Quick and Dirty HOW-TOs

This page holds a few quick tips to modify the WDTV's way of life. They all require ext3-boot firmware installed, a working network device and some linux experience. If you screw things up beyond repair, just pop your USB boot device out, and replace the root.bin file and you should be back to square one. These suggestions are actually SAVED inside the root.bin file or on the USB itself, so you should be able to recover from a major mistake. However, by all means backup backup backup!!!

This section was built for the curious ones in mind. Please understand these and many other modifications included in this wiki and many other forums are not endorsed nor supported by WD. These suggestions are placed here by regular users and owners, and you shoud consider them all as experimental, not thoroughly tested, and of course, to be used at your own risk. None the less, they seem to work.

This tip is meant to improve visibility of the file-list browsing feature on the WDTV.

• When browsing through your media files, in list mode, the current file selection's fond is slightly increased, yet there is no other means to find your current position in the list, forcing the user to sometimes move up and down to be able to notice.
• The idea behind this is simple. Change the color and/or make it bigger to make it stand out.

• This small change takes place in the XML files that hold the overlay information for the WDTV's On-Screen-Display
• Make a backup copy of the file on interest
  • cp /osd/inc_list_browse.xml /boot/inc_list_browse.xml.orig
  • this linux command makes a backup copy of the file and renames it as inc_list_browse.xml.orig. The file is placed on the boot USB device for your convenience.
• Edit the file
  • vi /osd/inc_list_browse.xml
  • vi is a weird editor for the first time user. Google it first, if in doubt.
• Modify the parameters of interest
  • Modify selected-line's font, from a slightly-larger 26 to a notoriously-larger 36
    • on line 25, modify selected_fontsize=“26” to selected_fontsize=“36”
  • Modify selected-line's text color, from whitish to bright yellow
    • The WDTV uses the standard HTML coloring hexadecimal color code 0xRRGGBB
    • in line 29, modify actnoseltextcolor=“0xe2e2e2”(greyish white) to actnoseltextcolor=“0xffff00”(bright yellow)
      • 0×000000 = black
      • 0xff0000 = bright red
      • 0x00ff00 = bright green
      • 0x0000ff = bright blue
      • google for more colors. It's a hexadecimal value from 00 to ff for color red, green and blue and combinations
• Press the “HOME” key and get back into the list. The list should now have one bright yellow line.
• These changes WILL survive reboots but not firmware upgrades.

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.