Is the development for the wd tv on hold? At this point do you think upgrading to the wd tv live is worth it considering future development with your custom firmwares?

<<< edit: I have some things planned for WDLXTV1 and a new release in the works, but most of my dev time is being (and will continue to be) for the WDTV Live. Most of the enhancements I do for WDLXTV_LIVE will be included in WDLXTV1 so its not like its died. WDLXTV1 is already at such a stable level anyways that there isn’t all that much left that could be done to it, besides minor maintenance. –b-rad >>>

Works nice, much better than the original already:-) Some questions:
-If its a non-flash firmware, why do I have to power cycle and replace wdtvlive.bin? If it didn’t flash anything, should it be enough to just power cycle?
-How can I enable ftp to /?
-Just configured samba to share /, now I can mess around like mad (btw: will any changes made to the files be saved in flash?)

<<< edit: Once a WDTV (either) has been placed into upgrade mode it does not leave that mode until it flashes a firmware. I’ve updated WDLXTV_LIVE to have / as ftp root. Download WDLXTV_LIVE-0.1.5. The root filesystem is read only cramfs on NAND, you cannot modify anything. –b-rad >>>

Thanks for the great work.

I can’t get optware 0.2 to work with 0.1.4. Am I missing something? It doesn’t get automatically mounted.

I tried to manually mount it, and added /opt/bin to the path and although that worked, running ipkg results in “ipkg: not found”.

Note, I’ve not tried any other versions yet.

<<< edit: The CPU is different and binaries are incompatible. You must wait for an 8655 Optware feed to exist first. –b-rad >>>

Hi B-rad,

Wow so good so quickly. I have a problem with NFS still, maybe you have an idea?

No matter what I do I can’t seem to get NFS to auto mount on boot. Have tried the new delay config, doesn’t seem to make a difference. Have net.mounts on USB root, put it in /conf/ too, the drives are viewable via SMB/CIFS but unless I telnet in and mount them no go. The net.mounts is fine because if I execute it from either USB or /conf/ they mount up ok. Tried with a 20 delay even, options are working ok as sshd/ftpd are shutdown now, I know its a once execute uncommented, even so the S0…options file is on the USB root. I’m running wireless.

Any thoughts/ideas appreciated =) Thanks so much for your time and effort.

I also can’t get optware to work.
I get ipkg: not found no matter what $PATH is set to

<<< edit: different CPU == binary incompatibility. –b-rad >>>

So is this armel we cross compile for or what???

<<< edit: mipsel. –b-rad >>>

Is there a way to run a bittorrent client on the WD Live, like transmission, as you can on the NMTs? Thanks

<<< edit: it is possible with the right skills. –b-rad >>>

Hello,
maybe I found a bug…
Using latest wdlxtv on wd tv to read mkv from a dvd (dvd attached to usb 1, usb 2 with a compatible usb key, media on) I noticed that:
- my iso/udf always worked with a single 4.6GB mkv on them.
- yesterday I tried a dvd with mymovie_cd1.mkv and mymovie_cd2 on it and what happens is:
wd tv sees two mymo~1.mkv files (same name!), and I’m able to start only the first file, not the second one.
On pc the dvd works perfectly.

Great work!

Ciao!
Lorenzo

<<< edit: Sometime I’ll see if I have any disks that fit your scenario. –b-rad >>>

B-Rad,
Do you think WD will be adding more media sites to the Live?… Is this something you are considering yourself for the homebrew?

Fantastic work!!

B-rad,

Is there a special procedure for using an optical drive? Just plugging mine in doesn’t work.

<<< edit: must be connected at boot to work, not guaranteed to work with all devices. –b-rad >>>

Hi B-rad!
Is there any chance to use rtorrent/webgui in WDTV live?
It’s a very important feature for me,because i’d like to switch off my Asus router because the smb is very slow on it.

<<< edit: How important i$ it to you? –b-rad >>>

Hi!
I second Paul’s question .
Coming from germany would be great if there would be any possibility to add more video services by myself, like ard and zdf mediathek.

<<< edit: you’ll have to learn to program if you want to add anything like that. –b-rad >>>

will it be possible to listen to shoutcast streams in any next custom firmware of you?

<<< edit: could be possible in the future. –b-rad >>>

Hi B-Rad,

Is it possible to modify/expand the subtitle funcionality ?
I mean, changing the subtitle’s color, outline and background ?

Thanks in advance

<<< edit: not easily. –b-rad >>>

Hi! ftp doesn’t work at all now:-)

I changed this
[ "$FTPD" != "off" ] && [ "$FTPD" != "OFF" ] && tcpsvd -vE 0.0.0.0 21 ftpd / -c 8 &
to this
[ "$FTPD" != "off" ] && [ "$FTPD" != "OFF" ] && tcpsvd -vE -c 8 0.0.0.0 21 ftpd / &

Btw: where is /conf (/tmp/conf) saved? Is this the only dir that persist my changes, or will all of /tmp persist?

Regards, G.

Do you know if the LIVE has a different HDMI handshake or music playback routine from the original WDTV? When I play music files the first half-second of every song is cut off.

With the original WDTV the start of the song was never cut off. Thanks for all your work on these little jewels!

<<< edit: I could compare the logs, but don’t have time. Your issue sounds annoying for sure. –b-rad >>>

Any idea when you will be releasing a flashable version?

<<< edit: maybe tonight? –b-rad >>>

Do you know if the WDTVLive also has the problem of playback of 1080p material and putting .SRT subtitles on it, making the playback stutter? (mkv files around 8-9GB that is)

Would be nice to know that upgrading would solve this issue seen on WDTV1.

<<< edit: no clue. –b-rad >>>

Hey, B-Rad..

I’ve been closely following your development of the WDLXTV-Live firmware for the last few days since my WDTV-Live showed up, and trying different things with it with varying amounts of success.

Though I’m really out of practice (the last 5 years or so I’ve focused almost exclusively on Windows Server OSs, ’cause, well, frankly, that’s what my jobs were paying me to do), I’m a long-time Linux fan, and have been absolutely blown away by the things you’ve managed to squeeze out of these BEAUTIFUL little boxes.

In any case, I’ve noticed the same thing as the last poster; with your 0.1.3 firmware that I had originally flashed to, FTP worked, but as you pointed out, I couldn’t use it to transfer config files effectively. I downloaded 0.1.4 a day or so later, but before I’d even had a chance to unpack it, you’d released 0.1.5.. Man, you work FAST!

In any case, I’m no longer able to FTP into the WDTV-Live. The box answers on 21, but never sends a welcome message. I’m wondering if there’s some sort of permissions issues since the FTP root is the root of the FS. Would seem to make sense that you wouldn’t let the daemon / anonymous user have read / write permissions to the root of your OS, at least from a 21st century security-paranoid point of view. Wonder if that’s something left from the official WD firmware? I’ll check it out in a few and post back after I poke around a bit.

I may also try unpacking and flashing the 0.1.4 firmware, to see if that “fixes” the FTP thing. I’d really like the FTP working, because I’ve +just+ begun playing around with the idea of customizing some/all of the OSD. I certainly don’t want to step on lilibabe, or anyone else’s toes, I just had some ideas and curiosities I wanted to satisfy. It would just be really nice to be able to FTP a replacement graphic element file onto the system, reboot it and see how it looks on the TV, without hopping back and forth with a USB drive. Although I +do+ think I may have a 10-foot USB extension cable upstairs somewhere.. hmmmm..

The other thing is for the last day and a half or so, I’ve been completely unable to access anything on wdtvforum.com besides the very first splash-screen (http://wdtvforum.com/ “Welcome to the WDTV Forum”). As soon as the redirector tries to load, I get an error message in Firefox stating simply “Connection Problems – Sorry, SMF was unable to connect to the database. This may be caused by the server being busy. Please try again later. ” I’m getting this error regardless of whether I try to drop straight into a thread, using a link like the one above in your article, or go in through the front door. Doesn’t seem to matter. Before that, it was working absolutely fine for me. I don’t guess you’d have anything directly to do with the management of that site / server, but I was wondering if you were having any issues seeing the site, or if it’s something more localized.

In any case, let me know about accessing the forum, and I’ll let you know what I find with the http://FTP...

<<< edit: go OSD theme crazy, you’re not stepping on anyones toes –b-rad >>>

B-Rad, quick update.. just took a peak at the FTP setup..

In 0.1.5, the FPT ps is being called as “tcpsvd -vE 0.0.0.0 21 ftpd / -c 8″ and it won’t let me connect at all, as I said before.

In 0.1.4, though, it’s being called as “tcpsvd -vE 0.0.0.0 21 ftpd /tmp/media/usb”. When I telnet in, I can kill the existing process, and manually run “tcpsvd -vE 0.0.0.0 21 ftpd /” without any problem. Once I’ve done that (in 0.1.4), I can ftp in as expected, except it drops me into the OS root, as one would expect.

