[EricReesor]

The latest gupnp tools set actually works correctly with our samsung series c led tv
Even though it is installed in Ubuntu variants under programming...(which I guess could be construed to mean upnp device programming tools) It is not a default install software choice which is rather unfortunate. The same as all the codec nonsense. All this aside it is very simple to use and understand like most great software.

You launch your dlna server...in my case a java based one called Serviio...but the PS3 Media Server from the google crowd will work just as well I am sure. The native linux app Mediatomb can work but needs special tweaks to make Samsung products work correctly and is really dicey at best streaming web content. Serviio will soon support web streaming so that is why I am using it.

As you can see from the Gupnp Universal Control Point interface it is for diagnosing connections and debugging what is going on with state requests and responses. Whereas the Gupnp AV Control can send request to control the TV renderer and send files directly from the server (in my case Serviio).

Fortunately the AV control has a button that will clear the request states. Really useful in my case because the Samsung Allshare Busy-Box based firmware on this 5000 series TV is flaky there are some really bad bugs in the firmware for this particular Samsung. It will crash if certain conditions occur during a upnp state request ...Hope they update soon. The allshare remote UIserver device will not even show up in Windows 7 so you cannot send media or play control the tv directly by just right clicking the way you can in theory to an XBOX and some other obscure Windows friendly devices...... Though it will accept some limited content from the WiMP player dlna it is essentially useless with most Microsoft drm codec altered media content. However the Ps3 media server for windows will work fairly well if you install real java, even so you cannot play control the tv. The software (PC share Manager Windows only) from Samsung is essentially useless, and will not even correctly send mkv or mp4 which the TV does render! Though it will send VOB if you scream at it hard enough

Here is a screen shot of how it works in linux...although I cannot just right click on a file and send it directly to the tv I can control the volume, play controls and state of the tv with gnupnp. It is essentially the same media framework used in the Samsung hacked Busy-Box firmware which runs the TV.

Imagine my surprise when I accidentally side scrolled my T43 laptop touch pad and sent the TV (and audio system) volume through the roof directly without using the tv remote Then I realized the Linux based control point actually worked as a remote.

 

[Balun]

Thanks for the info. I will give this a look. I'm not sure how well it will run, with my setup however. I tried Mediatomb about a year ago, and found the java code to be a real overhead for my atom based htpc. It did not react well to the video library constantly changing. I have 4 ATSC tuners recording nightly during prime-time TV season in transport stream , with about 6Tb of storage over 2 machines with NFS. The java coded DLNA could not keep up. This was meant for my WDTV live player.

I'm currently using Mplayer / LIRC with a wraparound playback script, with file search functions. The Gui for it (for non Linux family members) is still being worked on, and is close to finished. Its all written in bash. I have not found anything on the market to do this better. I have been using the CLI for it for a few years.

It would be nice if my 2 year old Samsung series 6 LED can play from this DLNA server direcly for the kids non dolby digital 5.1 viewing. I will check into weather all Samsungs have the "Allshare Busy-Box" firmware, and if its safe to Flash the TV with out bricking it (not likely) I would probably use the WDTV live anyway.

 

[EricReesor]

Update

I'm not sure how well it will run, with my setup however. I tried Mediatomb about a year ago, and found the java code to be a real overhead for my atom based htpc.
It would be nice if my 2 year old Samsung series 6 LED can play from this DLNA server direcly for the kids non dolby digital 5.1 viewing.

I tested the av control point, which is part of the gupnp-tools installation with a current version of Ps3 Media Server install and IT DOES NOT WORK. So your mileage may vary.

Serviio is currently in online streaming beta (youtube is up and running in beta). I am tester and it and it is coming along really well.

The current release works well with the gupnp av control point for local content.

I must say the Serviio server is the best at just delivering the content without causing the Samsung Allshare interface to crash the TV. Windows Media Player crashes the TV...The software PC Share Manager from Samsung crashes the TV on occasion. But Serviio does not.

Serviio is started from simple shell scripts in the bin folder it creates and can be installed to a local home directory..it does not have to run as root, and will not touch / in Linux.

You must have Sun Java or OpenJDK installed, Blackdown and other variants will not work. But the Serviio process is mean and lean and does not eat up your proc. It runs really efficiently from a single core pentium m with one gig of ram in Linux. Again on Windows your mileage may vary as it comes as an install exe...yuk
An older 386 atom should run it if you have a gig of ram. You need to have the ffmpeg libs installed and it absolutely smokes on a dual core atom d525 running in 64 bit mode.
Because it is java code it is agnostic to your system unlike some other software.

