Opinions on best pure player?

Now that I've started to see some of the limitations of the Panasonic TV as it relates to DLNA, I'm considering getting a pure media player if it will mean fewer headaches and less need to transcode. I'm curious what opinions people have on the best options out there?

I see Serviio has a renderer profile for the WD TV - thoughts on that or others?

Thanks!

Andy

[Mugwump]

Now that I've started to see some of the limitations of the Panasonic TV as it relates to DLNA, I'm considering getting a pure media player if it will mean fewer headaches and less need to transcode. I'm curious what opinions people have on the best options out there?

I see Serviio has a renderer profile for the WD TV - thoughts on that or others?

Thanks!

Andy

The cheap one with limited connectivity and no hdd can do just about any a/v format from stream natively..flac, avchd etc. Some Onkyo receivers will do flac and various audio formats but they just push everything other than audio to the hdmi so watch out if your tv doesn't recognise the compressed video format.

Some really expensive a/v receivers can even be set to up trancode incoming video streams to 1080p by remote choice but by and large it is hit and miss as far as to what device will do things best for your particular tv.

I would highly recommend making the saleman do some real testing for your particular needs before you purchase or at least make sure that the device has a liberal return policy if it does not perform as advertised!

DLNA has been distorted by many manufactures to make it so their equipment will work best only with their other equipment...prime example is the XBOX 360 which works well with Windows Media content but is a dog with every other DLNA codec spec. A Playstation3 is the most versatile choice as codecs go and will work with Serviio if the connections are really good...it is quite complicated to get the Playstation to work perfectly with a server but it is entirely possible because all you have to do is allow your server to push content to the Playstation with the Settings menu then make sure the profile is selected correctly in the console settings for the renderer.

set renderer choice here if device is not correctly set automatically

Screenshot-Serviio console 0.6.1-SNAPSHOT.png (68.45 KiB) Viewed 4703 times

Some DLNA enabled dvd/bd players can be the cheapest choice and some Samsung and Sonys are well supported and will work well. Check out this thread viewtopic.php?f=6&t=63 There is good info there about which devices work best and you can help by participating in the supported device discussion by describing what exactly is not working with Panasonic's TV DLNA ..

It helps if you turn on detailed logging and then post the log findings as Serviio tries to push content to the TV. Posts by Zip all include this link...about how to help out with device support. viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7
Regards

There are so many small audio players is available for Linux, yet none of them seem to be perfect to the all brands. the advance user friendly KDE player Amargo is a good choice for most users.there are so many plenty of the other excellent alternatives.

[Cerberus]

your better off buying a samsung or sony blueray player to solve this than buying one of the very limited dlna only player boxs.

[NX3]

WDTV Live HD is a good box, plays everything I've thrown at it natively but also works well Serviio for additional online services. That or a Dune box for about £99 are the best options imo for media playback additional to a tv.