DLNA from a Linux-based server?

I[m not worried about imrpoving the next model of Samsung TV, I want my existing one to work.
So unless the Marketing department write firmware upgrades, I think its Samsung's TV Firmware department that should get this.

So I can take a file I share via my linux based DLNA server, put it on a USB key, and it plays fine. But I get the unsupported file problem if I try to play from the TV (connected via ethernet). I'm pretty sure this isn't a hardware problem, or a codec problem.

However when I share it via Media Tomb, MythTV, etc. it always says "file format not supported". Even with JPEGs. I'm sure the TV can handle JPEG, this has to be a software problem. I don't know if it's adherence to a standard, or if it's simply good old fashioned confusion.

It'd be nice to see something from Samsung on how to work around this (or a firmware update). Even on Windows I find it to be hit or miss, matroska formats don't seem to share well from Windows, although the TV handles it beautifully when you put the file on a USB key.

See other post in this thread
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-13973_102-0.html?messageID=3028811#3028811

We have the same problems, but I do not know how to recompiling the code that you are referring to.
Can you explain in easy terms ? I'm not a programmer.

I'm testing MediaTomb.

Thanks

Mario@chianti-doc.com

Dear all,

Does anybody have a mediatomb configuration (config.xml) working with Samsung LED UE40C6530?

Samsung PC Share with WXP works fine. But with mediatomb server (Ubuntu-Lucid) my TV don't see the server.


I changed in the original config.xml

<protocolInfo extend="yes"/>

and added:

<custom-http-headers>
<add header="transferMode.dlna.org: Streaming">
<add header="contentFeatures.dlna.org: DLNA.ORG_OP=01;DLNA.ORG_CI=0;DLNA.ORG_FLAGS=017000 00000000000000000000000000">
</custom-http-headers>

But my TV don't see the media


Thany you very much

For developers: the particular challenge with the Samsung TV DMR is that you must provide DLNA-compliant responses to the following exceedingly rare DLNA headers:

RequestContentFeatures.DLNA.ORG: 1

and possibly supply other headers as well. A response header that works:


HTTP/1.1 206 Partial content.
Server: 2player/1.0
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2010 21:16:37 GMT+00:00
Last-Modified: Mon, 06 Dec 2010 04:58:54 GMT+00:00
Content-Range: bytes 0-6510077/6510078
TransferMode.DLNA.ORG: Streaming
ContentFeatures.DLNA.ORG: DLNA.ORG_PN=MP3;DLNA.ORG_OP=01;DLNA.ORG_FLAGS=01500000000000000000000000000000
Connection: close
Content-Length: 6510078
Content-Type: audio/mpeg

The magic seems to be "DLNA.ORG_PN=MP3" -- something that the media player has been told seven times till Sunday up until this point already. And it all seems so senseless given that the ONLY format that's supported is MP3, and there's a perfectly good header saying "Content-Type: audio/mpeg", and quite ignoring the fact that the SetAVTransportURI parameters are already required to carry this piece of metadata.

To Samsung engineers: this requirement breaks you with practically all media servers that have not yet made explicit fixes to accomodate your requirements. Given that the data is already in the res:protocolinfo of the DIDL metadata you have when you make the request, it would be so much more sensible to take it from there. (Valid res data is a common requirement for DLNA DMRs, so you will get it).

To Samsung Marketing: I don't get it. You've paid for Patent licenses for M4A, because you have to support that format in video renderers. Adding M4A audio support opens up direct support for iTunes content (DRM-less since January 2009), and 95% of all audio files that really matter. Take a look at WD TV Live Plus which Just Works For Almost Everything because they have provided a few extra audio and video decoders.

And the Allshare UI. For goodness sake get the same designers who did the TV menu to reskin the Allshare UI. It is drab, and dreary, and doesn't represent Samsung well. To be perfectly honest, even though I have Allshare on my BD player, and TV, I go to WD TV Live because Allshare is embarassingly ugly.

It's my livingroom. I don't want ugly stuff in my livingroom. It's important.

It really frustrates me. I love Samsung as a company. I really do. Your hardware designers are brilliant, and compete with Apple for producing pretty hardware. But the software guys... not so much.

You also urgently need to get native English speakers to review your text and error messages. "Not Supported File Format" says something about Samsung as a company to native English speakers that you really don't want said. For native English speakers, it says Samsung is not really that different from Chinese electronics manufacturers that ship junk electronics at a huge discount into the North American market; and reminds us that Korean companies once owned that market; and that Samsung was once one of those companies. And might still be one of those companies. Not something you want associated with a first-tier brand name. I don't think I can fully convey to you how powerful and unflattering that message is. If it were isolated, I wouldn't mind. But it's pervasive in pretty much everything you do. Your TVs; your BD players; my Galaxy tab. All have widespread Engrish throughout their documentation and UI. (If it wasn't for the fact that I love your hardware designs, I wouldn't even mention it; I'd just spend my electronics dollars elsewhere).

You're sitting on SUCH an opportunity. And you're blowing it. People want this, badly. Music everywhere, especially.