This is my java install on my ibm T42 with 1.5 gig of ram;
java version "1.6.0_22"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea6 1.10.2) (6b22-1.10.2-0ubuntu1~11.04.1)
OpenJDK Client VM (build 20.0-b11, mixed mode, sharing)

My server box is an atom D525 dual core running 64 bit ubuntu and the same java with 64 bit extensions...and it smokes.

Your setup is really important but any newer atom should handle Serviio and gupnp-tools with ease....at least with Linux.

Read the Serviio forum for more info there is good help available there. And Zip the software writer is really great at helping out. His java code is about as good as it gets ...I have seen a myriad of really bad stuff so it is refreshing to see someone who really knows how to optimize difficult object oriented java code. Because java runs in virtual machine it can be really difficult to debug...as sometimes it is hard to track down what the heck happened! So helping him out is encouraged.

The way things are going with dlna and Linux Serviio will surpass all that is commercially available for other OSes very soon! Tversity on Windows mostly hangs like a dog and it is a directx compiled Windows binary. From what I have read other commercial stuff is not that much better at least for Samsung Allshare based TVs. Dlna servers are a nightmare for the PS3...my brother curses at them on a regular basis. But Samsung's Busy-Box based firmware is really starting to come along. Just wish they were better with updates like LG

PS:
Does an Android look like it might have come from a Dalek compiler? Only Who knows.

 

[Digital_Frank]

I am a little confused.... Myth TV 0.24.1 has built in uPnP support.
Both my Samsung TVs (LN46C650 & PN50B650) can watch MythTV content via DLNA. (which is sooo nice with the commercials removed!)

 

[Balun]

The long term solution for me is to make things "family friendly".
I'm still looking into serviio as time permits. The problem I'm having with gui based servers is the task of cataloging more than 500 *.ts OTA recordings shared over NFS between two servers, and then scrolling through them to play a file. My music directory has more than 1500 tracks, in mixed formats. Any GUI I've tried was just crazy.
DLNA / uPnP java code servers push media to the client (at least as I understand it, correct me if I'm wrong). I like NFS because its very fast for searching, and the client pulls the request from the server.
I use mplayer with wrapper scripts called as functions in .bashrc

# find part of show name or date etc, looks thru all /videoX shares, in 1/2 sec.
ls -sh /video? | grep -i $1
# play selection with LIRC enabled mplayer in the background
mplayer -quiet -slave $command $profile /video?/[email protected] < /dev/null &

I have a crude setup using Konqueror, on one of the server's KDE desktop, but calling movies is faster using an WIFI ssh client.

serviio.sh won't startup over an ssh connection, which means setting it up on the servers Xorg/KDE desktop.
I will try serviio.sh soon directly on the local console, so see what its about.
I'm all for whatever gets Linux into more people's living rooms.

 

[EricReesor]

It does not push content just to clarify things

DLNA / uPnP java code servers push media to the client (at least as I understand it, correct me if I'm wrong). I like NFS because its very fast for searching, and the client pulls the request from the server.
serviio.sh won't startup over an ssh connection, which means setting it up on the servers Xorg/KDE desktop.
I will try serviio.sh soon directly on the local console, so see what its about.
I'm all for whatever gets Linux into more people's living rooms.

There are people running Serviio in a NAS..but to configure the library settings you need to hook up a screen and run the Serviio java console to set the paths and online content feed url, rss, mmsh etc Then just run it as a NAS DLNA server. The best thing to do is look at what others are already doing with Serviio...mostly in Europe It is not that much of a learning curve. And the online documentation is getting going and in some aspects is well underway. All you do is keep Serviio up and it will update client info as devices come and go. Then send whatever content you wish to a lan client.

To use Serviio you need to create your own NAS with a decent Linux box though as transcoding things can really require some grunt and in general you need at least 128 meg of ram available for all the java processes.

So a NAS box with no processor grunt or only 256 meg of ram might be possible but not practical. 512 meg of ram is the tested minimum.
And at least a 1 GHz processor. So there are lots of cheap used setups that will work well but not old P11s and the like with only 256 meg of sdram are out of the question.