Not sure if the additional “-c 8″ in 0.1.5 was for something specific, or just a type-o, but that seems to be creating an issue, one way or the other.

Shoot me an email if I can do anything else for you, in the meantime, back to photoshop & FTP land. )

x.

ps: I also remoted into one of my servers in another part of the country (I’m local to Michigan), and it’s giving me back the same error from wdtvforum that I’m getting here, and I’m getting it in Firefox 3, IE7, and IE8, identically. Again, I don’t figure you’ve got anything to do with it directly, but you might be able to get the info to the people that do. If they need a hand with anything, too, just fire me off an email, I’ll be up for a bit, yet.

<<< edit: the forums seem to be having a bit of trouble, hopefully it comes back soon. I’ll patch the firmware to fix the ftp issue tonight. –b-rad >>>

Thanks B-Rad,

I thought the CPUs were largely the same. Do you know where I can get the correct toolchain for the 8655? I’d be interested in trying to get optware going myself.

Hey B-rad as much as i lov your work on the new wdtv2 , I also would be very happy and willing to donate when/if you finishing porting the old wdtv firmware to c and make it quicker.

Shouldn’t you donate first? Then make requests?

B-rad has been nice enough to help the WDTV community he doesn’t get anything, unless you decide to make a donation.

I hate to see his efforts rewarded with requests for more custom features. If you donate it might just give him incentive to work harder.

<<< edit: thank you pagercam I do all this for free and unless theres a donation+request most requests are binned, unless they have direct interest/benefit to myself…You want something done? then pony up and maybe it’ll happen. –b-rad >>>

@BetaTesting

Get the toolchain from Eminent’s wiki site! Their EM7075 uses the same Sigma 8655 chip.

http://opensource.eminent-online.com/wiki/index.php/Cross_toolchain_EM7075

Hey B-Rad,
what happened to your Forum? I can’t open it. I always get this Error-Message:

Connection Problems
Sorry, SMF was unable to connect to the database. This may be caused by the server being busy. Please try again later.

Can you help me?

<<< edit: its not my forum, just a good place I like to hang out. If it was mine you can be guaranteed it wouldn’t be down for days Hopefully its sorted soon. –b-rad >>>

Hi,

just downloaded your homebrew fimrware and it looks great, but for somereason FTP isn’t working at all.. Also, is there anychance you could provide us noobs with some sort of instructions/wiki article on how to take full advantage of your custom firmware?? The link to wdtv forum you provided doesn’t seem to be working..

Cheers

<<< edit: will be fixing soon. –b-rad >>>

Hey b-rad, i was wondering, is the firmware flashed into the chip when we upgrade through the osd ? I’m not familiar with the inner workings, and wondered why when messing with the net.mounts i got my 2 boxes into some kind of ‘recovery’ state (where the wdtv asks for firmware.. error screen).

How does it work exactly, there’s a kind of ‘boot recovery’ section into the flash ? And why did the boxes go into that mode when messing with a config file ? Thanks for any infos !

how about hdhomerun? I hope to save the mp2ts on this device.

<<< edit: well you could buy me one and then I could attempt to get it to work –b-rad >>>

b-rad,

Slick, thanks. (for the promise of firmware fix)

Quick question, though.. any idea how I can test the files I’m working on for the OSD? I downloaded the .rar you put up and have been making changes to different files, but when I try to copy them onto the WDTV to actually view / test them in-use, it always tells me that it’s a read-only filesystem.. I’ve tried FTPing the files directly to the OSD dir’s, as well as putting the new files on a USB drive and moving them from a root shell.. both are giving me the same “Read-Only FS” error. Any thoughts?

Also, say I +do+ get a working theme I like and want to share.. what’s the “proper” way of packaging & distributing that? Does it get added to your firmware package at compile time, or is there another method that I’m not yet aware of?

x.

<<< edit: This guide I made might help you out: How to make a custom theme. That’ll give you a pretty good idea of how to do it. Basically you enclose your full theme in a bin file, which is a filesystem image (not cramfs), and that is named whatever.osd.bin. –b-rad >>>

I was reading through some of the old WDTV UI customization threads on the forum (It’s BAAAACK!) and I +just+ got to the part where someone mentioned something about cramfs. Help a noobie out with the syntax to compile a directory tree that’s +not+ just a mounted .bin file in the first place?

Thanks again for all your help!

x.

<<< edit: I said not cramfs. dd if=/dev/zero of=x.osd.bin bs=1024K count=10 && mke2fs -l x-osd -T ext2 x.osd.bin –b-rad >>>

b-rad —

nevermind the bit about the syntax, some more googling found me a page talking about building app.bins on the original wdtv, and they’re using dd for the ext3 .bins instead of cramfs, and even explaining the difference.. I’ll let you know if / when I get something worth bragging about..

I can’t update the /tmp/netmounts file after flashing fireware:

Status: Starting upload of C:\Users\Chris\Documents\net.mounts
Command: PASV
Response: 227 PASV ok (192,168,1,235,195,161)
Command: STOR net.mounts
Response: 500 Unknown command
Error: Critical error

Any ideas?

It says I need to be a premium member to download the permanent flash?

That sucks

Rapidshare screwed up I think, lets me download now.

Strange.

I tried flashing the latest WDTV Live firmware (0.1.6) to my WD TV Live device and it just hangs at 0% progress on the “Updating Firmware” screen. Does this just take an insanely long time to update, or is something going wrong?

<<< edit: you might try and execute the upgrade from a small flash device, if you were trying from a large hard drive. –b-rad >>>

0.1.6 – yeah! damn that was quick! do you sleep?

<<< edit: sleep is for the week. –b-rad >>>

Um,im still getting a boot recovery mode on my boxes. I can’t figure out why, but i have to reload firmware from usb whenever i try to use my wdtv live. I’m gonna try to figure out if there’s a pattern when it happens, but there’s something weird happening.

<<< edit: WDLXTV_LIVE (pre 0.1.6, 0.1.5 & below) used to be a non-flash firmware. This was accomplished by telling your wdtv live that you wanted to upgrade it, but then supplying a firmware that doesn’t flash itself…aka running ‘live’…So if you don’t have a firmware on an attached device you’ll see that screen. Solution? Upgrade to 0.1.6, it flashes itself like a normal upgrade now. Its pretty stable besides one thing that shouldn’t be hard to debug. –b-rad >>>

yeah cheebster – I’m getting the same thing. Occured after putting 0.1.5 on. Going to try restoring to factory default image tonight and see what happens

How to get WD firmware back? I got no sound on 0.1.6

Correction! I got the sound working but still wanna know how to roll back. I placed original fw files on the stick and restarted the box but this didn’t do anything.

<<< edit: refer to end of README file. –b-rad >>>

0.1.6 fixed my FTP ability and now I can see computers/shares in the Network Shares option, but the movies stops and the connection to the share drops after about 5 minutes. This was happening on the official firmware too. Anyone else having this issue? Wired connection btw.

<<< edit: I think I’ve read about some people having issues like that, dunno though. –b-rad >>>

I’ve tried upgrading from a small (512mb) and larger (1gb) flash drive, both formatted FAT32. I copied the .BIN and .VER files to the drive and selected “Upgrade Firmware” option that popped up in the menu. It stayed stuck at 0% forever, and now it won’t boot back normally.

It either gets stuck on the WD TV Live boot screen, or I get a black “Insert Flash Drive to Restore” screen.

What can I do to get my system back to normal? I’ve tried placing both the 0.1.6 files and original firmware files on the flash drive, and I get the same hanging at 0% problem. Help!

Hi B-Rad,

I have isolated what I think may be one cause of the network problem people are having on the network. Could you have a look at:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=17438780#post17438780

I’m not familiar with Unix generally, but do you know how one would modify these strings at boot time so that these values can be changed, and if so, how would they be added into your firmware at S00custom-options?

<<< edit: I’ll look into it. –b-rad >>>

Great work!! Any chance of impleting dvdfs in cd-manager to enable playing commercial DVD?
like it is implemented in opentvix for Tvix 6500 player

<<< edit: Any chance of a super fat donation coming from you to implement said feature? –b-rad >>>

I was able to “unbrick” my WD TV Live and successfully update the firmware to 0.1.7 by copying and placing the files on TWO USB drives, plugged in simultaneously. When I had a USB drive in each slot, the firmware was found and updated immediately. Now my WD TV Live works perfectly.

I wonder why it only worked when both USB slots were populated.

I’m a noob, and the feature list is too technical. Can someone tell me what’s on the list in English? :$

<<< edit: Go here. –b-rad >>>

does event-osd work with your software yet?
I used it to show movie information, before playing the movie.

