Video Hack the WDTV into a networked snazzy media player and Linux box !

vinayaga

vinayaga

Adept
I had a lot of spare time yesterday and thought, what the heck, it is time to hack the one device that I have not yet touched in the house :p

The WDTV has been a great media player for me over the last year, plays every damn file I throw at it, but I do not quite like the UI and more importantly, it is a pain to keep shuttling the attached hard disk to the computer to update the movies. So here is how I hacked my WDTV into a networked snazzy little linux box !!!

Step 1: The simplest and best hack for the WDTV :

B-RAD WDLXTV – enhanced WDTV firmware

Just download the binary firmware file and place it in the root of a USB stick and reboot the WDTV. It should pick up the new firmware and update it. Step one done with the full fledged linux running on the WDTV !

By the way, there are quite a few options for hacking the WDTV. Two of the options I have listed below are for the advanced users who love to fiddle around in linux.

B-RAD DVDMOD – DVD-Rom enabled WDTV firmware

ext3-boot-releases [WDTV WIKI]

Blow away the firmware files from the USB stick, from here on you will need the USB stick for your hacks.

Step 2: You need logs from here on to see what is happening on the WDTV.

Download : http://b-rad.cc/log-saver.app.bin

Place it on the root of the USB stick, boot the WDTV and when you shutdown, you should be able to see the boot log files on your USB stick.

Step 3: You need to buy a USB wireless network adaptor for the WDTV to go wireless !

There are a limited set of options here for what adpator you can use. See:

Supported Wireless Dongles

It seems like any adaptor that uses the rt2870 chipset is your best bet. The rt73 seems to be the easiest to get in India. The Dlink DWA-110 (1.4k) and the Dlink DWA-140 (2k+) adaptors are both available in ebay India for your reference and both use chipsets that work well on the WDTV.

I personally have the BELKIN Wireless G Plus MIMO Network Adapter which uses the rt2870 chipset :

BELKIN F5D9050 Wireless Adapter

Step 4: You need the driver pack for the network adaptor.

See this thread:

http://wdtvforum.com/main/index.php?topic=1029.0

Follow the thread properly, get the dat file and the bin file for the adaptor drivers and drop them into the root of the usb key. Now reboot and if you have done the steps properly, you should see the adaptor lighting up and connecting to your router. I personally use WPA-AES encryption on my router and it works perfectly.

Step 5 : Install Samba server and NFS client on the WDTV

This is the part where I screwed up a lot as I had a lot of trouble trying to get the Samba server to export the USB devices. Anyways, it was just a matter of editing the smb.conf file to export your USB devices and bingo, the USB device attched to the WDTV is now visible on the network from any Windows box. Now I copy new movies sitting on my computer to the hard drive attached to the WDTV. It takes time as the processor is slow, but what the heck is 10 minutes extra when it saves me from moving the hard disk all over the place every second day.

Follow this post and you should be able to setup Samba pretty easily:

B-RAD WDLXTV Samba pack

Note that it is possible to mount NFS drives to the WDTV so that you can view media remotely, I have not yet attempted that. That is a experiment for another day, another time ! :tongue:

Step 6: Making the WDTV interface look better !!!

This was the fun part. Use custom packs to snazzy up the UI.

Lilibabe OSD mod

This changes the icons and makes the WDTV menus look snazzy. Like this:

View attachment 8531

Step 7: Show movie information for every movie.

This is something that I always wanted, go to a movie folder and get all information about the movie before I play it !!! There is a program called tvixie that does this. Download the point it to the movies folder in your hard disk and it downloads all the information in JPG form for all the movie to the same movie folder. And this is how it looks:

View attachment 8530

Here is the link : Welcome to TViXiE

Step 8: Use the TVIXIE information on your WDTV.

See this thread below and use the plugin. As simple as that !!!

http://wdtvforum.com/main/index.php?PHPSESSID=d914fdbda1cd13578366c3a7941c1262&topic=1039.0

When you do this, this is how you browse your movies :

View attachment 8532

And clicking on any movie gives this screen full of info :

View attachment 8530



And this folks, was the way the WDTV was mean to be used !!! :clap:

P.S : If you want to use this information in your blog or another forum, make sure you credit me and provide a link to the original post on my blog : http://vinayaga-raman.blogspot.com/2009/10/hack-wdtv-into-networked-snazzy-media.html
 

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And for those who are interested in squeezing every last drop of blood from the WDTV, the firmware I installed comes pre-configured with the transmission server.

