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

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

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 !



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:

lilibabe.jpg



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:

TViXiE.Templates.v0.2.nobg.long.jpg

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?...2&topic=1039.0

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

folders.jpg

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

TViXiE.Templates.v0.2.nobg.long.jpg


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


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/2...zzy-media.html