Western Digital's selection of discrete media players have proven to be popular among the PC TV crowd, but a recent addition - the WD TV Live - has fallen foul of a faulty firmware update.
Numerous reports in Western Digital's own forums suggest that firmware update v1.101.12 has left users with nothing other than a blank screen and a now-unusable product.
Western Digital has since pulled the latest update, but customers with bricked units are fuming at the company's decision to charge consumers to ship devices back to Western Digital for a replacement.
"Well its Monday morning in Australia and WD support are not even aware they have a problem, they are insisting on me paying the shipping to return the unit. Hopefully common sense prevails here and someone from WD takes ownership of this problem soon,"
said one disgruntled consumer.Although an immediate solution isn't available, Western Digital has issued the following statement:
"A small percentage of our users are experiencing a problem with WD TV Media Players when they update to the newest firmware release (version 1.01.12).
We’re investigating the issue. Until we identify the root cause, we’ve removed update version 1.01.12.
If you’ve successfully updated to version 1.01.12 there’s nothing further you need to do.
If you are experiencing any problems with your WD TV player, contact our customer service.
As soon as we learn more we’ll post the information here."