This means that the WDTV can happily work as a torrent downloader when you are not watching movies !!! :clap:
 
Very nice guide Vinay, repped.

Seeing how your work is being ripped off freely, you may want to put a copyright notice of some kind stating terms of use of the content. I've recently seen your torrent box article simply copy-pasted onto another forum (hint: Google search the title).

Edit: Content has since been taken down at the other forum...
 
Wow, thanks for the heads up. I hate to suppress any knowledge flow, but I do expect that people would provide a link to the original post when they cut and paste. Now I have to create a login in the other website just to reach out to the admins or the copied post !
cranky said:
Very nice guide Vinay, repped.

Seeing how your work is being ripped off freely, you may want to put a copyright notice of some kind stating terms of use of the content. I've recently seen your torrent box article simply copy-pasted onto another forum (hint: Google search the title).
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Thanks. Because this is a hybrid solution (The hack manages to make it into a linux PC where I can do what I want) and because I never posted in the guide section before !!! :(

6pack said:
why didnt you post this in the Guides section?
good article btw!
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He he, thanks. The firmware seems to have a emergency backup procedure. See the forums if you get into trouble.

Even I got into a half baked state once when I was experimenting, just copy a new firmware on a clean USB stick and reboot and it all seems to come back. However, be sure to do all this with the WDTV connected to a UPS. You could get screwed if the update is interrupted by a power cut !!!

Techman said:
OMFG .... awesome rip off

Wanna try wid my WDTV, any default firmware if something goes wrong ?
Click to expand...
 
One quick question regarding the wireless part, wont the laptop wireless detect the wdtv ?

I have Acer aspire 4570. if so what would be the appropriate driver for the WDTV

Edit: Sorry, understood that the usb wireless has to be hooked up with WDTV.
 
Great job Vinay, repped.

PS: Simple watermarks like the ones used by Shripad might help in reducing piracy of your content.
 
Your confusion actually gave me a nice clue. :hap2: I can probably set up the WDTV network so that it connects to my laptop directly via wireless on a local peer network. The transfer speeds would be far far greater than going through the network established by the router. Im going to try this in the weekend !!!
Techman said:
One quick question regarding the wireless part, wont the laptop wireless detect the wdtv ?

I have Acer aspire 4570. if so what would be the appropriate driver for the WDTV

Edit: Sorry, understood that the usb wireless has to be hooked up with WDTV.
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Not sure of the WDTV's internal specs. Will check and tell later.

When I copy a file into the hard disk attached to the WDTV, my 100mbps network adaptor shows a constant utilization of 3-4%. So I assume the speeds are 3-4mbps (Someone correct me if this is not the way to calculate).

Remember that this is from a PC connected wired to the router and the WDTV is on wireless in a different room connected to the same router. Reasonable enough, takes about 9 minutes to copy a ripped 750mb movie.
sid_donnydarko said:
@vinayaga - can you post the internal specs of the WDTV?
Can you also give us all an idea as to what the file transfer speeds are like?
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You can hav a usb lan card attached to your Wdtv using the usb port, it has better compatiblity with wider range of lan chips.. Secondly people hav successfully been able to stream full Hd content using it.. You can hav both windows and linux network shares using these..there are detailed guides on the wdtv forums..

Thanks vinay for this awesome and precise tutorial..
 
Even I looked for a USB lan adaptor, but I could not find any of the listed ones in India. Dealextreme had one chipset that would work, but it is on backorder.

There are quite a few USB lan adaptors for Rs 400 in ebay, just not sure of the chipset in them. If you come across any in India, do let me know too.
Party Monger said:
You can hav a usb lan card attached to your Wdtv using the usb port, it has better compatiblity with wider range of lan chips.. Secondly people hav successfully been able to stream full Hd content using it.. You can hav both windows and linux network shares using these..there are detailed guides on the wdtv forums..

Thanks vinay for this awesome and precise tutorial..
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What do you mean ? The whole hack I describe is about enabling network access on the WDTV box. What you do with the Network access is then unlimited.

Since you are asking specifically about Youtube, the hack is already in progress !!! See this link below:
youtube WDTV Tools
Party Monger said:
Btw, any hack to enable internet on wdtv? Being able to play youtube vids will be awesome:)
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