Serviio

After quite a while of Serviio displaying videos as full-screen (or close) on my 51" TV, now suddenly they are showing as around a twentieth of the screen size, in the upper right corner. Only. I've not made any TV changes or over on the PC side. I just checked the Console and there doesn't seem to be anything there to adjust. ANY IDEAS?

What player are you using? Built in TV app? Blu Ray player? Roku? Other streaming box?

First thought is that there's nothing Serviio can do about it, as it's likely a display sync issue between the player and TV. But if you've checked everything else, then enable debug logging and start playing a video that shows the issue.

I have a DISH Satellite Hopper3 DVR between my PC and TV.

My setup is Win7 PC+Serviio 1.8+DirecTV HD-DVR profile-> Comcast Router -> Ethernet -> DISH Satellite Hopper3 DVR -> Hitachi 51" RPTV

The Hopper3 DVR is the likeliest culprit, being the glitchiest device in the line and subject to involuntary overnight software updates. With it, all one can ever do to fix problems is a physical hard reboot. And there's no revert. My Win7 never updates any more, turned off, and the router only updates with a manual reset on my end. I'm sure it's electrons, not the physical parts of the device chain.

I was hoping it was some Serviio software switch that just lost its way, but more likely this DVR. Rebooting the DVR just now, the first time through it couldn't see the Serviio server in its "Home Media app". OK then, a second reboot and now it does see Serviio. But the videos (I tried a few) are still micro-sized, and the other folders, Music, and Photos, upon attempts to access, just grind away spinning ball time, and show no content. EVERYTHING USED TO WORK before yesterday. Well, almost everything, NO SRT subtitles (only hardcoded) and no real FF and RW on vids, always jumps to next or prev. I attribute these problems to the Hopper.

Now, as for enabling debug logging, I don't see that in the Console. I just tried stopping and restarting the Serviio service. No help. So where can I find enabling debug logging?

I have a link to the instructions to debug logging in my sig mine.

But I agree that it's likely something to do with the DishHopper. I suggest trying a couple of other profiles. The one you are using transcodes everything, and Dish might have changed something that alters the way it works with the DTV profile. The Generic profile transcodes nothing, so that's the first to try. Of course, anything that the Hopper doesn't support either won't appear or won't play. There's a number of Sony profiles that contain different levels of transcoding. The Roku profile does some transcoding, but has no settings to alter image size or aspect ratio.

Thanks Dan. Changing to Generic didn't help. I did do the edit on that config file, now I have 2 backup log files, Generic and DirecTV, and no way to know what to look for or how to up/include them here. For now, for today, I'm done fiddling.

When you are in the Post a Reply page, directly below where you are typing there's a tab labeled Upload Attachment. Click that and you can add files to your post. There's a size limit (about 500k), so zipping the files will likely make a detailed log small enough to upload.

That said, if the image was the same with the Generic profile, than I'm fairly confident that there's nothing from the Serviio side that can resolve your problem. Generic does no image manipulation, so the Hopper can't be misinterpreting the result.

OK, here's the DEBUG of the DirecTV profile. Generic next.

generic

Yesterday I spoke with a DISH tech rep, who after considerable prodding had me look for the software version date in the Hopper's diagnostic screen. APRIL 19 at 2AM !! SO IT'S DISH. Before that Serviio was working fine. The rep said he was making 'a note to send along to the engineers'. Yeah, good luck with that!

Maybe I'll give PLEX another try, or some other server. Any suggestions? When I chose Serviio I'd tried others. They all messed with my folders in their own Virtual space. I mean my Windows folders were left intact but the structures ~displayed~ were a mishmash of videos, music, and photos. Maybe just user error on setup. Serviio duplicated my folders as is, YAY , and added extras like Last Added and Last Viewed, which was excellent.

I suspected it was a Dish firmware issue.

You can run Plex at the same time as Serviio, so you don't need to uninstall Serviio. I agree that I prefer the way Serviio lays out the presentation, and you also can control how that is set up as well. My guess is you might not have configured Plex quite correct. Is there a Plex app for the Hopper, or would it only see Plex as another DLNA server? If the latter, then you will likely have the same image format issues. If it has a Plex app, you should be OK, unless that firmware update really messed things up for DLNA.

There's no Plex "app" native to the Hopper3, similar to Youtube, Netflix, Weather, etc, at least not in the menu of "Apps", I see nada there.

For anyone else who might see this thread, there's

PLEX
KODI
MEZZMO
EMBY
TVERSITY
etcetc

OK, I just tried KODI. No surprise, the same micro-videos. I wonder how many calls Dish is getting about this.............

OK, I just had a new Dish Hopper3 installed yesterday. No fix for this issue, as I'd hoped. So I thoroughly uninstalled all Serviio from my PC and then re-installed and reconfigured. The Hopper/TV still sees the same folders and thumbs, but playing it's still the tiny videos in the corner. Humbug!

Now I'm thinking of going over to a DirecTV Genie. I posted a question here about that with Serviio but no one has answered.