My recommendation for a NAS would be something like an old P4 or Athlon with better than 512 meg of DDR1 and as much storage as you need. For a NAS with Windows server running without gui double the ram as a minimum as Linux seems to not mind things and is much easier to pare down things especially if you do not run any X server.

It is quite possible to make up a Serviio setting on another computer and then export it to your nas if the paths to HDD content are the same as the path set is directory set not UUID. So you can configure the /library on one computer with the nas path sets necessary and then save it to Serviio on the nas while removing the default nas /library.

I do not think that paths to remote computer's content from a NAS install of Serviio on a lan will work as they are not on the same device and therefore are not local. Though with the new online settings in Serviio this might become possible if you put a url instead of a path to a shared folder into Online content... I am sure this feature will happen...as the developer is keen and really fast at making things work. However I do not think the upcoming release has this feature included.

Serviio is nicely suited for what it does. It does not push content it is a request server. If your client device is a standard renderer not just a rcr (remote control receiver). Samsung C series tvs are all mode. However their BluRay players are just classified as renderer and only show one DLNA profile.

The push software I was showing in the original post is a tool from the gupnp tools that will push to an rcr that allows this DLNA feature...some do some do not.

Serviio will work as a background java process without a gui at all.

So essentially how Serviio works is to thumbnail with ffmpeg your video items then transcode content if necessary depending on the profile .xml used for the specific device. All of which is configurable and tested for different client devices...This aspect has been the greatest amount of work for testers as it has taken many different people with different devices to get things profiled correctly.

I am sure as more and more net capable a/v devices come on the market the device profiles will increase. Over the past 3 months we have configure and reconfigured quite a few...ps3s work well, Samsung C and D series Allshare support is better than any out there, Sony DLNA is well supported. So are new WD TV devices, Panasonic, LG...etc.

There is an Xbox configuration but like all things from Redmond it is sketchy and the Xbox itself is almost impossible to get some content to work like apple video and the like..though if you beat at it hard enough it will work..I personally do not have one so any further commentary about how to configure one with Serviio is best left to the many who are already doing it with a Windows install of Serviio. Constantly having to tell the operating system that what I am trying to do is perfectly safe is not my cup of tea...though some seem to think that this is a normal state of affairs

Then you use the device remote to select content. Serviio itself does not push content directly. After adding the paths to content including online sources.

There are tutorials on the site about updating ffmpeg on Linux as Ubuntu is stuck down at .6 series and the latest Serviio is best suited to use .9 The windows install of serviio includes ffmpeg but with linux you need to have a system ffmpeg as serviio is java and does not need root privilege to run.

I have written in the wiki how to install it as a local java app that does not need to run system wide and how to have it launch as a service under a single user profile, after the user logs in...this is with Mint linux but this can be done with most linux install ...just every distro has a different way of enabling startup programs for a user.

With Linux it is the java and ffmpeg process that requires network access so Sun-Oracle Java and ffmpeg need to be system installed for Serviio to work ... Same as Ps3 Media Server ...from the Google summer of code crowd.

After the new year the .6.1 release of Serviio will include internet radio and much more. The testers (I am one) have it working quite well with high bit rate audio transcode of flac audio streams like this one (classical music) http://amp.cesnet.cz:8000/cro-d-dur.flac or for ogg http://amp1.cesnet.cz:8000/cro2-256.ogg ..the transcoded ogg goes back up at over 150 kb/s and comes down at 30-60 but the flac stream comes down a 70-120 and goes back up as lpcm at well over 200kb/s so it is better than listening to cds hands down. As good as any dvd audio I have heard and sometime much better depending on the digital source that the Czech radio is currently sending out.

HOWEVER you need a really reliable connection and no blocks over the net to make it work during peak hours ...so the best time to listen is when it is late night in Prague

As I write this I am listening to CBC radio 2 high bit rate classical streaming from my Ibm T42 laptop to a Samsung BD D5700 player. The routing is by a/b/g wifi from an n router to my laptop then back to the router and then cat 5 to the Samsung and then optical to my amp. 0 dropout.

Check out the Serviio forum. The release coming up around January 1 is killer, it puts ps3 media server and Mediatomb to shame. We are in the RC stage.

 

[Balun]

EricReesor,
Thanks for the update. I'll check out the new release, and see if I can find the install scripts that will run over SSH. I also have a WDTV live not doing anything at the moment. I "fly" the HTPC's over ssh via laptop, its not practical to do things over the local console Xorg desktop, as I would have to steal the TV / monitor away from my wife for the night.