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[csimon]

I've just bought a new LG smart TV (42LM670T), purely because I wanted a bigger set and also passive 3D. I didn't think about DLNA at all but I've tried it as a renderer using JRiver/JRemote and it works really well with all formats of video I've thrown at it so far (.MKVs and .AVIs with MPEG2 and H264). I was surprised because up until now I always though TVs had the worst implementations of DLNA. But time moves on I guess and although it's now 2013, this TV is a 2012 model and by now they should be getting it half right I suppose. I seems to respond quicker too than my WD TV Live.

Two other nice surprises: it seems to pass 5.1 from HDMI inputs and from DLNA-streamed media to its optical audio out. My other TV, and TVs generally, will only pass 5.1 if it's from an internal tuner.  Secondly, even when in DLNA renderer mode, having initiated playback via JRemote, the TV will still repsonds to commands like pause, stop, and play from its own remote control. My previous experience has been that in DMR mode, a device can only be controlled by the device that initiated the connection.

However, I'm finding I can't rewind or fast-forward through video - pressing those buttons on the remote control brings up an error along the lines of "this function cannot be used at this time".  Video Conversion in JRiver is turned off.  The same files can be fast-forwarded on the WDTV although, obviously, only in player mode as it won't respond to remote commands if initiated by an external controller.

I can go to the controller (JRemote) and use the position slider control to move the video, this works fine.  Is this called Time-Based seeking?  but I would like to be able to use fast-forward and rewind on the TV's remote control rather than having to go to the iPad to do this. Does anyone know where the problem lies here? Do LG TVs not have the ability to do this sort of seeking via DLNA or on those particular file types or is there something in JRiver that I can tweak?

BTW the TV won't play FLAC files so I would be unable to use it to play my music without conversion, but then again I don't really want to play music on my TV!  I'll continue to use the WDTV Live as an audio-only renderer.

[bob]

I suspect there may be more than one mode of fast forward/reverse.
Since JRemote works, I suspect it would work to do the same thing with MC as the controller.
But the player itself can do this in a couple of different ways, it can read a single stream and discard frames or jump forward X bytes and re-read.
On some devices, this is a selectable option (Samsung BD players for one IIRC).
You might look for this in the TV options.

Also, you could get an idea if it's related to time based seeks by setting video conversion to always convert. Then you'll get time base seek support.
Unconverted files play with byte based seeking.

[csimon]

There's no option on the TV that can be set, and I've tried with conversion on and still no joy, either as DMP or DMR. I suspect it's just that the TV can't do it via DLNA. I enquired to Cambridge Audio at one point to ask if seek was implemented when playing to their NP30 as DMR and the reply was No, even the position-slider in the app is only there to literally show position and was non-operational by the user. So I guess it's not something that can be taken for granted.

[bob]

Well, that's interesting.
But you can do it with JRemote so you must be able to do it with MC as the controller and conversion turned off (because that is essentially what JRemote is doing).
Perhaps a different combination of buttons on the remote would do a skip vs a seek?

[csimon]

I haven't tried from MC itself, I assume as you say that since JRemote is doing it then it would be the same thing. But the position slider in JRemote and MC client is a different function from the fast-forward and rewind buttons on a remote isn't it? When I move the slider, the video doesn't fast-forward in real time, it's only when I let go of the slider that it jumps immediately to that point. The fast-forward and rewind buttons do a real-time scan, or should do. Like a skip but very small increments. It's not as if the function is simply not working when I press the buttons, I actually get a message from the TV "Function not available now". MC client doesn't have fast-forward and rewind buttons as far as I can remember, I think the << and >> buttons do a track advance?

[bob]

Agreed, there is a fair amount of mapping of functionality in the FF logic.
I use a PS3 as an example of how this is handled properly.
When using the PS3 you can do a speedup, 1.5x (and still get sound!) and nX up to 16x I think.
It simply does a combination of throwing away data in the case of 1.5X and byte seeking in the other cases.
You can also easily tell it to seek to an exact time in the movie.
A lot of the BD players and most TV's lack this functionality with streams.
They can often do it when playing from attached devices like USB media though since they are just seeking into a file.
In the possibility we are missing something they are doing differently, you could install a different server to test this.
Serviio works pretty well and supports most advanced features of DLNA.