Serviio

Hi,

Apologies if this may sound not fully relevant to Serviio, but it's a fact the best DLNA experts for Sony products are around here...
I'm running Serviio with my Sony products in a quite satisfactory manner: I particularly appreciate all the work involved in adapting BDP-S570 profile so that files can be played properly.
So, it's all good when I use the attached TV screen to browse my Serviio server content, and most of the time, it plays nicely.

Now, when I want to listen to music content, it's a total waste to power-up a TV screen, as my BDP is connected to an amplifier and speakers.
So I'd like to select DLNA content by another mean, typically with an iPhone being DMC: it would select content and play it on the BDP.
There comes the problem: I could not find any DMC software which would recognize BDP-S570 as a proper Renderer...

I seems the BDP does not declares itself as a full service renderer on the network (my assumption, as I'm not a DLNA expert with all necessary tools to debug).
It a shame as very similar products (BDV-S370, & others) seem to be proper renderers...a very bad Sony marketing shortsight I guess.

Anyway, I was wondering if Serviio could be of any help there, by advertizing proper functionality (as it does for the player function), and allow DMCs to controll this device to, at least, play music...
Maybe it's just not possible, or the magic "profile" should be built into DMC program, to make it as smart as Serviio is?

I would appreciate any idea to enable this use-case (play music from Serviio onto BDP without any screen).

Thanks for consideration!

Can you post the information on the BDP(see signature "Provide supported formats of a device")

You are right here. The BDPs don't advertise themselves on the network as DLNA renderers (you can confirm by it not appearing in DeviceSpy), therefore the DMC cannot see it. Serviio has a workaround based on the fact the player can see Serviio and eventually will connect to it - that's when Serviio gains knowledge about the player being on the network.

Nothing Serviio can do for you in this case. Not sure if there is a DMC that can do it, maybe one that'd enable you to enter the player's IP address (similar to AVMediaController's Add device functionality)

Thanks a lot for your support!
I did attach a Device Spy screen copy: there is no ConnectionManager service as in other renderer (Bravia TV): only service seems to be IRCC...
I'm afraid outlook is not looking good...

Hi Zip,

Thanks for your suggestion.
I tried to add the device on AVMediaController, but it did not seem to connect...

I'm not sure about stream initiation process in a DMC-DMS-DMR scenario (could not find a doc with the flow).
Hoped that, by chance, a smarter DMS could masquerade the "failing" Sony BDP and advertise a "fake DMR limited service" on his behalf, and then do some magic to redirect streaming request issued by DMC, between itself (DMS) and Sony BDP (using it's known player capability).
I understand this may look as science fiction, is NOT how DLNA is supposed to work, and would derive Serviio from it's primary role.
Should probably be a separate project (if at all possible), would this be of interest of many.

Anyway, thanks for your time.
Best

Interestingly enough, it turns-out that latest version of Squeezebox server (LMS 7.7), does some preliminary bits of that!
They built "traditional" DMS support, but also a mechanism which exposes existing Squeezebox Players as DLNA Renderers!

I played with that by letting iTunes connect to Squeezebox Server in opening a stream.mp3 URL. Then server manages iTunes as a Squeezebox Player.
Nothing really new here, and same can be done with VLC, Winamp, etc
Now, with LMS 7.7 UPNP plugin activated, this iTunes stream is exposed on the network as a DLNA Renderer!
I can use any DMC to control it!

So, exposing BDP-Sx70 devices as Renderer should be feasible by a smart server.
One key remaining issue would be to find a way to pass BDP-Sx70 a reference to a file and initiate actual playback, hoping it has some "unsupported backdoor" to do that, even-though Render profile is not officially available.
Only some Sony DLNA devices gurus could figure that out I guess...

Best.

Interesting thread this is exaclty what I am tring to setup

BDP-S480 Bluray Player - Renderer - via - 1GBit Homeplug
Serviio Media Server - Transcoding Server - 1GBit Homeplug
IPhone (Kinsky App) - Controller - WiFi

With this setup I can use my iPhone to push Photos and Music to the S480 or browse from the S480 to the Serviio server which transcodes the media to the blue ray. Pulling from the server works great for my iPhone4 videos and most movie trailers. I do not seem to have the problem of the Bluray being visable on the network may be later firmware has sorted this ? You do have to be patient for it to be detected.

However still having some problems
1) When transcoding produces an MPEG > 10-15MBits I get stuttering.
2) I have some videos that fail to transcode
3) Transcoding always fails when it is initated from the Kinsky app.

Does anyone have any suggestions ?