I have recently purchased the WD TV Live and I have to say I’m really starting to regret that decision. I purchased the TP link network card, it didn’t work as it was a different revision, spoke to some shops and they told me all those cards are at newer revisions now. In short, I can’t use it on my network because you can’t actually buy network adapters compatible with the unit anymore.
Onto my second problem, my USB flash drive doesn’t get recognised on WD TV Live startup once I’ve played media from it. At that point, if I turn the unit off and back on, it doesn’t work, so I have to dig around under my TV to unplug and replug in the device for it to work!
Third problem, when I’m watching things with ssa subtitles, you can’t have multiple subtitles displaying at the same time, it just overrides one set of subtitles with another. Usually this isn’t a problem, but when you have translation notes on top of the screen, there is no telling which will decide to show up, the t/l note, or the actual speech subtitle.
If someone can at least help with number 2 that would be great… I intend to buy a WD passport hard drive soon to go with the unit, I hope that won’t have the same problems.
I ended up buying a WD passport 1TB HD, and it appears to solve problem 2. So that’s at least one major issue out of the way. I can only hope they improve the SSA support in a future firmware update… As for the wireless card issue, not sure much can be done, but I can say it’s not a good situation.
I had the same problem with a wireless USB adapter - bought an expensive dual band USB dongle that was supposed to work, but didn’t - probably due to a different firmware version. I then bought a so called ‘generic’ brand which did work. I have just purchased and set up a second WDTV Live and bought a second wireless USB adapter and it works!
Details are:
300Mbps Wireless USB Adapter
Brand Name: Tenda
Model: W322U V2.0
Note: This adapter is not listed on the WD site but it does work.
I ended up finding a D-Link which works (DWA-140), so that kind of solves problem 1, however, it is extremely slow. It only seems to manage 1MB/s when I’m transferring files wirelessly to the hard drive. Is that normal? I transfer wirelessly between my Mac and PC and I would have sworn it was faster than that.
1MB/s is fairly slow but WiFi speed is dependant on a couple of factors; the first being distance between the two WiFi devices and what is in between like a wall, in particular, those inside a metal framed house. The other factor is interference from other WiFi devices like wireless phones or a microwave all of which use the same 2.4GHz frequency. To test this, try moving the two devices into close proximity and in line-of-site, then test the speed again. You may need to relocate one the devices to improve transmission speed. Keep in mind that they communicate via your router, so consider moving it to a more central location. Hope this helps with your speed issue.