I plan to use the wdtv as my primary musicplayer with hundres of albums, once the wdtv-live will be available in germany.

In times of biiig TV`s I would like to see as much cds per page as possible.
would it be easy to add more options in the config-file to choose between
10 (2×5) /original
15 (3×5) /already made available by you!
24 (4×6)
40 (5×8)
60 (6×10)
for example, or whatever you like…?
Just an idea, which would be great for huge collections!

great work so far! donation will come for sure!

<<< edit: The other views are possible (dunno about 60 though), but very time consuming…therefore unlikely for me to do without serious motivation. If someone else made those extra views I could see about including them in the firmware though. –b-brad >>>

Hi B-Rad,

I am also very interested in seeing dvdfs implemented in wdtv live firmware.
I guess there are quite some people out there who would make you motivated with a donation.

<<< edit: –b-rad >>>

May I suggest using torrents for the firmware instead of rapidshare?

Will this work firmware work with the LaurentG.app.bin that allows you to show fan art, info about the movie, etc? Reading this link.. http://wdtvforum.co/main/index.php?topic=1039.0

<<< edit: gotta be recompiled, I’m going to look into some of that stuff soon. –brad >>>

Hey im trying to connect to a NFS share on ubuntu.

My /etc/export on the server looks like:
/media/movies 192.168.*.*(ro,no_root_squash,async)

But i get permission denied from wdtv:
# xmount 192.168.1.137:/media/movies user-movies nfs
mount: 192.168.1.137:/media/movies failed, reason given by server: Permission denied

I can connect to the NFS share from my laptop but not the wdtv, what do you suggest?

<<< edit: I imagine you’ve already force reloaded your nfs server? That’d be the first (and very necessary) thing I’d do, it doesn’t refresh itself. –b-rad >>>

Hi b-rad. I played with car pc’s for a while, tried many many configs, and finally gave up on it. Never found any combo of stuff that would boot instantly or close to.. had many issues. I tought, the wdtv would be a pretty good embedded platform to run in a car; the only things that would make it perfect would be VGA support (maybe use component to VGA cables ?) to plug into a vga monitor, and some touchscreen support.

I wonder if it’s even remotely possible, to add some touchscreen support into a such piece of hardware via USB, maybe i could search for some touchscreen controller that already has linux drivers written for WDTV’s os (busybox, right ?)…

I might be off in many ways here, but i just tought that would be a good idea. Thanks again for your great firmware.

Hi b-rad. Thanks for all your wonderful firwares. BTW, what is the possibility of getting programs like TVants or Sopcast on WDTV Live?

<<< edit: standard sopcast caps would not play on WD TV 1, think i’ve tried them on WD TV Live and they wouldnt play on it either. Too bad, I like sopcast. –b-rad >>>

Great work

Installed 0.1.7
Can’t seem to get a USB hub to work. I have 2 drives connected to a powered USB hub connected to USB2. Only see one drive. Can switch the connections and see the other drive (after a restart) What am I missing?

Can’ use USB1 because it is inaccessible where I have the WDTV Live mounted.

Also, FYI the .Thumbdb folder is not being populated, not a big deal as I think the WDTV caches the covers anyway.

Not sure how to get the orginal backgtounds and screen savers back. Any hints?

<<< edit: hub devices are only viewable from ‘folder view’, its .thumbDB >case sensitve< , and include any properly named images at the root of a device at boot and background & screen_saver will change to them (villa_bg.jpg & screen_saver.png) --b-rad >>>

Hello B-RAD,

Would it be possible to change the color of the subtitles from white to yellow? No need to add a full selection menu, simply changing the font color should suffice. It wouldn’t be hard to implement as nothing needs adding, only changing. This is the only thing that I really miss from the official firmware.
I already tried contacting WD but they don’t seem to be able or willing to help so I’m asking you. Again, I don’t need any of the changes you’ve already done to the firmware, only this one feature. Could you do this for me please?

I’m aware that this isn’t the place for personal wishes but you’re the only one I can turn to.

Many thanks for your trouble!

Kind regards,
Csokis, Hungary

<<< edit: short answer: no. –b-rad >>>

Thanks for the quick answer.
The drives are not visible from the folder view.
I see USB2, clicking I then see the root folder of the drive that is working. (The root folder has no media, only folders) The drivers are NTFS

With the older WDTV, I saw an additional icon for the second drive. (in fact I could get to the drive through, the icon or by navigating from USB2) I don’t see it now.

Could it be the drives are NTFS?

The folder was .thumbDB, just typed it wrong in the note. Again could this be NTFS related?

<<< edit: I don’t use anything NTFS, so don’t know about issues dealing with it–but possible. If you want to manually mount the drives you can make /conf/fstab containing entries on where you’d like them mounted. You need to format the entries by UUID if you want them to be executed, like such:

UUID=5fa9bced-4efe-4bb1-bf3e-4c1f91c0f46b /tmp/media/usb/something ntfs defaults 0 0

–b-rad >>>

Pff… Then suck my dick, you faggot!

<<< edit: Leaving this comment so everyone sees what a douche you are. If its ’so easy’ go do it yourself. –b-rad >>>

<<<<

Hello B-RAD,

Would it be possible to change the color of the subtitles from white to yellow? No need to add a full selection menu, simply changing the font color should suffice. It wouldn’t be hard to implement as nothing needs adding, only changing. This is the only thing that I really miss from the official firmware.
I already tried contacting WD but they don’t seem to be able or willing to help so I’m asking you. Again, I don’t need any of the changes you’ve already done to the firmware, only this one feature. Could you do this for me please?

I’m aware that this isn’t the place for personal wishes but you’re the only one I can turn to.

Many thanks for your trouble!

Kind regards,
Csokis, Hungary

<<>>
>>>>

B-rad,

I think users need a liitle education to explain that much of your work is based on the fact that the WD TV Live is Linux based so there are things that can be fixed, changed, modified at the OS level. But other functions video playback, subtitles and the such are hand coded for this specific CPU/DSP/SoC that you do not have access to and thus can not change.

Users have seen you make God like changes for networking, filesystems, backgrounds etxetrnal devices and the such, etc… and now assume that you are all powerful to change anything and everything. While I bow down to your skill and power, I realize that there are some fixes/changes that only WD or Sigma Designs can make and I don’t thing many of your users realize the difference. Few people understand that embedded systems are not like PC’s and a there are a different different set of rules.

I think that Csokis thought that this was something within your power and it isn’t.

Likewize, although it has been mentioned a few times people still don’t seem to understand that the differing architecture between WDHD1 and the Live means that old firmware won’t run on the new box with out at least a recompile, and that Live firmware will not be back compatible with WDHD1.

Any chance of WOL support for this (ie wake up WDTV2 from LAN?)

Possible?

<<< edit: WD TV Live is always ‘on’, when its ‘off’ (standby) it has just shut down power to the usb bus. You can still telnet/ssh in when its ‘off’. –b-rad >>>

Hello,

I have in my net.mounts 3 mounts, but when I reboot the wdlive, only the last mount of the 3 in my net.mounts is mounted. The others I can manually mount, but the net.mounts file does not seem to be mounting them. Any suggestions?

<<< edit: dunno, my NFS all load fine from /conf/net.mounts. Try setting a delay: config_tool -c NET_MOUNTS_DELAY=10 –b-rad >>>

B-Rad,

Just read your exchange with Paul.. Is it true that you have been able to access multiple large (None NTFS) HDs using USB-Hubs with WDLXTV_LIVE-0.1.7 and that the NTFS format may be the problem for those of us that cannot.
I would like to hear of your success. Thanks again for your efforts and assistance

Sorry! Please delete above posting error. Thx

Hi there,
Looks like you really know what you are doing with this device. I have have to say that I do not care much for the improvements and tweaks to the osd and rest.
However, i would like to ask one thing that is a must for me on a device like this and it is missing in the WD TV Live.
Is it possible to get a one drop down list to the OSD while playing a video file that would contain several user-chosen resolution/refresh-rate/color-standard options to be able to change it from within the movie playback and not have to go through menu and changing it in 3 steps?
I would really appreciate a one button option to change between 1920*1080@23.976@YCbCr for blu-ray movies, 1920*1080@60@YCbCr for 30fps HD materials, and 1920*1080@50@RGB High for PAL tv/dvd media.

<<< edit: no. –b-rad >>>

Maybe this is a problem, I use notepad to edit the net.mounts then i upload it back onto the wdlive, when I VI the file, I see that the two xmounts are appended with th ^M symbol. I tried to VI to edit them, but the ZZ command does not save and exit me out of VI.

xmount 192.168.1.110:/Movies Movies nfs^M
xmount 192.168.1.110:/Music Music nfs^M
xmount 192.168.1.110:/TV TV nfs

Thank you so much, i’m one step closer i think.

ok, b-rad. I’m all set, it was the extra characters, I used VI to edit the file and everything is working now, thank you so much for your work.

