Using WD HDTV Live with the latest official firmware release and a 2tb WD MyBook HDD plugged in. Every now and then randomly on any movie the video will freeze for a moment, then fast forward skipping through without audio until it’s caught up to where it should be, then resumes playing normally.
You can rewind back to the freeze point and watch without any problems.
Any ideas why it’s doing this randomly. There’s nothing wrong with the video files (.mkvs) themselves. Any similar experiences? It hasn’t always done this.
i have the same problem streaming mp4 and avi from my computer. itll play for a couple of minutes then appear o freeze. then appear to fast forward as if it is catching up. happens at least once per video. sometimes more. also the audio on my netflix sometimes starts to mess up. squelching chirping and other loud and odd sounds. have to rezstart the video to fix it.
I haven’t noticed any of my WDTVs do this yet, but it happens to me with my PC occasionally, playing media with either WMP or VLC.
People have been complaining for quite some time, in general, about occasional pauses when accessing external USB drives. Usually, the drive behaves as you expect, but some times when you go to access it, Windows pauses for a minute or two before the Explorer window will start populating with the files off the drive, and other weird things like that.
Why external drives sometimes lag is a question for WD to answer, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with your WDTV itself.
Just an update, this is when an WD MyBook is connected directly to my WD HDTV Live box. Actually, I think this issue seems to be going away and replaced with, every now and then… my hard drive self ejecting.
I have this problem, but I have 3 hard drives attached to my Airport Extreme base station. The video and audio stutter a few times when you first start playing something. I’m able to rewind and play over again normally, but it’s really annoying. Haven’t had any problems with Netflix. Contemplating taking it back and exchanging. Started right after the last firmware update, so I downgraded the firmware. It got better, but still does it.
I have the WD Live, talked to tech support, exchanged the unit, and still, the same problem with freezing , usually after the first 5 to 7 minutes of any video in my hard drive. What I found out is that if I leave the unit on all the time, when I play a movie, I don’t have that problem, at least I tried this since last week, and so far it works, I don’t ;like it , because I usually utilize the system only in weekends, and still leaving it on for 3 days, it gets kind of hot.
I have been facing the same problem with my 1TB seagate ultraportable hard disk. My observation is that if I copy the same file to a lesser capacity (640GB or 320GB) then it plays without freezing issuues. I am thinking the playet is not able to handle higher capacity hard disks appropriately.
Movie freezes then after a while goes fast forward. Firmware is 1.05.04_B
latest version. I did all the resets as explained. Also I have discovered
the real issue. The issue is that when I display the movie time, it might
show something like 00:06:05 and 00:14:02 meaning I am into 6 minutes of
a 14 Minute movie. The movie is actually 01:22:03 minutes long. So either
the movie is encoded somehow incorrectly, Or the WD is misinterpreting the
time line. I can play these same movies on a PC with no issue using various
players.Windows movie player, VLC player, divix player etc. Also the other
players also show the incorrect time for the movies, but still plays them
fine. In any case it is not a hardware issue, but a software issue that can
be fixed with a firmware update.
After re-encoding the movies, they play fine and display the correct playing times and no more freeze then fast forward. I submitted this information to tech support and they have moved the issue to the development team.
The issue is that when I display the movie time, it might show something like 00:06:05 and 00:14:02 meaning I am into 6 minutes of a 14 Minute movie. The movie is actually 01:22:03 minutes long. So either the movie is encoded somehow incorrectly, Or the WD is misinterpreting the time line…
After re-encoding the movies, they play fine and display the correct playing times and no more freeze then fast forward. I submitted this information to tech support and they have moved the issue to the development team.
That’s one of the “classic” signs of a file without proper indexing, which is probably why re-encoding it fixed it.
