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[duttonst]

Hi there.

I've just bought one of these WDTV Live streamers to connect to my Media Server and although I've made a fair bit of progress I seem to have hit the buffers with a BDMV folder issue.

So far:

• I can connect to Media Server and browse all my movies with their artwork nicely rendered. My movies are a mixture of DVDs and Blu Rays ripped to their native folder structures and all play nicely from within MC
• I can play all my DVDs without any transcoding
• I can play all my Blu Rays but *only* if I switch some form of transcoding on (doesn't seem too fussy which I use)
• If I try to play a Blu Ray with transcoding switched off the WDTV complains it's an unsupported format
• But if I try to bypass Media Server and play the raw file the WDTV plays it without a problem

It feels as though Media Server is doing something to the stream which makes it incompatible with the WDTV. Are there any settings I need to enable to make this work?

I'm on the latest WD firmware and have tried this with the latest builds of both MC17 & 18. I'm using a wired network.

Any help very much appreciated!

-- Andy

[duttonst]

Am still really struggling with this  .

Am I trying to do something which isn't supported? All I want to do is play an unmolested (non-MKV) blu-ray rip over DLNA without transcoding & degrading the picture quality. The WDTV definitely supports the blu-ray streams I want to play, plus JRiver does a great job of presenting all my movies (Blu Ray & DVD) with nice artwork etc. All that's missing is the bit after I press play!

Yes, I'm guessing I could probably switch to MKV but that's a mammoth task and should not be necessary.

Thanks!

-- Andy

[stevemac]

• If I try to play a Blu Ray with transcoding switched off the WDTV complains it's an unsupported format
• But if I try to bypass Media Server and play the raw file the WDTV plays it without a problem

It feels as though Media Server is doing something to the stream which makes it incompatible with the WDTV. Are there any settings I need to enable to make this work?

I'm on the latest WD firmware and have tried this with the latest builds of both MC17 & 18. I'm using a wired network.

Any help very much appreciated!

-- Andy

Hi Andy,


My collection is MKVs & the WD unit is great with them.  Tried with a BDMV folder tonight & I get the unsupported format message on the WD TV Live you've reported.  I'm happy to try a few things out
Would you provide more detail on what you're doing to bypass the media server.  Are you mapping as a  network share or connecting a HDD to the WD unit?  In the BDMV structure what file are you selecting or is the WD unit presenting the movie & you then just select it.

regards,

Steve

[duttonst]

Hi Steve.

Thanks for the reply - appreciate you taking the time to look into this.

When I've bypassed the media server I've done it by using a network share and both by playing the file in the STREAM folder directly and by scanning the drive using the Media Library feature in WDTV. The WDTV recognises and plays the file both ways and if you are using the library feature it does a resonable job of identifying the right file to play.

If you are wondering why I don't just stick with doing it this way rather than using the JRiver DNLA server try Googling "wdtv live network share stutter"! Basically the WDTV SMB client doesn't seem to be up to the job and most people who have this problem (including me) seem to have more success using DLNA servers. JRiver is *streets* ahead of other servers in terms of library browsing etc so it would be my preferred choice if I can get it to work.

Regards,

Andy

[stevemac]

Hi Andy

Connected an external HDD containing a BDMV folder to the WD unit.  It was recognised and played however there was an issue with the audio stream.  The movie has Dolby trueHD and several AC-3 tracks.  The WD unit did not recognise these (showed as Invalid) & played stream 1 (True HD)

I reattempted accessing the same BDMV via MC and DLNA.  The WD unit recogises the Video Codec (VC-1), but does not show the audio stream & of course it can't play it.  For the same movie converted to MKV, the WD unit can interpret the video & audio streams & plays OK

I have tried MC with the DLNA flags enabled (as normal) and disabled (so it acts as a uPnP server).  Same result

Also searched WD TV Live community forums & it unclear if anyone can stream BDMV folders to it from any DLNA server.  Can you provide any further details in this space?

I don't think I can add anymore value - although can provide a logfile and trace if needed.  Perhaps Bob can explain what's going on

regards,

Steve
 

[duttonst]

Thanks Steve.

Really appreciate you taking more time to look into this. Interestingly I haven't noticed the WD TV Live having problems with the audio streams I've thrown at it (mostly TrueHD & DTS I think). Not sure if it makes a difference but I'm passing these straight through over HDMI and allowing my Receiver to sort them out. I'll try a few more titles to confirm.

I played around with a few different DLNA servers and had some success but can't recall which combinations worked – I'll try and confirm tonight, starting with the native W7 DLNA server. All of the other servers I tried seem to suffer from the same problem though: they only give a "file" view of my movies. This is ugly but just about works for films where the movie is all in a single large file. However with films where there’s a file per chapter (e.g. Iron Man 2) it's completely unworkable: you end up having to play the movie one chapter at a time. JRiver seems to be smarter so I'm hoping it will do better, if I can get it to actually play.

I'm certain that putting all of my movies into MKV containers would work. However having ripped quite a few movies into folders now (which work great with the MC front-end) I'm loathe to do this. I'm not short of disk and I just hate the idea of throwing all that information away.

EDIT: I've just re-checked and if I select, say, the main movie file from Avatar while using the MS W7 DLNA server it plays perfectly with a DTS 5.1 audio stream. Using JRiver DLNA I get an unsupported message, unless I tell it to transcode.

Regards,


Andy