<<< edit: good to hear and fyi, :wq saves&quits VI. –b-rad >>>

Have been running 0.1.5 since it got out, have a problem that it locks up after being powered on a day\or two (never put it on standby). Problem first noticed by black screen on my tv. Then I try the remote and I’m only able to turn if off, then it wont respond to remote anymore. When I telnet to it and login it says -sh: can’t fork, and doesn’t respond to any commands (google says this is probably due to too many processes running?).

<<< edit: Dunno what might be causing this, why not go with the latest version. Mine (0.1.7) doesn’t crash/freeze/lock up at all. If it still happens go to the forums and post your entire system setup. –b-rad >>>

Hi, another Gunnar here,

I just got my WD TV Live today, and couldn’t access my samba share using the normal firmware so I decided to try yours, how ever I’m still having the same problem, I’m not sure if the share is supposed to show up in Media Servers or Network Shares, nothing shows up in the former and I see all the boxes on my network in Network Shares, but when I try opening the shares I get “No Media Content” or something like that..

The samba share is running on a debian 64bit with samba v 3.2.5

Thanks for the firmware and your help in advance

<<< edit: Read the forums for how to use xmount and net.mounts. You can manually mount your samba (nfs too) shares and then they’ll appear in the the folder view of your files. –b-rad >>>

Hi Brad!!! Your doing a wonderful job…thanks so much for taking your time to better our community in wdtv and tech wise

I have a problem..

I have a Addonics NAS USB2ethernet adapter with an external HDD plugged in it >> to my router. My WDTV LIVE can see it and its files, but play back is slow and sluggish…and skips…

But playback is fine on my ASUS OPLAY PLAYER….

Addonics says the adapter is strictly SMB technology for sharing through the network…

Is there anyway I can make playback more pleasureable in WDTV LIVE??

THANKYOU

<<< edit: You could try manually mounting the shares using xmount and see if that improves the situation. Refer to the forums for assistance. –b-rad >>>

Hey b-rad, great work.

Couple of questions if you’d be so kind to answer?

1. Have you ever read anything from the past about using WDTV/WDTVLIVE with an Apple Time Capsule? I’m having massive issues mounting a share from it. I can mount one to my Mac but not to the Time Capsule. About to throw it out the window.

2. What’s the easiest way to get the theme back to the normal WD one? My missus is moaning that she likes the normal one more (there’s no accounting for taste).

Cheers again, and keep up the hard work.

Matt

<<< edit: 1) no clue. 2) include whatever background (titled: villa_bg.jpg) you like on the root of a device you boot with and it’ll change to it until you pull the power cord. –b-rad >>>

Great stuff, I got this working using NFS, still don’t know if the auto-mount works but it’s a small bug that doesn’t annoy me that much anyway, great stuff, I love this .. only one thing that’s missing from this to make it the perfect media player, is the ability to play video files that are inside rar files, like xbmc does..

..anyway, big thanks for this great upgrade from the official firmware, when I get some cash I’m gonna donate a few bucks

is anybody working on getting optware for the wdtv live? If so, please point me to the site/discussion. Seems to me as if getting optware working for the live is just one knowledgeable user/maintainer away.

Thanks!

<<< edit: Whenever I find a large spot of unoccupied time I’m going to work on it. –b-rad >>>

Hello,
this is really really a great firmware.
I would like to give an idea, I don’t think any player around has this feature implemented.

Situation:
- wdtv player
- software to manage movies like Ant Movie Catalog
- big hard disk with a big collection of movies

You use the catalog on the pc to manage your movies, get descriptions, plot, etc… from internet.
Everything is saved in an xml file.

Wouldn’t it great to have the ability to load this xml on the wdtv so that:
1-you can see a description of the movie instead only the thumb
2-you can push a button on the remote to toggle “movie seen” or not (saved in the xml), and then filter movies to “not seen”.
3-then it would be possible to filter movies also using the other fields like year, genre…

Ciao
Lorenzo

Hey Brad,

I’ve been following your progress on your site since the live came out; looking forward to what you’re able to do with it after all the customizing you did with the first WD TV box. The thing that troubles me the most unfortunately is the lack of respect by some posters, as well as how this has turned into the likes of a Dell Support forum. I think people should post problems in the support forums and turn to you as a last resort… your site should be reserved for discussing new ideas/features…

Just my two cents. I look forward to everything you’re doing with the OSD, your work is very much appreciated.

<<< edit: Cheers bubba. It annoys me, but its easy to ignore people. Everyone needs to realize I do this in my spare time, unpaid, because I enjoy it. I do all this for myself (yes, I’m selfish) and everyone is lucky I share. People need to realize that I either spend 2hrs a day answering questions that have already been answered a thousand times OR I can spend that time doing dev work & research. I choose dev and peeps should be happy when I give them any response at all. The forums and the WDTV community are there to answer questions, I’m here to work…and watch movies –b-rad >>>

Hi, Brad!
Great firmware! Would it be possible to change the position of the subtitles. They appear pretty high up the screen, not at the bottom, which is very annoying. Thanks for all the great work!

<<< edit: yeh, go into options while viewing a movie and change their position…:rollseyes: –b-rad >>>

Hey Brad…Your a very helpful smart and brilliant guy!! You helped me get ext3-boot on my wdtv and I thankyou deeply!

But, How do I get Movie sheets / LAURENTG osd on Ext3-boot…Is it possible?? I have searched everywhere but cant figure it out

Hi B-rad,

We need a little help from you (google couldn’t help) with the firmware unpacking/repacking…

Maybe you could help to us.
Here is the command that my friend is using:

”
dd if=wdtvlive.bin of=unpacked.img bs=32 skip=1c
mount -o loop unpacked.img tmp
rsync -avHS tmp/* rootfs/
mkcramfs -q rootfs wdtv.cramfs
md5sum wdtv.cramfs | dd bs=32 count=1 > wdtv.md5
cat wdtv.md5 wdtv.cramfs > wdtv.bin
”

eM

eM82,

You didn’t even ask a question.

But an obvious mistake is that you’re unpacking wdtvlive.bin (first line), and re-packing to wdtv.bin.

Hello Brad,
Thanks for making this firmware.
The menu is working faster now and scrolling is beter by the menu.

I have 2 questions:
1- do I need to install all the prefious firmware’s like version 0.1 or are all these items also in the latest version?

2- when I change the subtitle font from thick to tin I dont’t see any changes.

Thanks in advence.

Thank you,
Eric the Viking from The Netherlands

<<< edit: Every release is self-contained. –b-rad >>>

Hey great work, thanks. But I had to put back the original firmware, because my usb hd did not show up anymore. It´s formatted hfs+ (no journaling) which worked fine before. Do you have any idea, why it did not mount anymore? I tried power off and on and waited a long time but to no avail. Could you check it for problems with hfs+?
Anyways, nice work guy! What´s missing is a feature list. One thing I really miss now is the audio delay option.

<<< edit: I have an HFS+ drive sitting around somewhere, I’ll investigate when I have time. -b-rad >>>

B-RAD, outstanding work. You should be paid by WD for enhancing their products. If you would be so kind to answer my question. Trying to use SSH, but not having any luck with the password. I have tried the following: Username:root and passwords from blank to wdtvlive. I even tried the pw-fix.app.bin but nothing gets changed. No even sure the app.bin file is loaded. Any help you be great.

Thank You

<<< edit: I wish password-less login is disabled with ssh, try telnetting in with blank password, then change password to what you want with passwd. You should be able to log in via ssh after. –b-rad >>>

B-RAD, that worked perfectly.

Thank You!!!

Hello,
I noticed a problem with my external usb dvd drive attached:

Dvd is recognized only if inserted when I power on the wd tv live.
If I put a dvd after boot or resume from stand by I get a “no media found”, it seems it is not refreshed.
Same configuration on my other WD TV (not LIVE) and your firmware worked fine.

By the way, great job!

Lorenzo

media library is turned on.

@Lorenzo: When I tried to get my optical drive working (which doesn’t work with the WD TV Live apparently), b-rad said it only works if it is plugged in before you power on the unit.

Yes I confirm that it works only if you plugin drive with DVD/CD inserted before power on. That was not necessary on the old WD TV.
I hope this will be fixed!

Lorenzo

Excellent work B-rad!

I was wondering if a full aspect ratio control much like MPC is in the works in future FW upgrades?

