Samsung DNLA/Wiselink/Samsung PC Share Manager Setup

I enjoyed providing the feedback. At times it can be frustrating to do technical things, even for us experienced folks. I would not have stumbled through this without the contributions of several others.
Feel free to use as start point.

Ken Stevens

Thanks a lot Ken for your efforts and suggestions to solutions regarding this software! I also bought a very nice Samsung TV LE-40A866S1 yesterday and have exactly the same problems as been described on the net. There is no recognition of the TV using menues "sharing" and "unit security" and when choosing "changing status" the software freezes (menues translated from Swedish so they might be differentin English). I downloaded 1.4.3 from the US site but got the menues in Swedish(!?). I have tried two computers HP nc6400 and Sony Vaio TZ21XN with the same problem. I first tried Share Manager 1.2 provided with the TV but it was almost impossible to uninstall on my HP. This is why I tried the Sony using all the tips given by Ken to avoid strange problems during the installtion. The TV was on the net with a verified connection during the installation but this did not help. It seems that the software needs better basic features such as uninstall and it is provided with 1.4.3 but it cannot uninstall 1.2!
Although the network is OK according to the test on the TV it cannot find the server. I have an "old" router D-Link DIR 655 Wireless N Gigabit Router that was bought before the UPnP standard was established (spring 200. I cannot find how to overcome this block in communication.
Maybe someone know how to change the settings of this and similar routers?
I suspect that there is a security block in the software and that Samsung could open up the software. As it is restricted to the same subnet and you also approve the devices connecting to the server this would not give any major security problems. I have also tried to connect a pc directly to the TV as stated in the manual but this does not work at all (more information needed).
Before my tests I downloaded the latest firmware to the TV from 16 december (Nordic area). It did not help but the selection of menues could be done in a higher speed now so other things improved.
I am also grateful to know that Samsung wireless cannot be used for connecting to a server. This means that I will not buy it...

I suggest that Samsung do the following:

Open up the PC Share Manager for better connectivity to different routers

Develop a wireless device that also could be used for connecting to a server


Thanks,
Carl-Erik Flodmark
Malm

I do not have wired ethernet where my LN52A750 is located. I am using a Linksys wireless gaming adapter which provides a hardwired ethernet port. This way I can connect the TV over wireless but the TV thinks it's hardwired. I have no problem loading media over DLNA from my PC.

Another advantage of this method is it does not tie up your USB port so you can use it with a thumbdrive or USB hard disk.

Hello,

I would like to share my troubles with PC Share manager, hopefuly somebody can help me as I'm out of any ideas now.

I have series 7 LCD TV and 2 PCs running Win XP. TV came with share manager version 1.2 (btw, I had a lot of troubles to uninstall it too, finaly I get rid of it when I inserted the install CD before running the uninstall process). Now I have version 1.4.3 installed, however it does not work as all previous versions. Even if I add the folders with correct media files for sharing, wait for update of library, allow TV in share manager, my TV each time I try to browse for the files ends up with error message saying something like "There is no foto/video/music file in selected device."
As on the other PC after disabling firewall all just works, I do not suspect any issue can be introduced by my Linksys router. I went for checking what can block the traffic on other PC. I ended up with sniffing packets with WireShark and found that the TV and PC communicate just well, but it is the share manager which responds for Browse message from TV with message containing no details of the shared files while in the same scenario the working PC embeds in the message details of the files shared for the particular category. If needed I can post here also the details from the packets showing the difference. Once such packet is received by TV, Tv displays the error message and TCP communication is ended.

The difference I can see between PCs is that the working one runs XP with SP1 while the other one has SP3 installed. I enabled UPnP and SSDP services as I found them disabled, there is no other fw running then windows firewall. My system disk on the non working one is j:\ while the working one is C:\ (I tryed to install on USB disk connected as C:\ but no change in behaviour)

Any idea what I should try next please? Thank you

did the trick for me. My Samsung would not display a simple jpg until I upgraded. I'm also using a gaming dapter so i don't have to run a cable accross the room. One consequence however is in the PC manager list fore the PC, I have a mix of readable folder names followed by a list of non readable file and folder names. This makes a bit hard to share mysterous folders until they show up in the share list. I'm using a Windows2000 pro system that displayed properly in the older release.

Works fine,
Too bad it doesnt support many video formats, which dulls it's existence .

Hi,
I have a problem connecting my Samsung UE40B7070 LED TV to my wireless network.
The TV is connected to the wireless network with the Samsung wireless dongle in one of the USB ports.
The wireless network has a Netgear WGR614 v6 router with latest SW installed.
The PC (with all films) is connected to the router with a cable.

The TV indicates good signal strength.

I can see all movies enabled by the Samsung PC Share Manager (ver 2.0).

Problem is that the movies starts up OK, but after a few seconds or even up to a few minutes, they either freezes and then starts again or stops completely. If it starts again the behaviour is repeated until it stops completely.

Music and photos works OK.

The WGR614 is an old product (2005), but Netgear support claims that that should not be a problem and that it should work.

Anyone uses WGR614 for DLNA?
How should it be configured?

