Can you play other files OK. My guess would be that there something wrong with the encoding on one or all the files. Is there any that work. If the WDTV does not like a file it does tend to hang up and refuse to play anything.
None of the WMA files work, but the MP3’s do. Everything else works great. It is an awesome system. NO a big deal I can just load MP format music, but was wondering why. I entered a ticket number with Tech support. Wanted to see if anyone else who just purchased this system was having similar issues.
FYI; this is on the new WD TV Live Hub
I only have 3 WMA files that I created from my own guitar recordings (using Sound Forge). All of them play fine, no issues.
As they were recorded at widely different times, they all have slightly different encoding settings.
For reference, here is some of the codec info for them:
Windows Media Audio 9 - VBR Quality 90, 44 kHz, stereo 1-pass VBR
Windows Media Audio 9.2 - 96 kbps, 44 kHz, stereo 1-pass CBR
Windows Media Audio 10 Professional - VBR Quality 98, 44 kHz, 2 channel 24 bit 1-pass VBR
One possible issue could be the source; if these are legitimately bought WMA files, chances are they have DRM protection and will be unplayable on the Hub (or any of the Live range).
Mine were created without DRM, so there is no problem.
If you want to try re-encoding your WMA files into MP3, check out http://winff.org
Quick WinFF tutorial:
- ADD your WMA file
- CONVERT TO - Audio
- DEVICE PRESET - MP3
- OUTPUT FOLDER - wherever you want
- Press the CONVERT button.
You can ‘Add’ as many files as you want to the queue.
If the issue is DRM, I’m not sure if WinFF will work either. We can’t assist you in defeating DRM on these forums.
Thanks, that must be it DRM, as I purchased them from I-tunes. I will try that program, if not no big deal.
I have been fighting this problem since last night. I ripped from Windows Media Player to a Music directory on the hub. It recognizes the files and album covers but when I go to play the files it finally compains that it cannot find music at that location and says if the files have moved, wait for them to be re-indexed (or verbiage to that effect).
I stopped Media, wiped it out and restarted it. I tried powering down the unit by pulling the plug and rebooting. I tried removing all the thumb files in that music directory and then scrolling the folders to see them again. Nothing works.
I called WD technical support and they say they are not aware of a problem with WMA files not working. I requested that they monitor this site and help us as a group. The fix to rip all my albums again is not a good solution for me.
I asked WD support to address this here and the tier one person agreed that was a good approach and said he would contact the parties who could do this.
lkruper wrote:
I have been fighting this problem since last night. I ripped from Windows Media Player to a Music directory on the hub. It recognizes the files and album covers but when I go to play the files it finally compains that it cannot find music at that location and says if the files have moved, wait for them to be re-indexed (or verbiage to that effect).
I stopped Media, wiped it out and restarted it. I tried powering down the unit by pulling the plug and rebooting. I tried removing all the thumb files in that music directory and then scrolling the folders to see them again. Nothing works.
I called WD technical support and they say they are not aware of a problem with WMA files not working. I requested that they monitor this site and help us as a group. The fix to rip all my albums again is not a good solution for me.
I asked WD support to address this here and the tier one person agreed that was a good approach and said he would contact the parties who could do this.
If you read above you will see that wma files do play on the hub. The possible problem that the OP had was his files were from itunes and probably were DRM’ed. The hub does not play protected files.
It does look like I posted a problem that did not mesh with this thread. My apologies. I just changed the setting on my Windows Media Player to mp3 and when those files are ripped directly to the hub they play on my hub. However WMA lossless files do not. I will check to see if normal WMA files play.
From memory, the Live series support WMA9 and I think WMA Pro audio files / codecs. Not sure what category WMA Lossless falls into… I think it’s a subset of WMA9 but perhaps it depends what version of WMP you’re doing the encoding with.
You can check by downloading / using MediaInfo to examine the non-working files. 
-edit-
That’s what I get for relying on memory. ;) The Live series, rather ambiguously, supports WMA audio. Doesn’t specify what versions on the product page. I know I’ve successfully played back WMA9 and WMA10/Pro audio files before though.
See here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Media_Audio_9_Lossless
The format has never been publicly documented, and support for it remains limited outside of Windows-based PCs.