I would really love that, more importantantly full screen vertical stretch to get rid off the top and bottom black bars without any cropping, as this would be a boon for all who have the WDTV Live linked to a projector in a Constant Image Height setup with an anamorphic lens

Now that would definitely replace my HTPC completely for movies on the big screen!
Thanks a lot and keep it up!

<<< edit: Not going to happen unless WD does it themself. –b-rad >>>

Hi from Spain !

I read someone (by the way… what an education has this guy) was asking about yellow subtitles. Well, I found this on the quick-and-dirty-HOW TO relative to WDTV. Don´t know if it will work too for the WDTV Live, but the file referred for WDTV also exists in Live…

YELLOW SUBTITLES
=============

This tip will allow you to change the color of the srt subtitles in a movie. Some other types of subtitles may not be affected/modified this way:

* edit /osd/subtitle.xml, line 3
* change textcolor=“0xF7FE2E” (some sort of white) to textcolor=“0xFFFF00” (bright yellow)
* Save and open a video with SRT sutitles, they should now be yellow with black outline.

<<< edit: hasn’t worked like that since original wd tv firmware 1.01.00 –b-rad >>>

update 0.1.7 id and pw is?
thank

<<< edit: root : wdtvlive >>>

Hi
I am thinking of getting a wd tv live, but i am a little concerned that it does not have gigabit network card.
Does your firmware support usb gigabit ethernet adapter?

thanks!

<<< edit: not currently, maybe in future. I stream 1080p constantly from my NFS and it works without a hitch. –b-rad >>>

I’m going to pick one of these puppies up soon… Are you still working on the firmware?

<<< edit: yes, just published 0.1.8 –b-rad >>>

the video program is really useless in the wd tv live when using an .iso image. The dvd menus are not accessible as well the bonus and other things. Is there a way to tweak a better behavior on the application or replace it with vlc.

Regards
Henri

<<< edit: its never been advertised as playing dvd menus. Theres no chance whatsoever you’d ever replace the video renderer with VLC either. –b-rad >>>

Thank you very much.

Keep up the good work!

Is there others video renderers working with ?
Henri

<<< edit: Theres no X and no access to GPU, so no. –b-rad >>>

First i want to say thank you for your great work so far. Its impressive how much time you put into this. A donation will be come soon.

Second thing, im a total noob when it comes to linux.

Now to my question.
I found a bash script for downloading apple trailers and i wonder if its possible to use somethig like this to get my wdtvlive to play the trailers.
The script can be found here: http://linuxtidbits.wordpress.com/2009/08/30/download-apple-trailer-fix/#comment-2022

Is it possible today to make some kind of script, (similar to this one) so it downloads trailers or other things? Or even better put a entry in the gui where you can choose what to download or stream. (How about a meny entry to run scripts located on a usb drive or on a NFS.)

I did notice that you included cron and wget was already included in your previous release.
So i was hoping that it would be possible to make scripts to download or stream content on my wdtv live.

If this isn’t possible today, would a donation help to get some kind of script support so we who dont know how to compile bin files can write useful add-ons to our wdtv live?
I know many people ask about XBMC and I also know that it would never happen that XBMC would work on our WDTV. But the scripting support similar to XBMC (phyton) would be very nice.

If its possible to run scripts, would a donation help to get you to write a quick tutorial on how to use scripts to fetch external conent on our wdtv’s.

I think that a support for scripts would boost the use of the wdtv’s and my guess is that there would be more users who contribute to the wdtv.

Regards
SWEPaul

Uhh… I just updated the FW and… suddenly I have no media files under shared folders…

I have a normal PC with XP SP2 sharing movies & music folders the old way (under explorer, right click on that folder & share, don’t what is that: cifs, nfs or whatever). With 0.1.7 I could see all my shared folders without problem, but now nothing… do I have to mount anything O_o

By the way… I still haven’t been able to change video thumbs display throught SOOcustom. I have read quite a few forums where other users have the same problem, but still no solution reported.

I think the customs option not working may be a problem with NTFS drives.

Under the original WDTV I was able to boot and keep the bin files on a NTFS drive. Then around mid summer a new version came out that removed the ability to have bin files on NTFS.
Rad corrected this in the next release.
Sorry I can not remember the version numbers.

I now have a WDTV Live and with NTFS drives customs options do not work if on the NTFS drive (I also can’t upgrade the software from NTFS)

When I use a FAT32 drive, all works well.

I reported a problem with USB hubs not working with NTFS drives. I solved it by using both WDTV Live ports and no hub. But others have reported similar hub problems.

Rad indicated he did not have NTFS drives, I am not a Linux expert, but perhaps someone who has NTFS and knows Linux could do some testing in this area.

If I can supply any more info, or dumps, let me know.

New Firmware 1.01 for live

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/updates/?family=wdfwdtv_live

ooo new firmware 1.01.11

<<< edit: Already been notified about 1373 times Will be updating wdlxtv-live later this afternoon, never fear. –b-rad >>>

Does anyone knows how to backup original firmware before I upgrade to new one?
I have been reading some people have started having issues after upgrade. I just want to have a backup plan.

<<< edit: ummm…why don’t use just d/l the official firmware release I have linked on this page? –b-rad >>>

Well, I finally was able to mount cifs… the PCs at my network appear in the shared folder (btw, can I hide some PCs from appearing here?), but no media available… instead, if I have a USB pendrive/HD connected… tada! Here they appear all the shares, under Local drives > USB…

I will mess with the tips you provide too see if I can’t get rid of the pendrive, anyway, no big deal…

One question that I have I don’t know where to ask (excuse me if not the right place)…
Is there a way to go to videos directly when power on ? I mean, the menu would appear inside Video > Local drives > [USB] by default… 99% of the time is what I do, watching videos, so it could be a nice feature/option. Thanx for your time.

Is it possible to install the homebrew firmware to the Emenint EM7075 (also the sigma 8655)?

Is the LaurentG moviesheets option build in your firmware. Thanks for your time.

<<< edit: absolutely would not work. no movie sheets atm. –b-rad >>>

Upgrade firmvare to 0.2.0…
cifs shares not mount
startup script /etc/init.d/s90net.mounts never linked to /tmp/init.d directory, and not executed…
Help!
P.S. Sorry my english.

<<< edit: I’m going to try and find time tonight to fix this, I overwrote the file that calls net.mounts. –b-rad >>>

Hey b-rad,

One thing that WD changed from 1.01.00 to 1.01.11 is they disabled a way I found to enable 108p over component on WDTV Live.

Here’s the thread with more info.
http://wdtvforum.com/main/index.php?topic=2513.0

Is there any way to re-enable this bug or a way to just add 1080p over component option to WDTV Live video/audio options?

Thanks!

<<< edit: I’ll see what I can do –b-rad >>>

can support external dvd?

<<< edit: can read Changelog? –b-rad >>>

Hello b-rad,
I just updated to latest 0.2.0.

I have an external samsung dvd player, using 0.1.7 as stated before Dvd was recognized only if inserted before wd power on.

Now using 0.2.0 thing are getting worse, drive is not recognized anymore! Any ideas?

Thanks

<<< edit: I’ll look into it. cd-manager does not work with Villa, so I need to fully rewrite it. –b-rad >>>

Hi B-rad,

You sound like the only who knows about this wonderful piece of gadgetry. I love the Live, but I am one of many who recieve the dreaded “There is no media in the current directory”

I can network fine via DHCP (I can view You Tube), plus I can connect to shares as the share is authenticated. However, all shares show the same error. I changed permissions and renamed shares with !video and the like, but no luck. This happens with my Win7 x64 Ultimate, my Server 2008 R2, my Win2003 server as well.

Please help, you are my only chance of sanity.
BTW…you 0.2.0 firmware made no change.

Cheers

<<< edit: I am not a windows user and have no clue about getting windows working. I feel verry sorry for you attempting to get three different microsoft operating systems to interoperate with open standards. –b-rad >>>

Hi B-Rad,

I’ve just installed the 0.2.0 version and I must admit that it boots up a lot quicker than the factory firmware. I have yet to change anything since it’s not connected to a network.

I did try to see if the USB Hub would work, but like Paul above, it’s not working for me. I too have my HDD formatted in NTFS.

You’ve mentioned that you’re not using NTFS. May I ask which file system you’ve formatted you HDD with? I’d like to give that FS a shot.

Thanks!

<<< edit: Theres issues with NTFS, I’ll be addressing them when I can. I use ext2/3 for all my filesystems. –b-rad >>>

Hi b-rad,

Great work on this firmware! Do you think it is possible to add support for the Linksys WUSB100 v2 adapter? The adapter was in the WD supported list from the start, but it appears that only the ‘no version’ model is supported.

The v2 version is the current sold model and a lot of people bought this to work with the WD TV live, but it appears there has been a change in chipset or so, because it is not recognized..

Thanks!

