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[chriswatson]

I just upgraded to .60 from the last beta. I'm noticing the following behavior:

* I am trying to play to my WDLIVETV player. Last night on the prior beta I was able to see it and play to it. Today on the .60 build I can't see it on the network. The usual activities turn off/turn on, wiggle cables, growl at system have all been performed. ***perhaps a way to perma register DLNA server IP's/names rather than waiting for them to wake up?**** On the speculation that may be the problem?

* I have two media center 16 .60's when I "Load Library" to the remote server I get the popup about "loading the library in the background" the popup never goes away and eventually I get bored and force close Media Center as it's all frozen. I have 37,000 songs. (I also have a synology diskstation DLNA library. It does the same popup window and freeze instantly)

* I have many .m4a files. These show incorrect "duration" (usually very long) and bitrate. (this is an old bug from the last 15 builds)

* I have been seeing more droputs during playback with the 16 beta build
* Sometimes a song at a given bitrate will not play back on my default output format settings depending on the device.


* I have been seeing occasional momentary and sometimes permenent freezes when I switch windows inside Media Center.

* Using Gizmo has been mostly disappointing with .16. I have a hard time using it in my local network. when I open firewalls and come in from the public network it connects better for some reason. I also am not a big fan of the interface. After using the itunes remote application on the Touch Gizmo leaves me wanting something simple that just works.   play/pause, next previous and volume buttons with one popup for playlists/playdoctor and a dropdown for selecting servers. I have a media center server at work, one at home and then a laptop I use when I travel or to control the embedded media servers. Being able to use Gizmo to connect to home and work without have to type in the code de jour would make it much more usable.

* The web client isn't that functional for a smooth easy to navigate interface.
 
* I have to fiddle with output format more than I like to get the right sample rate bit rate for the device I am playing in combination with the encoded music file. The new popup that (sometimes) reports when there is a problem and suggests settings is a step in the right direction. Better IMHO would be to allow me to set 192Khz and 64bits for all my devices and then have media center downgrade on the fly as needed for device or file format AND just make a optional log notation when it does that. I'd much rather hear the music and get a log message than deal with a popup (or worse a freeze) that stops playback.

* A general pleading for stability and cleaning up what is already in the product  over adding features! I was using 15 and it was still a bit unstable and would not be reliable for being an out of sight out of mind media server. 16 has better handling of DLNA but please please please spend more time with stability and play back issues. I really want a media player I can select a playlist and feed to my audiophile setup or to my scattered DLNA clients around the house and be able to play music without my wife and kids teasing me about how my music never works right when I press the play button.

* I do like the new features especially play doctor

* If you could ever do Pandora that would be great (I've read the various issues with that in the past on the board)
* It would be nice if users could drag menus to the interface as "shortcuts". For example I find I fiddle with output format a lot and it's buried fairly deeply.

* STABILITY! New features are great but get to stable version then do beta's for new features. 15 never worked quite right with DLNA and zones which I keep trying to use and keep being disappointed with. I need a stable version I can use for 6 months or a year while you work on the new cool stuff.

[JimH]

For stability, you might not want to use beta builds.

When you have a problem, please post it with an appropriate topic.  Multiple problems in a single thread usually won't get much attention.

I would work on this one first:

* Using Gizmo has been mostly disappointing with .16. I have a hard time using it in my local network. when I open firewalls and come in from the public network it connects better for some reason.

If you can't connect locally, something may be wrong on your router.  Firewall is also possible.  The wiki has an article called "Network Access".

Once you have Gizmo set up, you shouldn't have to retype the Access Key.

[csimon]

* I am trying to play to my WDLIVETV player. Last night on the prior beta I was able to see it and play to it. Today on the .60 build I can't see it on the network.

Ooh - you're using a WD TV Live with MC16, perhaps you can help me with a problem I've had for over a month but which I've had no response to...

Up until now, has the WD TV Live been behaving OK with MC16, i.e. when you send an audio file to it, does it play the music and display the Now Playing screen?  And when you send a video file to it, does it play it properly?

BTW the WDTV can take a long time to appear in MC, although it seems to be pretty quick in PlugPlayer.  But note that the WD TV Live's port number does not remain constant, it changes randomly with every boot.  So even if you were to be able to register URLs with MC, it would not always work.

[chriswatson]

Jim,

If 15 had been stable (or was being vigorously worked on) I wouldn't be on 16...

The last few builds of 15 were less stable for me. 15.0.174 was released in early Feb. and is still listed as "under active development". When is the gold release of 15 so I can use that instead?

For the most part most of the issues I have with 16 are either on 15 or there is a different related issue on 15. I even mention in my post one of the bugs that exists in the last builds of 15.

I'm not a J River detractor, I have already paid to upgrade to version 16 but as I say in my original post I would like SOME stable version to have my backroom systems on. Those machines run in a mostly headless environment using remotes and the current versions of 15 and 16 both have too many crashes or popups that stop playback.

~Chris

[chriswatson]

Ooh - you're using a WD TV Live with MC16, perhaps you can help me with a problem I've had for over a month but which I've had no response to...

Up until now, has the WD TV Live been behaving OK with MC16, i.e. when you send an audio file to it, does it play the music and display the Now Playing screen?  And when you send a video file to it, does it play it properly?

BTW the WDTV can take a long time to appear in MC, although it seems to be pretty quick in PlugPlayer.  But note that the WD TV Live's port number does not remain constant, it changes randomly with every boot.  So even if you were to be able to register URLs with MC, it would not always work.

I will play around with the WDTV some more and see what I can see. The more recent builds of 15 and 16 seem to be better at finding my wired WDHDTV. I have a WiFi WDTV that Media Center seems to have a much harder time finding.

As far as playing video from Media Center to the WD. I've given up on that for the moment. It seems to sometime work and sometime not. Generally it seems like it has trouble picking the right rendering method. It's something I played with a few hours over time and gave up. These days I'm mostly just using it for music and, when it sees the unit, that seems to work fairly reliably. I've been seeing a number of bug fixes around DLNA and video have come out so I was thinking of trying out the video in a version or two.

~Chris

[chriswatson]

Ooh - you're using a WD TV Live with MC16, perhaps you can help me with a problem I've had for over a month but which I've had no response to...

Up until now, has the WD TV Live been behaving OK with MC16, i.e. when you send an audio file to it, does it play the music and display the Now Playing screen?  And when you send a video file to it, does it play it properly?

BTW the WDTV can take a long time to appear in MC, although it seems to be pretty quick in PlugPlayer.  But note that the WD TV Live's port number does not remain constant, it changes randomly with every boot.  So even if you were to be able to register URLs with MC, it would not always work.

I tested this today and found the following with .60:

I can use the WDTVLIVE (wifi) from the WD interface to Media center. It doesn't always play every file (rendering issues?) but it works for some audio files. I cannot get it to work for Video from the WD interface.

From Media Center I can get it to play some audio. It does not show the audio information screen when I play. I cannot get it to correctly play video files from Media center. It will sometimes play audio but not the video.

I figured out more about my WiFi problem. I can only see the WD unit that has WiFi IF I connect to Media Center from the WD interface and play something FIRST. After I do that, Media Center sees it and can use it to play media. ****NOTE**** I think this is a flaw with The WDTVLIVE. I checked the non J River DLNA servers I have on my network and none of them can see the WiFi WDTVLIVE either. Despite the fact it is "awake" it is not apparently broadcasting it's status to the network over the WiFi. The wired WDTVLIVE I have is able to be seen consistently from Media Center.

~Chris