Regards
Hans

As long as we share information on how we connected our computers to the fancy Samsung TVs, let me share my experience.

My computer is running on a dual-core Intel MAC OS (Leopard). Unfortunately, Samsung did not provide a Mac version of the PC Share Manager, therefore I'm using Windows XP running from the Parallel Desktop. The internet connection is made through an Apple Time Capsule hard drive that's connected to the computer(s) via Airport. The TV connects by LAN to the Time Capsule.

As suggested, I've downloaded the latest version of the software (1.4.3) from the US download center. There were no issues during installation of the software and the network set up with the LN46A850 TV. The program behaves reasonably good as long as the shared folders are on the C drive. However, when I try to share folders that are on an external hard drive (the Time Capsule hard drive), where all my movies, pictures and music files are, I constantly receive the message "Can share only folder items". Definitely the message is not related to the actual action I perform as I tried to share folders. Any hints where the message is coming from and how can I share the folders from my external hard drive?

FInally, I might make my last investment into computers, buy the Apple TV and close the Windows subject forever.

Now that I have the basics working I seen many needs.
Cannot drill into a folder containg many levels of folders
The display of the folders on the TV are I guess based on the size of the folder. Hence a samll folder labled 20091229 would look like like other folders prefexed the same. Performance is terrible. It takes hours to share large folders. Take the best from Tversity and fix this or throw full support behing another product. Please.

Kevin

Has an Samsung tech confirmed that there is now way to have the Samsung PC Share Manager pull content from a networked storage drive...or is there a work around? It would only make sense that you could access these files (in my case mostly video) becauses if you have 300 gigs of video where else are you going to store them??

Thanks for any feedback!!!!!

JC

I should have an answer by Monday.

--HDTech

Has "Monday" not come and gone?

<sigh>

We tried this is our office this week with a USB drive, and had the files storesd in a folder named "Videos". With the folder set to share, it worked.

So it's possible. I'm not sure if it will do that with networked drives, but with an external, we were able to get it to work.

--HDTech

Given that the question in this particular chain referred specifically to networked drives, this is really a non-answer. Trust me, networked drives are an epic fail with Share Manager. I see that some enterprising soul has posted how to make this work with Vista's symlinks, but guess what? Most sane people don't use Vista...

You know most sane people may only thank for this maybe not a solution but hack instead of blaming me that I am not normal. Many people are having troubles
making different media servers working with Samsung TV. I gave a solution only for Vista because occasionally I am so stupid that yes I do have in my home network MAC, XP and vista and tried all these system work with Samsung.
And believe me or not about epic fail of networking drive with Share Manager - this symbolic link in Vista does work for me and overrides surely internal bug
of Share Manager preventing it normally work with networking drive

i wrote this letter to samsung today. I encourage you to do the same.


---------------------------------------
i bought this very expensive($5000) tv hoping i am able to play my videos through wiselink pro. I am very upset that wiselink pro doesn't play MKV files and a lot of other videos. I did not find this out until i read the user manual. I believe marketing documents are misleading! i demand a solution from samsung that plays mkv files.

If this matter is not resolved, i will contact ABC consumer department (ABC 7 on your side) and will encourage others in CNET forums to do the same. Please feel free to call my cell phone to discuss this matter.


http://www.wjla.com/


http://forums.cnet.com/5208-13973_102-0.html?threadID=321535&start=15&tag=forum-w;forums06

Sorry, I am confused how this forum organized and thought you blamed me in something

i have used a 500gig external hard drive and it works fine for movies

Was that a desktop size drive powered by an external AC power adapter, or was it a 2.5" drive powered only by the USB connection?

I have just spent a large wad of hard earned cash on a Samsung LE40A856S1MXXU NETWORKED LCD TELEVISION only to find that the 'networking' so at best hit and miss which is then compunded by the fact the pony Share Manager software is about as much use as a light house in the desert. I purchased this TV specifically for the DLNA connectivity.
Did the developers deliberately go out of their way to build in the massive limitations.
I'm a network manager by trade, Cisco and MS qualified; networking devices is a no brainer..........yet this TV one miunte will pass all the network test, next minute it will decide to not be able to find the router or resolve the domain?
But my biggest bug bear is the software Samsung have released that CAN NOT do what it says on the tin.
I have over 150GB on a shared local drive D: most of which it refuses to see and certainly can't play a sodding note of music - I think under english law thats classed as 'not fit for purpose'!
The software crashes everytine the db is refreshed without fail as a result I have paid a premium price for premium features I can't use so how do I go about getting a refund?

TwonkyMedia Manager seems to work far better then the pooh samsung give you.............
Point is this nothing works as it should, no PIP, Share Manager v?;
Hands up, Samsung fooled me.....never again, next time I'll save a few pennies more and go for a premium brand..
The DLNA is soooooo restrictive to be useless. So for now I'll plug back in my old Xyzel media box and stream from that instead; at least it actually works.
Message to Samsung; I will proclaim to everyone that listens what a massive heap of pooh your TVs are. That way, though I won't get my money back, you can rest assured you are guaranteed to loose sales.
In future, if I were you don't sell a 2 stroke as a V6 it will only ever come back to bite you in the ringer.
Have a nice day.