<<< edit: Without one of said adapters, probably not. –b-rad>>>

Hi b.rad.
I have search everywhere. how do I turn off ftp and telnet server? I only use ssh!

Thanks

Hello b-rad ,

You are doing a very good job !
I have an idea to improve the Youtube experience on the WD Live TV .
Could you include in a futur release of firmware the support for a USB keyboard , or USB mouse or both ?
That would be great !

Thanks

<<< edit: most likely no, the implementation is not nearly as trivial as you’re imagining. –b-rad >>>

[...] [...]

Brad, thanks for your hard work on the WDTV Live firmware. I just flashed with your latest firmware last night, and I’m having FTP troubles. I can download anything I want from the device (ex. screen_saver.png and other OSD files), but I cannot upload anything. It looks as though it’s logging me on as anonymous. What is the root password for FTP? I’ve tried blank, wdtv, wdtvlive, and the password I have set for ssh, and none of them allow me to upload. Sorry if this has been answered before; I’m having trouble finding this information.

<<< edit: The filesystem is read-only NAND flash, of course you can’t upload to it. You can upload to /conf and /tmp. –b-rad >>>

Hi Torleif
See the S00custom-options file

Hi, just updated to 0.2.1, net.mount works great now and 720p over nfs-wlan is no problem
thank you!!!

Hi b-rad,
Just updated to latest 0.2.1, when wdlive is in standby can not access wdlive share (samba) all usb is unmount…any ideas? when is started all is OK !

<<< edit: when in standby the WD TV Live shuts off 5V to the usb bus, effectively killing all connected devices. This will be addressed whenever I figure out how –b-rad >>>

Hi b-rad. First, thanks again for your work. I was wondering, is there any ways to get both HDMI and Component outputs working at once; or just have a way to toggle between some pre-defined video modes (Say, a component 720p 60HZ and a HDMI 720P mode) with the remote ?

I’m able to get both outputs working at the same time, but i’m unable to nail down a setup that’s working in a stable way, sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t…

I guess the video chip can do it since it works, but what do i know. Thanks for any kind of help on this issue.

Btw, i’m asking because i’m using the unit in 2 rooms at the same time, having component outputs going to the second room.

@TeamTerry : I’m able to get all the sharing part working perfectly using a Windows 2008 SBS Server. Hint : Setup NFS services and use NFS shares, along with a good net.mounts edit on the WD TV Live, it works perfectly.

Is the webserver/webinterface plugin supported by your WDTV Live firmware?

Webserver Addons version 0.2:
(http://wdtvforum.com/main/index.php?topic=1667.0)

Are there plans to support webserver/webinterface
plugin for WDTV live?

Thx joobster.

<<< edit: in time. –b-rad >>>

Great work going on here! The lame part about WDTV Live firmware 1.01.11 is that they broke audio/video sync in mp4 (cant remember the exact format but i think it was h264+acc (default Handbrake settings)). Here are a few things I ran into in the last day messing around with my WDTV Live:

Firmware 1.0.1.00
– Locating Network Shares sucks

Firmware 1.0.1.11
– Breaks audio sync with h.264+acc (Handbrake default settings) if there is a lag/latency/empty buffer/ffwd

I like your hacks, I did try to use the last version you had on 1.01.00 codebase which you had as 1.9 (but only 1.8 was downloadable). it worked fine however I decided to reflash with the over the network update to 1.0.1.11 and it semi-botched the upgrade. Looks like WDTV is somewhat smart about recovering from a botched flash. The screen went black for a while (> 10 mins) after one of the reboots, no remote control key presses or ssh was available so I had to risk bricking it by power cycling. It booted to a black screen with text noting i needed to load the firmware on a USB device to repair it. As i was creating a new USB stick it looks like in the background it got the 1.0.1.11 over the web (so it must have been ok) and properly updated to 1.0.1.11.

Things WDTV Needs to add support for:

1. Cleaner CIFS support
2. Native NFS support (I like your interceptor hack)
3. Native Hulu/Clicker/Netflix
4. USB Keyboard/Mouse support

I guess the short answer is ‘no’

<<< edit: lol. If its as indeterministic as you say then I doubt any config option would help. The option is question in case you want to try is: VIDEO_OUT_RESOLUTION. So config_tool -c VIDEO_OUT_RESOLUTION='720p60' to change. –b-rad >>>

Been a fan of your WDLXTV, with UPNP, works great. Have read your release notes on the WD TV Live version and noted app.bin loading on the Live version. Can you confirm that UPNP is working via the app.bin loading in your Live version. Thanks for the work.

<<< edit: UPnP comes enable in the stock firmware –b-rad >>>

b-rad; i didn’t get the undeterministic part Anyhow, would that config_tool command set the output to hdmi or component ? or both ?

<<< edit: working & not at random Forgot about these two settings: VIDEO_OUT & HDMI_DEEP_COLOR. ssh in monitor how the osd changes those values, then change them around manually and see if it does anything like you wish. –b-rad >>>

Where are the settings changed by config_tool stored in, b-rad ?

<<< edit: /conf/config >>>

Great work!

Is it possible to add support for free internet radio? Maybe if we could add our own station URL or something? I would really like to use the wdtv as a digital radio tuner…

<<< edit: I’m workin on it, slowly. -b-rad >>>

Is it possible to correct the translation’s mistakes/mistypes?

<<< edit: yes, I’ll post all the translation files sometime soon. –b-rad >>>

Excellent work b-rad;Keep up the good work.
I had a problem with the command xmount. The error message I was getting was “permission denied”. The problem was due to the “local security settings” I had in my windows XP.

In your “how to xmount tutorial” you can include that: “In order for xmount to work, the windows XP server should have LM & NTLM enabled under the Network security of the LAN Manager authentication level.

If Network security: Lan Manager authentication level is “Send LM & NTLM -use NTLMv2 session security if negotiated” then OK.

<<< edit: This means nothing to me since I’m not a windows user, but perhaps it’ll help some peeps out there. –b-rad >>>

HI b-rad,

starting to discover my new wdtvlive, and trying whatever I can (or can not).
I see you noted the UPNP is built in.
I tried Cidero UPNP controller, and can only stop a song with it. Play queues or play are not supported (from the Synology server).

Did you test/find any upnp controllers that would let you easily control volume, song queues (push & forget), without the need to select songs afeter songs onTV?

thx !!

(I’m don’t want to list here all requirements or items that I can’t get working, and will use the forum, but fyi I tested negatively some Wmv files, mov files from my camera, Exif descriptions on images, network mounts from Gui on synology, and others

Lots of items to play with!

cheers

mov quicktime files from panasonic seems to be mjpeg
damn

Hi there.
Great work b-rad. I love your homebrew.

But only one question.
Do you still work on the USB-Hub support for the WD TV Live?

<<< edit: my hub works. –b-rad >>>

b-rad you are accomplishing some great stuff /w this project.
i am also having issues connecting to nfs. my nfs is setup on a freeNAS box (Unix) for now i only have one share setup -for testing purposes- this is what i get on my WDTV live when trying to xmount the nfs:

# xmount 192.168.1.102:/server Movies1 nfs
mount: 192.168.1.102:/server failed, reason given by server: Permission denied
# xmount 192.168.1.102:/server /mnt/Movies1 nfs
mount: 192.168.1.102:/server failed, reason given by server: Permission denied

and this is what the permissions look like on my freeNAS box:

drwxrwxr– 6 JRGx19 WDTV 6656 Nov 16 20:34 Movies1

I do not have much experience on either Linux or Unix, so it makes it a little more difficult for me to find the issues on my own. Thanks in advance!

<<< edit: theres many guides on NFS. Your permissions probably aren’t set correctly on the server. –b-rad >>>

just got the latest, looking good!

One (hopefully simple) feature that would be great is a skip functionality to jump ahead 10/20/30/xx minutes at a time.

I had some nasty flashbacks last night, I threw on a movie I wanted to watch the last half hour of and had to fast forward at 16x for about ten minutes.. it was like VHS all over again!

@greg

10 minute skip: Press Fast Forward/Reverse on the remote then Next/Prev to skip forwards or backwards 10 minutes at a time.

Hi brad,
I’ve translated OSD to Czech language, created .mo file and tested. I works great, but only when i rewrite annother .mo language file. My own cz.mo doesnt appear in the list. I’ve searched some of the xml files, but I can’t find and links pointing to the mo files. Can you please tell me where to look? Thanks

Hi b-rad,

as Snowfox wrote it would be great to support the new WUSB100 v2 usb wlan adapter. It uses the same rl2870 as the former version, it has just an another usbid: (taken from an ubuntu forum, verified with the windows driver inf file)
{USB_DEVICE(0×1737,0×0070)}, /* Linksys-WUSB100-V1 */
{USB_DEVICE(0×1737,0×0078}, /* Linksys-WUSB100-V2 */

Could you add this id in the next release?