Portable media is very 2010. And the TV is the perfect appliance for moving music and video around a living-room, if for no other reason than that it has both the connection to a sound-system AND licenses for the full audio/video patent portfolio (which most audio systems don't have, and can't afford).

AllShare COULD be a hugely valuable brand in the English-speaking world. But, as is, AllShare seems to mean "half-@ssed version of DLNA".

Regards,

Robin Davies
2Play
http://two-play.com/2player.htm <-- my credentials in this market place.
http://two-play.com/about.htm <-- my credentials in software for hardware.

Hi, I can fully understand your delusion obtained from the Allshare product ...I'm in the same position some time after your post... I have the Samsung PS51D550 plasma ... older model, but anyway... supports allshare-dlna-upnp... I have tried to send the SetAVTransportURIAction to its AVtransport service and kept getting http response code 500... guess what... your header trick did fix it ... I was astonished... such a bad design...

cheers...

Since i bought my LN52A850 I have been experimenting with several DLNA media servers. After a while i decided onusing TVersity wich is probably the best of them all (particularly because you can customize it the way you want)
Among other things you can put the extra HTTP headers that will make it work with samsung tvs...
The only thing that was missing was the possibility for the tv to do fast forward and rewind, but I was under the impression that that was a firmware limitation...
Yesterday, I decided to take a look at Windows Media Player 11 as a DLNA media server. I didn't like it because I can't customize pretty much nothing, but i wanted to see if it will support the broken samsung dlna implementation.

Great was my surprise when the TV not only was able to see the WMP11 server, but also stream some of the videos I have on my PC. Actually the only ones I was able to sream where the mpeg2 videos (no luck with avis containig xvid videos for example) AND on top of that, for the mpegs2 videos that worked I HAD FAST FORWARD AND REWIND BUTTONS on the TV interface!!! 20 seconds forward or backward as you have when using a usb key to serve the videos.

So now I know that the fast forward rewind issue is not related to the tv firmware but to the HTTP communication between TV and server. Somehow WMP11 got that right and everybody else (including samsung'S media share application) got that wrong...

I'm suspecting the WMP11 server sends some extra HTTP headers that make the TV believe it can do FF/RW. I will try to capture some network traffic to see if i'm correct. If that is the case, maybe a workaround for the FF/RW could be implemented using TVersity...

any other ideas?

Omar

Could you please explain what the necessary changes are?
Thanks in advance.

Well, the change in dlna is about the definition of HD format, it was not recognize my recorded TV HD program.

The change in ushare is about a return stream to TV's streaming request. I think the change should go to dlna lib, or the other lib. But I did not go that far.

both changes involves recompile the source code.

Compiling the source isn't a problem (I already do this). Could you please update us as soon as something is available - either as official fix or at least some diffs or sources?
Thanks!

I am not sure the first change makes a different, and you can see I just hardcoded the second change. There are should be better ways.

diff ushare.c~ ushare.c
110c110
< /* DLNA_ORG_FLAG_CONNECTION_STALL | GD */
---
> DLNA_ORG_FLAG_CONNECTION_STALL |

diff ushare.c~ ushare.c
110c110
< /* DLNA_ORG_FLAG_CONNECTION_STALL | GD */
---
> DLNA_ORG_FLAG_CONNECTION_STALL |
dad@dad-desktop:~/dlna/ushare-1.1a/src$ diff http.c~ http.c
150d149
<
167,168c166,167
< content_type =
< strndup ((protocol + PROTOCOL_TYPE_PRE_SZ),
---
> content_type = "Content-Type: video/mpeg\r\nContent-Length: 3269525672\r\nCache-Control: no-cache\r\ncontentFeatures.dlna.org: DLNA.ORG_PN=MPEG_TS_HD_NA_ISO;DLNA.ORG_OP=01;DLNA.ORG_CI=0;\r\ntransferMode.dlna.org:Streaming";
> /* strndup ((protocol + PROTOCOL_TYPE_PRE_SZ),
170a170
> */
176c176
< free (content_type);
---
> /* free (content_type); */
180c180
<
---
> fprintf(stderr, "content_type: %s\n", info->content_type);
305a306
> fprintf(stderr, "http_seek\n");

Cool that patch works for me! For video that is... I still cannot play mp3s, for which I get a "filetype not supported" error. This was actually my primary goal. Has anyone been able to get this to work?

I keep trying in the meantime. If I get any results I keep you posted.

The latest rc of a beta dlna client called TvMobili has just about everything working properly. It does have some processor overhead...7-10% on a single core Pentium M from about 2006 so it will slow down cheaper i386 atom or via based netbooks somewhat, because the daemon runs at boot.

It currently only has an xml based http://localhost:30888 interface (somewhat like the cupsd) to stop and start the network functions of the daemon. You still have to use top to actually kill the root core daemon if you need to free up the processor and a small amount of ram though. All and all not exactly a Linux newbee friendly piece of software. But it works really well and does not seem to crash too much!

That said it is a really good Linux dlna server that streams well to allShare (at least on my Samsung 5000 series LED).

Thank you very much for your hack.
I don't know exactly what i have done, but it works for watching movies.
Without your diff i would never had it made.
That's all i wanted. Ok i know this is only a hardcoded hack - but how cares.

