives are more than "seeming like they are on"....

[WDUser]

I have made it a habit to switch off the power on the power strip that my WD TV and drive are plugged into, once I'm done playing my media. Unless of course I know I will be watching something soon, in which case I leave the player powered off using the remote. This of course leaves my drive's LED on, which bugs me, though the drive itself doesn't seem to get appreciably warmer and it does spin back up when I power the player back on after a while. Still, if I'm not planning to use the player for a long duration (anything longer than an hour or more), I simply turn both of them off completely as the dimmed LED gives me peace of mind regarding my drive with my precious data on it. What's more, even if WD fixes this behaviour (ever) with new firmware, I'm probably still gonna do the same thing 'cos I don't wanna risk the drive ever turning on and churning away unnecessarily when I'm not there. Final reason, and you might think I'm being paranoid (but who cares), in case of a soft power off and a power spike/fluctuation, I just don't want to see both my player and drive fried to a crisp.

[kladimere]

good point WDUser. It is a good habbit you are in to power off your devices each evening or when you have finished. I have kids who are often awake before I am, so tend to find it easier to leave it all on, rather then being woken up in the morning, haha, as they can navigate the menus fine, but I don't want them touching the power cords.

I found my drives stayed a little warm too, especially any USB flash sticks that were plugged in, while the WDTV is powered off with the remote.

Anyway I am glad I am not the only one that it bothers, thanks mate.