Regards,

Attila

<<< edit: why are you asking me, go ask WD. –b-rad >>>

jis

Awesome! Thanks. I did try hitting the next/prev while playing, but it would move to the next file in the directory. This is great

Hi b-rad,

nice piece of work ) Thanks a lot.

Is it possible to tweak the power-on behaviour? I am particular on switching things off when not in use. The WD as well as all other HiFi and TV equipment gets disconnected from the power plug using a physical switch. Anytime when I switch the power on, the WD becomes active. However, I would like it to either stay or fall into standby directly after switching the power on. I wouild like to start the WD only when needed using the remote.

To plus it, if it could react on a WOL event, this would be too much to hope for.

ANyway, do you think this would be possible at all?

Again, thanks for the great work so far.
Michael

<<< edit: its possible if you know how –b-rad >>>

good aft to all,

i’m from greece and i am potential buyer of wdtv live,

one major issue that most of the greek people are facing is that
when there is an external subtitle (srt) it is appearing quite high almost in the centre of tv and it seems that there isn’t any way to lower it.

especially in my case which i will use it on a projector i fear
that this will ruin the whole movie.

the question is if there is away to lower the external subtitles with the latest firmware of b-rad (i saw somewhere that this is possible however have tried many times with no success)

would appreciate a reply on this matter if possible,

thanks in advance

brgds/george

<<< edit: If i delete your comment multiple times its because it has nothing to do with me or wdlxtv, which this doesn’t as evidenced by you own experimentation. Ask them. –b-rad >>>

Your HUB is works?
My HUB with NTFS HDD is not working. And i testest 3 different Hubs.
I think you are using FAT32 HDD, isnt it?

Is there no chance for NTFS user?

So i have to buy me two seperate Cases. That sucks. ^^

<<< edit: I’m not an NTFS user. I use ext2 or ext3 primarily. If you want to me set something up, debug, and get NTFS working fully how about sending a $20 my way –b-rad >>>

Hi Brad.

I’m not a programmer so don’t know if this is an option but is it possible to hack the SBM protocol that the WD box uses so that it has increased throughput, then make a registry hack for the OS that will handshake with that mod (make it a bespoke SBM almost)? Such as increase the packet size or transmission wait times reduced… You get the idea.

It looks to me like the box can manage 20mbits give or take, if we can squeeze another 50% by optimization and a hack of the server then that may be an easy way rather than intercept and use another protocol/server.

I’m a Systems Engineer and often think a bit out of the box! Apologies if this is a daft suggestion.

Keep up the good work.

Regards
Craig

<<< edit: I get 60mbps through NFS. Your idea doesn’t make sense to me. Its possible to mount your cifs using custom mount parameters & cifs-interceptor. look in /tmp/messages.txt for what options its being mounted with and then investigate further options to optimize them. –b-rad >>>

Hi.

How exactly can make the subtitles apear downer than is the default settingsfor external subtitles?
I already press options button and up or down as the movie play and nothing happened.

A lot of thanks.

<<< edit: when was this ever listed as a feature, go ask WD. –b-rad >>>

New official firmware today:

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/updates/?family=wdfwdtv_live

Unfortunately, it sounds rather boring:

This critical update improves the reliability and performance of the WD TV Live product update manager. It’s important to install this update to ensure the reliability of all future software and firmware updates.

<<< edit: I unrecoverably bricked a wdtv live during a botched upgrade process…so this might be in response to that event and my correspondence with them…of course this firmware seems to be bricking a handful of people atm, so I’d suggest against upgrading. I’m currently awaiting replacement of my bricked unit and only have one spare to play with now, and no place to buy one locally so I gotta be careful. Therefore, I’m not upgrading in case I’m one of the unlucky ones and get bricked…even though I’d like to see what happens during the possible bricking and log it I don’t like downtime. –b-rad >>>

Hi B-rad,

My suggestion was more for an official release to support SMB better if that’s all the share protocols thay are going to do. SMB 2.0 may be a start, and tweak from there. Though naitive NFS would be easier, woudn’t it?

I have only had my box for 3 days and have not looked in to modding it via a firmware update, I’m sure it will screw the warranty and I at least want some use out of it to know it worked before I brick it!

It just strikes me as daft that we need to mod a streamer to get it to work correctly (I assume I need to mod it to get NFS and the intercepts) . I’m sure you agree with that.

I will have a look at your suggestion as streaming 1080p is not going to work as it is and moving the USB drives all the time to play them is not good for them either :S

Cheers for the good work.
Best regards.

Hi, b-rad,

would some tangible feedback help to let me in into your secret know how )

Best regards
Michael

Western Digital released a new WDTV (not Live). It seems to be a WDTV Live without network adapter because it decodes DTS. They called it WDTV Gen. II.
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=1004&lang=en
It think the firmware is very similar to WDTV Live one and could be supported by your custom firmware.

Thank you for your work

<<< edit: Are you going to buy me one? –b-rad >>>

Can you work on streaming netflicks? I like everything I’ve been reading and am planning on buying wdtvlive because of your awesome additions. I’m really in awe here, just great stuff.

<<< edit: If you had any idea what that would entail you’d know that the request is ridiculous. –b-rad >>>

Attila
December 2nd, 2009 05:31

Hi b-rad,

to your comment:
<<>>

I did, I’m just curious who can make it faster .

Regards,

Attila

Hello, I’ve downloaded your latest fw and copied al the content to the USB FAT formated drive.
When i chose new firmware update it just stays on 0 % 30 mins doing nothing. In this moment i can’t do anything it just stays there with that stupid message.
Please help!

Ok i’ve finally did it with another USB drive OCZ formated as NTFS and another firmware 0.2.2.
With Kingston drive formated as FAT32 0.2.2.1 didn’t move from 0%.
I’ll try now 0.2.2.1.

< <>>

Sorry b-rad. but I’ve only the old WDTV. My post was for information purpose only.
It could be easy to analyse firmware source or binary image to see if hardware matches. I bet the only differences are on the user interface.

<<< edit: I know for a fact that there is more differences than that, not to mention firmware binaries that refuse to run except on specific hardware containing HW keys. –b-rad >>>

I’ve just received my WDTV live today and my USB HUB with NTFS HDD isn’t working either

I bought it mainly because of the DTS downmix, but now I can’t use it with more HDDs

I really hope you could fix this for us b-rad Since it worked for the original WDTV, it shouldn’t be so hard for you, is it? Pretty pleeease?

Thanks for all your hard work, you’re amazing!

<<< edit: I don’t use NTFS and can’t stand the filesystem. You’d be suprised what a $20 donation can accomplish though –b-rad >>>

Why rapidshare? It’s the worst… If you want i can host the files, should not be a problem. Just drop me a mail.

<<< edit: can you handle well over a TB of traffic a month? –b-rad >>>

hello B-Rad,

I’ve made a little osd mod for WDTVLive but i’ve a problem with unmounting (recreating) the modded villa-osd file. The problem is: Nothing is updated. I’ve followed your guide (and the old guide too) and searched on google for answer but no luck.

Here are the commands/steps I’ve used:
“mkdir /tmp/villanewosd
mount -o loop villa-osd-0.1.bin /tmp/villanewosd
sudo cp villamodded/*.* /tmp/villanewosd
umount /tmp/villanewosd
”
And after this I see that the villa-osd-0.1.bin is the same as before. Nothin’ is changed although I’ve overwrote the files.

You wrote: >>”…edit whatever files you’d like.”
I did.
>>”When you’re finished umount the bin…”
Did that too, but still no success with it.

Could you help me with a hint, what am I doing wrong ?

Maybe I’m not the only with this problem, ’cause I saw lilababe has the same (recreating) problem as me.

I’m using Kubuntu under VMWare.

regards:
- eM

Does say “unlimited traffic”. Im willing to give it try, at least just as an alternative alongside rapidshare.

Hello Brad, do you have an Idea how we can restore our WD TV Live Box when the Box is bricked? Reset Button and copy the files on a USB Stick brings nothing!

Thank you very much!!!

You can read here:

http://community.wdc.com/t5/forums/forumtopicpage/board-id/tv_live/message-id/104

or here:

http://wdtvhd.com/index.php?showtopic=9399

<<< edit: I know how to unbrick a wdtv to a certain point–I bricked one though that was not recoverable. Without a unit in my hands that was bricked by the 1.01.12 upgrade I have no clue on whether it can be unbricked. –b-rad >>>

I have a strange problem with WDTVLX Live when mounting NFS shares via net.mounts (I have always a USB stick attached as storage). NFS Streaming does not really work, the movies don’t play smoothly they stutter extremely. However the same movie with SMB using the standard Network Shares works perfectly even for BD RIPs. However if I use the debian version of WDTVLX, using net.mounts and the same server, streaming of movies works perfectly, even BD RIPs with 30Mbps average bit-rate work without any issue. Any Idea? Not a real problem as I just run the debian version and it works great. Very well done Brad, thanks a lot for your work.