Thanks a lot !


But Samsung has to do something. There a still other OS than Win.

I've been wrestling with this one too. I've tried miniDLNA and media tomb for linux. miniDLNA didn't work. You could see the folders but not any of the files.

Media Tomb almost works. The files show up in the folders (sometimes), but the TV (UN55C6300) has alot of trouble playing them. Most of the time, the "Loading" icons spins for 10 minutes before it fails. Other times, it will play a movie file but stutter horribly.

The same files loaded onto a USB stick work fine, but sucks to have to load them up every time. And the same files play fine on other uPnP devices, like XBMC. This Media Play is a great feature - I'd love to get it working

I did the online chat with Samsung, but they only refer to that Windows only PC Share program. I've been at this for four days now, if anyone has any advise, please let us know.

Dan

There are discussions about how USB and DLNA do not support the same encodings. You and others can keep talking about that but here's what I think those that want this to work will have to do.

Find a dlna server that can transcode on the fly.
Bob

Thanks Bob, If I knew the encoding scheme was the problem, I'd re-encode everything. I triple checked all the encoding schemes, and they are all supported by this model - I didn't see anything that said that the Media Play would support different formats from USB/DLNA?

The DLNA certificate doesn't really give much insight into what this product is compatable with - it was certified to the following:

MPEG_PS_NTSC
MPEG_TS_SD_NA
MPEG_TS_SD_NA_ISO
MPEG_TS_SD_NA_T

But there was no test conditions given - like what server was used. The document for my product was here: http://certification.dlna.org/certs/REG34108817%281%29.pdf

You can see that the certifications aren't really very helpful.

Also - if it doesn't support the codec, it would just fail, rather than take forever to load, then limp along for a while playing the file, then die

Dan

MPEG as you listed could be anything. We've had these discussions in this forum and somewhere there must be a web page about encoding. I've read so many documents that while it's interesting you noted a standard, your are right that while MPEG_PS_NTSC is support we'll have to find a better definition and the settings of our encoder to play with what Samsung decodes.
Bob

You know what would be helpful - a few videos from Samsung for testing. It wouldn't make a difference if they were Samsung commercials - just something that should work. That would at least help us know if the content is wrong, or the server is junk or misconfigured?

Dan

FYI, I grabbed the static binary of miniDLNA and it worked great for me. Skipping forward and backward works too. Running Debian Lenny.

I have a TON of content (in the TB's) and I checked some Xvid avi's. The quality is phenomenal. Even files I thought to be of pretty mediocre quality look absolutely fantastic. Ten times Better than on my PC and a hundred times better than on my XBOX running XBMC. I was going to buy a Boxee Box or maybe a Popcorn hour or just setup a PC running boxee but I'm thinking I don't need them anymore.

I'm playing with MediaTomb now and thanks to a poster here I was able to get the content playing back but skipping doesn't work at all. It has a nice web gui but unfortunately what I'm really after is being able to fine tune the browsing experience so I only see folders with videos in them when I go under Videos. Naturally it only displays Video files because the TV is filtering for those (I guess) but I still have to scroll down through tons of empty folders (that actually contain photos).

Well, I'll be going back to miniDLNA because REW and FF are more important than the pretty gui of MediaTomb. Perhaps I'll try to trick it by creating an empty "root" folder and then symlinking all the various subfolders into there. Hopefully that will give me the browsing experience I'm after.

Long story short, just wanted to let people know who are trying to get DLNA working on Linux that miniDLNA does work great for me. I'll dig around and see if I can find some H264 mp4's or mkv files to see just how good the codec support is.

My TV is a brand new UN46C7000 in case it matters and so far I'm loving it.
Of course I didn't buy it to be a set-top box like some people seem to be trying to do. Seems pretty absurd to whine and moan and get hung up on such things. It's great that it can do this but you can get a decent HD set-top box that'll play anything for a hundred or two so I'm not going to let such small things sway my decision in purchasing such an expensive TV set.

After wrestling with a few linux DLNA servers (media tomb and miniDLNA), I installed PC Share manager on an XP PC to see if I had any better luck. It runs about the same as MediaTomb.

This is what happens:
Server is detected by TV under Media Play
Shares are listed and start okay.
"loading" icon spins for a long time before movie starts
Movie plays less that 1 second before pausing while "Preparing to Play" icon spins
30 seconds late, TV plays another 1/2 second of content, then the "Preparing to Play" process restarts. This continues forever.

My xbox plays the content from all three servers fine, including the Samsung PC Share one.

I was hoping the Samsung TV would play from the Samsung server, but it does not. It looks like the Media Play is defective on the UN55C6300 over the network.

The USB stick looks like the only option until that's fixed. This is bad.

Samsung - please fix this.

I'm still following this thread. I've been trying every DLNA server I can get my hands on to come up with something workable - but so far - nothing works.

The Synology NAS doesn't really describe the server in much detail. I don't think it's possible to try out the server without first buying the product. Even if they sold their server application, that would be helpful.

Anyway - I'm still following the thread. So far, no success getting DLNA to work with my UN55C6300 TV yet.

Samsung - how about a firmware update to fix this?