Since I can remember, Media Center hasn't adequately supported DLNA using a typical Sony Bravia available in the US. By that I mean, it will only work with transcoding set to always transcode, even formats that the TV will play natively. Here's a sample of a past forum entry that illustrates the problem.
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I just tried to configure the MC DLNA feature. (MC 17.0.38-beta)
For the video part I've been following this or that advise I found over here.
1. Always transcode
2. MPEG2/DVD ( I'm wondering if that needs to be DVD PAL for Europe??)
3. DLNA
4. DLNA Extra
5. Overwrite MPEG2 MIME Type.
Not any of the files I have -- m2ts, avi, mkv, ts --- is available, thus not playable.
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This guy lives in Europe. However, the same conditions exist for the US market. Here's the deal. My library consists almost exclusively of m2ts files with h264 video and AC3 audio. The TV plays everything just fine, sans transcoding, via another DLNA program. They will only play when the Sony BD/TV server is set to Always Transcode. I'm led to conclude that something's wrong with MC 17 when the only option to play the video is through ffmpeg, even though the TV can indeed play the video when it's streamed to it as is by another program. On the Sony, as one might expect, these .m2ts files show up as mpeg using the MC 17 server, even though the compression tag indicates "m2ts video (video: AVC1, audio: AC3)". On the other program that works without transcoding, they show up as AVC on the Sony.
There's certainly been vast improvements in MC in every area of the program since MC 15. No doubt about that. It's just in this one little corner of the program where I think things could be better. So Bob, my question is, will MC 17 support these files in the future without the need to transcode to mpeg? Or, is this too low on the radar screen to worry about? Thanks in advance.