I would also love to see better support for large shares.

I have a directory of digital pictures I've taken from about 2001 to 2009. I shared the directory, went to the television, and went to see the most recent ones. I could only go forward month by month, not year by year, and frankly finally just gave up trying to reach the recent pictures. Moving by year would help, and a QUICK response would help - loading a directory tree in advance or something? I don't know ... but as is, the interface doesn't scale to large directory trees at ALL.

Anyway.

So I thought fine, I just want one folder, so I went to the PC Share Manager, unshared the whole folder, and shared just the one folder I wanted to see. Great! Until I went to the television, which still displayed the entire tree, even though that was no longer in PC Share Manager.

So I unshared the folder completely. It's no longer available on the network. But the TV still SLOOOWLY lets me navigate it. It wasn't able to show the pictures, but something is cached and I can't seem to get it uncached.

Help!

Did you refresh the DB? PC Share manager does not auto refresh.

Also, though you can't skip years, you can skip folders. If you want to share your master directory, I'd recommend browsing by folder.

I was looking for something like a database refresh but didn't see one either on the television or the PC Share Manager. Nor could I find much documentation on either.

Would you mind telling me where to find a refresh? And thank you! I think that would solve it! I was hitting the rightmost button of the four icons on share manager to update the shares ... I'm at work now and can't look, but I'm suddenly wondering if there was another button in there I needed to hit?

For folders ... these are mostly family pictures. So I have each set in it's own folder, sorted by date with the folder name telling me the date and what's in it. Works great on a computer where I can look at the directory tree and know exactly what's where ... but ... well, there are a lot of folders, it seems to want to load thumbnails, and in the end browsing by folder was just as bad as browsing by date. It just wasn't workable. --And there are movies I took with my camera in those folders, and all those showed up in the "movie" folder, with a meaningless name and no thumbnail, but so many of them were in there that I couldn't find the movies that I'd intended to have on the television among the movies I didn't intend to have there. And I can't filter out the ones I don't want.

So I think sharing the master folder was just a mistake. It'd have been awesome, but hey.

The interface is pretty and I think if I can make sure that it has a very limited set of items to display it'll work just fine. So if I can get this database refresh to work, then I can just share the folder I want to see when I want to see it. Not as flexible as I'd hoped, but I can happily live with it. So thank you in advance for any advice on how to do that!

Hi,

I'm at work and not in front of my HTPC, but it is done from the PC Share manager. It is found under one of the dropdowns on the toolbar (i think configuation). I'm also pretty sure it says "Refresh DB" or "DB Refresh"

What version of PC Share are you using?

Let me know how you get on, I'll check when I get home where the option actually is.

Hey! And thanks again!

I'm using version 2.0 of PC Share Manager.

I unshared the folder from PC Share Manager, and from the network. I hit the menu item Share->Refresh DB, then hit the icon to refresh, then the icon to set changed state (several times when playing with this, mostly just hoping something magic would happen.) I also unplugged the television for about 10 seconds just in case.

I can still not only browse all the folders, but can open images from them - even though they (supposedly) are not shared on the network in any fashion.

I looked for updates a bit ago but didn't see any, I looked today and see a version 2.1 ... I'm installing that now.

I upgraded to 2.1 and now the folders on the TV match what the PC Share program says! Yay for bugfixes!

I have similar problems with gaining access to my laptop's folders via PC Share Manager/DLNA link.

What I have:

-Laptop Windows XP Pro (SP3), using USB Mass Storage Drive (w/ JPG, MP3, AVI, MP4)
-Samsung PC Share Manager, Version 1.5
-Samsung LN52A750 TV with USB & Ethernet ports

What I can do:

-InfoLINK starts up on TV whenever I turn it on, displaying Weather, Stocks, RSS feeds, etc.
- I can plug a USB thumbdrive/flashdrive to the TV and access Photos, MP3s, Videos
-On my laptop in PC Share Manager I can see shared folders from C: and F: (via USB) drives. I can see the IP address as accepted for the TV
- On the TV, Manual Setup, I can verify the PING, Domain, MAC address

What I can not do (or do well):

- Hitting W.Link button for WiseLINK Pro does not open the application on the TV.
- After much fiddling (on the TV, PC Share Manager, laptop, folders, router settings, rebooting, turning devices on and off) I -- accidentally -- was able to see the WiseLINK screen (twice) on the TV. Both times (1-clicking for photos, and 2-clicking for MP3s) the application disappeared and returned an error message.
- I can not replicate the situation to get WiseLINK Pro on the TV.
- I looked on the Samsung web site download section for my TV, only to find version 1.5 -- Where can I get Version 2.1?
- I tried a forum post suggestion to try TVersity software. I loaded some photos, music, and videos, but couldn't get a connection to the TV.


Can anybody help me with this deplorable situation? The TV is great but is less of a charm without this DLNA WiseLINK Pro option.

Thanx for any advice.

Len
(Frustrated, Happy HDTV Owner)