Serviio

Hi there,

Brand new user here - I came across Serviio after a google search because I was looking for a solution to stream wtv (that's Windows Media Center recorded tv files) format files from my desktop PC to my Panasonic TV. The Viera side of it can't play wtv files natively; so I was hoping to find a solution that would do the necessary transcoding on the fly - and Serviio looked like it might be the answer. Have got it all set up dead easily and I'm pleased to say the wtv files will now play on the tv perfectly! Whatever transcoding needs to be done to make the TV happy seems to be happening automatically, which is wonderful.

However, the metadata for each wtv file seems to be missing - what I mean by that is all the tv recordings appear in a single list; there's no sorting/grouping by series, there's no info/synopsis on each show, there's no date showing up for each of the recordings, etc... That sort of thing. Just a long flat list of filenames really.

So, I was wondering, is there anything I can do to help get the metadata across into the Viera/TV side of the world?

Many thanks!

Yes, there are very few media players that can play a WTV file. Besides a Windows computer, my Nvidia Shield can play them, but everything else requires transcoding.

There's no metadata within the WTV file that Serviio can read, so you have to get it from online sources. This requires the files to be named in a specific way. For example, a movie needs a format like this: "Bad Day at Black Rock (1955).mkv" or "Star Wars - Episode IV - A New Hope (1977).m2ts". For TV series, "Doctor Who - S00E13 - Planet of the Dead.mkv" or "Mission Impossible S01E12 - Fakeout.mkv"

This page (https://www.serviio.org/index.php?optio ... icle&id=12) provides more detail and options. For particularly difficult to identify titles, you can use the IMDB ID number as well: "Sherlock Holmes A Game of Shadows tt1515091 (2011).mkv"

I have to say though, my last Panasonic TV didn't show any metadata because it wasn't capable of displaying it. Same as my two Samsung TVs now. My Roku and Shield players display metadata just fine. But the TVs just don't support it.

HI Dan, thanks for the link - I'll take a closer look.

To add a little more relevant info; the interesting thing here Serviio must be doing something to 'kill' the metadata in these wtv files.

I know this because, before I discovered Serviio, I started off trying the simplest option - attempting to stream the wtv files directly from the Windows PC to the Panasonic TV. The files all showed up fine on the TV, all metadata was intact - everything was organised by series and grouped and dated nicely the way you'd expect/want, program descriptions were all there, etc. The only problem was when I tried to play one, the TV would then bail out with an error.

Hence I conclude two things from this so far: the TV itself is entirely capable of processing the metadata, but Serviio must be doing something to kill it during its on-the-fly transcoding that allows me to successfully watch the recordings.

That's the first time I've ever heard of Windows Media Streaming actually getting it right! Since WTV is a Windows specific file format, I would expect it to read the embedded data.

Your TV is likely far newer than the one I used to have, so perhaps they've improved the DLNA player function over what mine had. For my ST30, you saw the title, cover art in a tiny image, and one other thing I can't remember. I think it was the file format (MPG, MKV, etc.) I'm glad they've added metadata display.