<<< edit: No clue, NFS works without a hitch for me…I use it exclusively. –b-rad >>>

Thanks for your hard work B-Rad! I havent installed yet, waiting for the official firmware to get corrected before I install your upgrades. Anyway, how much of a donation is needed so we can have a remote web access page?=)
Thanks again, I can’t wait to use your program.

<<< edit: You’d have to describe what you mean by remote web access… –b-rad >>>

I don’t understand why I can’t reboot my wdtvlive. I use the command “reboot” in telnet or ssh, but nothing happen!

Another question: is it possible to flash the screen saver and the backgroung permanently?

@Simone

reboot -f

How can I delete the cfw and go back to the original? I`ve tried to boot with original fw without respons. Please help! Thanks, John

<<< edit: go read the README, its there for a reason. –b-rad >>>

Hi B-Rad,

Just thought I report back so others will know that formatting the drives to ext2/ext3 does allow the WDTV Live to see the multiple drives thru a single USB (hub), NTFS didn’t work for me.

Also, about a year ago, I was using MediaFire.com to host files. Its free, and from what I recall, it was much better than RapidShare, IMO. I think the free account has a 100MB per file limit, which should be plenty for the firmware, but upload and download is unlimited. Check it out.

@Jessy

I was in the same situation as you. NTFS doesn’t work thru the USB Hub, so I had to format in EXT2/EXT3.

This is what I did. First I downloaded a bootable CD: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/ and partitioned the drive and formated to EXT, it works similar partition magic. Be careful not to partition/format the wrong drive…

Go here to read about setting the inode to something smaller than the default: http://gparted-forum.surf4.info/viewtopic.php?id=1903

I’m at work, so I’m not 100% sure, but I think this was the ext driver for windows I used: http://www.fs-driver.org/

The Windows ext drivers only support inodes up to 128, which is why you would want to format the drive manually (from the post above). Good Luck

@Joshua,
Do you mean something like : http://wdtvforum.com/main/index.php?topic=1667.0
?

Shoutcast! Shoutcast ! We need Shoutcast!

<<< edit: You best get programming then eh? –b-rad >>>

That is exactly what I was thinking about, that one will not work on wd live, right? Thanks for the post.

Wait, not a remote control…what I ment by web access is that, it is a web server with an interface where I can access content from any home and stream it/download/get to files or media at a friends house on his cpu or mine. Web server to download my files to a friends cpu or stream files directly from the web page to his tv.

Joshua
You are missing the whole concept of WDTV Live UPNP functionality. It is already a web service and it is exposed on your local network. All you have to do is to expose it to the WAN through your router and some free DNS service.

Two things about the NTFS problem (USB hub not working).

I refomated my 2 gig drive to EXT2 (under Windows 7 using Paragon Partition Manager and lost about 10% of the space from what I had under NTFS. I just went back to NTFS since the drive was 95% full.

Anyone know of the right settings to prevent such a significant loss of disk space.

For Rad, Could the problem with NTFS be the fact that the NTFS driver is loaded late in the boot cycle after the hard drives are mapped.

I know for a fact, that if i try to load your software or use custom options on a NTFS dirve they get ignored.

I don’t know if you can control the load order, but if you can, could you see if the NTFS driver could be loaded before the drives are mapped or read?

Thanks for your help.

Thanks Mike,
I still am learning exactly what can be done with this wdlive. I guess I was hoping to have the same functionality I have from my home network remotely from my friends using a computer to access the wdlive to stream using the same interface as home.

Good
First congratulations on the work you do
Second. You think that you can add support to other streaming websites like youtube, dailymotion, metacafe …. etc
If so how much you donate

PS: I do not have much money but if we join together we could help several more to this project

<<< edit: It’d probably cost more than you’re willing to pay. –b-rad >>>

Can I use the latest version to plug in my DVDROM?

Hello
can I ask a question? sorry for my bad english
will any of your firmwares work with my wdtv2 (not live version but the new one) ?

<<< edit: Not a chance…If you buy me one I’ll see what I can do though –b-rad >>>

Hey every1.
I managed to mount a CIFS. While browsing through the movies section, I had problems with the file names of the .avi files.
When Greek characters are used, in the names of the directories or .avi files, it is impossible to open them. I am getting the “there is no media in the current folder.” error.
Kind Regards.

Hello
Great work B-Rad.
It is possible to change subtitle files with different names when playing avi’s files

Regards,

<<< edit: no. –b-rad >>>

Hi, Brad!
Great firmware! Would it be possible to change the position of the subtitles. They appear pretty high up the screen, not at the bottom, which is very annoying. Thanks for all the great work!
edit: yeh, go into options while viewing a movie and change their position…:rollseyes: –b-rad

Is it true what I read?

<<< edit: I misread–misunderstood-mis-somethinged…you can adjust the picture, not the subs. –b-rad >>>

@ro3ck
yes, pushing the subs in the black bars would be fine.

convert srt subtitle to smi (Subtitle Workshop/Save as SAMI Captioning)
and you’ll have the subtitle on the bottom of the screen…

B-rad, they released a new firmware for the WDTV — I take it this is different than for WDTV live (in other words, your firmware is still up to date?) You have done a great job, by the way, many thanks…..

<<< edit: the WDTV Gen2 is a different device from the original WDTV, and completely different from the new WDTV Live. –b-rad >>>

Upgraded to latest firmware try to ftp in to load file in config folder but get permission error read only file system. Tried to change permissions but can’t do that either I have yet to get anything working on any version of your firmware. What is wrong ? I even donated 100 bucks

< << edit: Thank you very much for the donation. I am out of town right now and am therefore not really around. I don't know what you're trying to do with the firmware. If you're using wdlxtv-live then the entire system is read-only because it is cramfs on NAND flash. You can upload to /conf and /tmp and thats it. If you look in the 0.3.X forum thread theres a link to ext3-boot-live, which is identical except with a writeable root. ext3-boot-live is geared towards developers and those wanting to get their hands wet. --b-rad >>>

Hello,

Do you have any plans to include sopcast streaming support ?

Thnaks,

<<< edit: I don’t think sopcast streams are a compatible codec. –b-rad >>>

Hey B-Rad!
I am really interested in trying out your firmware on my WD TV Live!

I was wondering if you might be able to fix some of the BUGS that WD has not yet addressed. Namely the duplicate thumbnail bug when viewing a network shared folder. It is really annoying!!! Couldn’t you just tweak the firmware to hide all jpeg files when viewing a VIDEO folder? Not sure how hard that would be…but I am sure there has to be a way to fix it.

I also hate that the USB hard drive mode defaults to the ALL VIDEOS view instead of the FOLDERS view (the network shares show folder view by default). I wish there was a way to change this in the settings.

And finally, the YOUTUBE function crashes for many of us when trying to view the USER mode.

Anyway, just my rant.
Great work so far…keep it up!!!!
Thanks!!!!!

<<< edit: disable Media Library and you don’t have all videos option. –b-rad >>>

Hi b-rad!!
Ty for your work; hope to gain some help (ehm..sorry 4 my english).
I’ve a Time Capsule (a NAS system) but i have some problem xmounting!
Listen, is there on the net some kind of walkthrough for noobs? Something concerning xmounting and installing unofficial firmware?

<<< edit: There are the forums for help. –b-rad >>>

How’s the development of this doing? Homebrew for this cute little box sounds REALLY cool!

On the changelog at the top of the post, it would be of help if you had the date of that release beside the release number. This just to get a quick feel for how things are moving along.

Thanks a bunch!

<<< edit: check the front page, b-rad.cc, for the most up to date information. There is also wdlxtv.com and wiki.wdlxtv.com in the works. This page is a bit out of date, it’s much further along. Might look into adding date to versioning. –b-rad >>>

I still love this little box, use it every day

It plays everything I throw at it. but must admt, do noit trust it beyonmf 5 gigs file so just do that usb2 not lan.

I still love what I bought.

My 1st little box that plays everything I throw at it.

not into fancy pants show presentation, still low down direct shows direcectory lists.

best thing, but can never compare cos never bought popcorn hour.
I am drunk, but none the matters

everyone needs lan somertimes. and always works < 5gigs. but its nice having that little usb2 cable.

Or maybe not upgraded firemware cos all same issue

up 2 manyfile sizes works, via not lan xfer.

I 2 drunk ^ if it works, it works. No matter how ya fix it

wintvlive has no problem reading big files. brsd