WDTV Freezes After Playback on Any Media Type Options

[tomascubero]

Hello Guys,

I got a WDTV about a week ago and hooked her up to a Panasonic 42" Plasma via HDMI and using a 1.5TB Seagate Free Agent Drive with aroud 150-175 720p/1080p mkvs' and NTFS formatted. On all of them, some after 5 minutes, 20minutes, 1 hour playback, the WDTV freezes, turns the tv to a black screen, the HD powers off after a few seconds and it makes a clicking sound on the tv speakers. I have to unplug her and plug her back in for it to respond.

I have tried all firmwares, from 1.02.10 to WDLXTV to ext3-boot and they all do the same, WDLXTV being the one resisting more playback followed by ext3-boot and the official firmware being the one with the least playback time. I do not know what else to try, at first I thought the HD goes to sleep but it has a pulsating light that shows read/write and it constantly pulses during all movies until the WDTV freezes and it then shutdowns.

It is a pain for me to have it replaced so hopefully someone can shed me some light on this issue.

Thanks!
Tomas.

[Rev Drew]

what is your wdtv sitting on or near? they get fairly warm on their own, an extra heat source like a receiver of some kind could cause that to happen. mine is on a glass tray in my entertainment system and that helps dissipate heat but it still gets quite warm.

I had issues with WDlxTV playing a show, only one and couldn't pause, ff or fr. had to reboot between each file played..
using ext3-boot 0.9.2 and no problems at all now.


just throwing out some far fetched possibilities there, not really sure what's going on but it's a start..


sorry and good luck! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[neverlift]

Welcome to the forums. I hate to keep saying it but I think its the external drive hooked up to the WDTV. Lets try copying over one of those mkv's that skip to a different external drive and then see what happens. Please leave it in the same environment so we can see if Drew's answer might be the problem. Kind of like two birds with one stone. Please try it and report back.

Cheers!

[tomascubero]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for the replies. It is on its on, on a wooden surface with nothing around it, the HD is not that close to it. Anyways, I will try again, but I do not have other external HDs, only a 2GB stick, and I do have small 1.5gb mkvs but I really want to use a large 10GB+ MKV so it really juices out the WDTV to rule out that problem. I will try and get another external HD and try again.

Thanks!

[Rev Drew]

okay, likely not heat.
your hard drive, does it have it's own power supply? I will assume so since it is 1.5TB

how is the drive formatted? that is the next big question.

[tomascubero]

Ok, I have still not tried with the thumb stick nor getting another HD, but to answer your question Rev Drew, it does have a power supply and it is formatted NTFS. I will try at it tonight when I'm at home again.

Thanks!

[tomascubero]

Hey Guys,

Sorry for reviving the old post but I decided to by a new WD MyBook 1.5TB drive, being the same brand as the WDTV and using the official firmware, should not have any trouble. Anyways, it has gotten better, movies last like an hour and a half but it always freezes to the end. I don't know what it is but its SO frustrating. This drive is formatted NTFS, maybe it has to do with that? What happens if I format her FAT32?

Hope anyone can help!

Tomas.

[Rev Drew]

Fat32 limits you to files 4GB or less in size, you wont get to enjoy any 1080p movies likely..

All my drives are NTFS, they are all 1TB drives, all work no problem



very strange.

[Poppa23]

Not sure what is the cause of this, but I get the same problem of my player freezing after a certain time. I have the newest firmware as well... Hope someone can help. This happens with all the hard drives I've tried.

[cybermorph]

I have the same problem. Have gone through 5 different players and they all do the same thing with WD External hard drives....formatted for Mac in HFS; they will start to hang on files with that spinning blue wheel going and the only way to stop it is by pulling out the power and restarting.

I'm thinking maybe it has to do with the volumes being journalled. I hope by disabling that it fixes it.

[WDUser]

I'm thinking maybe it has to do with the volumes being journalled. I hope by disabling that it fixes it.

Journalling is not supported by any WD player AFAIK. This is where reading the manual comes in handy.

[BusterB]

Hi all,

Similar issue here.

I played the first ten or so miutes of Predator.mkv file. I didn't want to watch it so instead of pressing 'stop' I pressed the 'back' button and went back to the movie thumbnail menu. When I chose a different movie and pressed play, it went straight back to a 'still picture' of the scene in Predator where I had just pressed the 'back' button from.

After installing the latest firmware and starting over again, I started "Inception" another mkv. Again, I pressed 'back' to come out of the movie instead of pressing 'stop' first. When selecting another movie to watch, I go straight back to a 'still' of the boy on the beach at the beginning of Inception, which is where I came out of the movie.

I carried out a factory reset of the WDTV and managed to watch Despicable Me.mkv last night with no problems, when the movie had finished and the titles were going up I let it run right to the end and then revert back to the movie files. I then selected another movie to watch and this time did not get a 'still' from Despicable Me.

Not sure if that all makes sense

BB