WDTV Live - probably a really newbie question within

samat2001

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Hi guys

Firstly, apologies if this is a real newbie question...i have searched (honest!) but can't really get the straight answer I'm looking for.

I have the WDTV Live - currently it is connected to a USB External Hard Drive, but what I want to do is hook it up to my computer, which has about 4TB of storage - plenty to rip all my movies. I want to connect via an ethernet cable as I'm assured this is the fastest way to go (as opposed to wireless).

I tried connecting an ethernet cable to my router (an Apple BaseStation), which my computer is also attached to. I am able to transfer files between them, but it is all done over the internet (and therefore limited by my internet connection). Is there a way to hook it up to the network so that transfering/streaming files is done just on the network cable, therefore making it faster? Or to put it another way, if I were to remove the broadband cable from the router (but still have my PC and WDTV Live connected to the router) can you still stream to each other using the ethernet cable? If this is possible, what would I need to do on my PC to allow the connection to take place? (I just activated the 'sharing' option before, but as stated above, it's all just online and so it isn't very fast).

Thanks in advance, and sorry if this is a real newbie question.
 
Over the internet? Do you mean wireless?

If you have not got a wireless dongle connected to the Live then it cannot be wireless and it won't be over the internet.

If you have ethernet cable attached from the live to your router then you should be able to pick up the attached USB drive within you pc's network and map it as a drive on your pc. You can then transfer files over the netowork to the usb drive.

Is that what you are doing?
 
Also is your PC an Apple Mac ?
 
Sorry I probably wasn't very clear what I'm trying to do. As it stands, my wdtv live is connected to my router via Ethernet, and so is my pc. I'm Witt virgin, which plugs into the router, supplying Internet access to both the pc and wdtv live. I can transfer files from my pc to the wdtv live, but this is happening via wired Internet; what I want to be able to do is transfer files just by Ethernet (without it using my bandwidth).I understand Ethernet is very fast which would be great to stream things, but I'm currently limited by the speed if my Internet connection.

Hope this makes sense! To put it another way - can you stream files over a wired network without the Internet?
 
Your not transferring data over the internet link when copying to and from the PC to the WDTV Live it is using the local ethernet network link.

If its very slow there could be some other problem, what speed is the PC connected to the apple router running at is it 1000mbps 100 or 10 ?

You could try swapping out the cat5e cables betweeen the WDTV Live and the PC to see if that does anything
 
Your not transferring data over the internet link when copying to and from the PC to the WDTV Live it is using the local ethernet network link.

If its very slow there could be some other problem, what speed is the PC connected to the apple router running at is it 1000mbps 100 or 10 ?

You could try swapping out the cat5e cables betweeen the WDTV Live and the PC to see if that does anything

I'm not sure how fast it is running...do you know how I can check that?
 
I'm not sure how fast it is running...do you know how I can check that?

Mouse->right click on the taskbar and the right click will bring up a context menu. From the context menu left click on the task manager and go to the networking tab.

It should state the link speed for example 1Gbps or 100Mbps etc.
 

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