Serviio

Hello,
I often have DLNA-related problems with the home cinema system Sony e870. Basically, I tried about 5 media servers (Serviio and commercial ones, like Mezzmo and iSedora) and none of them fully worked. I suspect the following:

Renderer of e870 has some one nasty limitation, that others do not have, so software developers ignore it and fall back to transcoding (which works or not).

Is this true? Or maybe other DLNA users have similar issues and we must still wait for The DLNA Server? (i.e. for new Serviio

Best Regards,
Tim

Have you tried serviio version 6.0 ? It contained lots of updates specifically for Sony profiles and have been a vast improvement for various sony models I own.

MKV does not work even with 6.0. But I did one more test: I bought a tv: Sony KLD 32ex520. I then tried a bunch of DLNA servers, starting with Serviio. Almost nothing was working, especially full hd Mkv movies.

So I returned the TV to shop and bought again a smart tv from Samsung. And everything simply works!

So I guess: Sony is selling crappy DLNA support. Their profiles or something are pretty limited.

I bought Samsung Smart TV ue40d5500 and I am able to play simply all files, including large files like 16GB MKV with dts and 1080p. I can now focus on Serviio -- for the Sony I needed Mezzmo (now the Mezzmo works less reliable as it did not play the 16gb file). I am wondering why supporting Sony devices is so not easy (apparently..). Thank you Serviio.

PS. Oh I see that I already wrote about buying a tv -- it was for my sister.

I regularly watch 10GB mkv files on my Sony BDP. I don't think it's a good idea bad mouthing a whole product line just because you didn't get on with it. Compared to many other brands Sony is actually rather good for DLNA.

It's quite likely that say your PC's power management was interrupting your large file playback, your Mkv files may have been hitting an audio downmix bug if you were converting 7ch and electing to preserve the channel count resulting in them not paying at all, your mkv files may have been tripping up the new version of FFmpeg. All of these things are reported on here and some people chose to work constructively on fixing them rather than making it the shop keeper's problem.

Ok. I am sometimes feeling bad about the mouthing Sony. Maybe it's because of months with sometimes frustrating Sony e870 (for example: inability to control with DMC). And then buying the KLD as a gift and seeing that simply nothing works except for wildlife.wmv (win7 demo file).

I have a feeling that Sony is obeying tactics: giving one step less, that client actually needs. So, for USB -- no ntfs. For DLNA -- limited codecs. There is always something missing. One thing or two. This is like perfect way to frustrate client :S

I am so amazed with samsung's opposite tactics: give ALL that client wants. So, AFAIK, only Samsung tvs have DTS support. But not only that they decode DTS, DD+ (I dont know how it is with dts hd? I wonder if they opposite tactics works also here , they also pass them through to spdif output!! So it is possible to use HT AV receiver and 5.1 speakers or so. This way Samsung tv becomes full member of HT HD, not a toy. This impresses me.

Sony e870 is not bad, although it works only with Mezzmo. And has that one or two things missing..

Today I tried a few MKV files on my Sony e870 and they worked very well with new Serviio/Mac. So this is improvement as before I had to use Mezzmo with my Sony (Serviio was better for Samsung). I must say that even though e870 is not fresh hardware it works quite well. if only it would support ntfs, subtitles and dmc controlling (my e870 won't play video files when using a dmc). Maybe Sony tvs are problematic. BDV players seem to be good, e.g. They support many surround codecs.