On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 12:26 AM, John R Pierce <pierce at hogranch.com> wrote: > On 2/11/2014 10:09 PM, Les Mikesell wrote: >> What server software have you tried? I'm using serviio on a mac but >> would expect the linux version to be equivalent, with an assortment of >> players (ps3, sony blu-ray player, vlc on an ipad, etc.). The trick >> with video is to be sure it is encoded in a format the player can >> handle directly so the server isn't transcoding on the fly. And >> avoid wifi if possible. > > thats the problem. different clients have different unpublished format > rules. Agreed, it is a mess. > i have devices that play HD mp4 and mkv files just fine via SMB, but > refuse to acknowledge the same files as video if they are over DLNA and > ask for them to be converted to something else. Or maybe they will > play the video but don't like the audio and want it transcoded. whaaa? There is a scheme to recognize the players and serviio includes a lot of device profiles and allows you to add your own (although you have to edit some ugly xml). It will transcode or remux if necessary, but then you can't move around in the file until the transcoding is complete. > That and the whole DLNA finder and tag system is awful. i have stuff > directory structured and not all of it is well tagged. DLNA clients > decide to lump it all in one virtual list, 12000 titles or whatever. The presentation is at least partly up to the server. With serviio you can just expose the folder structure if you want and the clients I've used will navigate it. (Vlc in upnp mode is an exception that tries to digest the whole tree before displaying anything, although the most recent ios version works OK) > needless to say, that crashed the browser on half the embedded > players. different DLNA servers have a different idea of how tags > should be structured. DLNA players kept insisting on showing me > directories and files that I'd deleted a week ago. ugh, I quit. And you can tell it how frequently to rebuild its index. > SMB gives me my directory structure, and thats fine, and the WD TV in > particular has played just about everything I've thrown at it, AVI, MP4, > MKV, TS, Ogg, Flac, etc etc. Sure, but not everything will map smb shares, especially blu-ray players. My current cable tv setup has a central dvr (sort of a rebranded Arris Moxie) with media players at each tv that do DLNA reasonably well and its nice to not have to switch inputs or remotes to play local content. But from another computer, I'd just map the drive and run vlc. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com