DLNA Software

I'm trying to get a Samsung blu-ray player with wired ethernet to play files from my Windows 7 PC. Yesterday afternoon I knew absolutely nothing about how to do this. Today all I know is that it's a bloody nightmare to get anything to work at all let alone consistently.

I've tried Windows 7' own media streaming (consistently being recognised on the player as a device), and Samsung PC Share Manager, and 'Serviio' I picked up from these forums. The Samsung program only appears when it feels like it. Serviio appeared yesterday, but not at all today.

The Samsung program has zero to absymal documentation (what does the 'set changed state' button do? Whatever it is, it takes the best part of any hour, and it still doesn't help!)

Even when I can get access, on the player, to a folder I've told the Share Manager to share, the files it sees seem to come and go; if I add a new file on the PC, it's not seen on the player. And right now it's seeing no files at all. (And the few files it does manage to see have codecs it can't play or it will have some excuse for why it doesn't work.)

It seems so much simpler to just bung a disk in! Is there any way of getting this idea to work (play PC files via this box)? I had had thoughts of copying a DVD to the PC, in scratch-proof format, and playing them from this box, but I don't think the formats will be recognised even if all the problems above are solved!

Comments

  • MeanMintMeanMint Posts: 454
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    Model number of your Blu-Ray player
  • bart4858bart4858 Posts: 11,415
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    MeanMint wrote: »
    Model number of your Blu-Ray player

    It's a Samsung BD-F5100 (/XU if that's important).
  • Chris FrostChris Frost Posts: 11,015
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    You're not the first person complaining about streaming features on Samsung Blu-ray players recently. Looks like this is more than just the usual "getting started" trouble. Unfortunately they didn't get theirs working after almost a week at it and several requests from Samsung to reinstall the software.

    Have you have a look at AV Forums to see if any of the bods there have found a solution?
  • bart4858bart4858 Posts: 11,415
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    You're not the first person complaining about streaming features on Samsung Blu-ray players recently. Looks like this is more than just the usual "getting started" trouble. Unfortunately they didn't get theirs working after almost a week at it and several requests from Samsung to reinstall the software.

    That gave me an idea to try this on my Humax PVR instead, which also has wired ethernet, but in the past accessing the 'Network' did very little.

    Now, with Serviio installed, that is coming up (don't know what happened to the other two!), and can access files more reliably, although it still takes a while for new additions to the list of shared folders, and any extra files inside a folder, to be seen by the player. I don't know how to force that to happen.

    But anyway it seems much more reliable, more importantly it can play files which have been saved off the Humax (rather laboriously via a USB pendrive then onto the PC), and it even had a decent go at playing a copy of one DVD (with lengths all mixed up) but not another.

    I think I'll be sticking with the Humax for this (it did cost 5 or 6 times as much as the Samsung though..)
  • MeanMintMeanMint Posts: 454
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    I had a different Samsung Blu Ray Player that all over the web and even on the Samsung website said it was DNLA compatible and it was not.

    I upgraded to the better network version and still had problems with reading files from my DNLA servers (laptops, PC's and networked drives). If would find some files but not all, and additional new files added would take days to appear on the player.

    In the end I bought a Panasonic player which resolved the issue.
  • mac2708mac2708 Posts: 3,349
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    bart4858 wrote: »
    .....although it still takes a while for new additions to the list of shared folders, and any extra files inside a folder, to be seen by the player. I don't know how to force that to happen.

    Open Serviio console > Library> Force refresh

    'Keep library automatically updated' should be enabled by default
  • bart4858bart4858 Posts: 11,415
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    MeanMint wrote: »
    I had a different Samsung Blu Ray Player that all over the web and even on the Samsung website said it was DNLA compatible and it was not.

    I upgraded to the better network version and still had problems with reading files from my DNLA servers (laptops, PC's and networked drives). If would find some files but not all, and additional new files added would take days to appear on the player.

    It seems astonishing that a major company (that can produce decent smartphones) can sell something so incompetent (I haven't even tried an actual blu-ray disk yet, I hope that those work at least!).

    It's not even about getting complicated software to work: there are clear instructions in the thin paper manual on how to download DLNA stuff from its website, but you go to the website, and all it's got are manual PDFs, no DLNA! That at least ought to be easy to fix.
  • jjnejjne Posts: 6,580
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    I borrowed a Samsung Blu-Ray player recently as I'm after something that plays NetFlix.

    I have a Linux server which has MiniDLNA and MediaTomb loaded. I have attached quite a number of clients to this server (Android devices, music players, media players etc) and every one has been able to connect.

    Samsung? No go. It sees the DLNA services on the network but is unable to play anything.

    Might have been a faulty unit, but in all honesty I couldn't be bothered to test further. A DLNA client connecting to an established setup should not have problems.

    Hoping to borrow a Panasonic and/or an LG in the near future for comparison.
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