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[Cyisone]

Not trying to be rude but trying to understand why this is better than other free media servers.  I appreciate your guidance.

[AndyU]

Not trying to be rude but trying to understand why this is better than other free media servers.  I appreciate your guidance.

Don't know much about serviio, but it is described as a DLNA media server; JRiver is much more than that, it is a complete media player, ripper, tagger and server application. Even comparing them just as DLNA servers only I can't see anything in serviio that rivals JRiver ability to customise views, transcode, etc. Otoh serviio can be run on a NAS, while JRiver needs a pc or mac on. Since JRiver is free to try for a month, why don't you download it and compare it yourself? And then tell us if and why you think serviio is better! Plenty of other pure DLNA servers out there - Twonky, minimserver ....

[csimon]

As mentioned above, JRiver MC is a complete "media management and play" tool, Serviio is only a DLNA server which is a small part of what MC does.

If you are only looking for a DLNA server then the things I guess which will define whether one is any better than another for your own purposes are:

1. whether it will run on the hardware you want it to run on
2. whether it will transcode files as necessary depending on your particular rendering devices
3. whether it will allow you to categorise your media as you wish and specify/customise your browse menus
4. whether it incorporates metadata tagging/scraping tools if you need it to do that
5. whether it has its own browsing interface, e.g. a TV interface or a mobile app, etc.
6. whether it has its own ripping tools

There may be other things, but those are the major things off the top of my head!

Points 1 and 2 are subjective and I don't know what hardware you've got.

JriverMC will certainly do 3, 4, 5 and 6, and it does them extremely well. Last time I looked at serviio, it had limited and pre-defined browse structures and limited tagging management, whereas MC is completely flexible and customisable in that regard. It will also perform 5 better then serviio I guess, as it has a TV interface and remote apps and means you don't have to use a primitive interface that might be built into a TV, or a generic remote DLNA app.

Other than that, I don't know much about servoio, but if you describe to us what you'd like to do and what you expect from a DLNA server then we might be able to point you to specific things that MC does instead of trying to second-guess what serviio does and why one might be better than the other!

[csimon]

PS.

7. From my experience of serviio and its developers during its early stages, I think you will get better response from MC staff and user community, and also you get weekly releases of MC with bug fixes and new features, whereas with serviio the updates are not very regular.

I was initially looking for a NAS-installable server and was already fond of MC but started looking at serviio becuase it's available on a NAS. but I found its browse menus limiting and no better than any other media server. I put a request on the forum to enhance the browse menus, as the software was very much in its early stages of development, but unfortunately they found it too difficult to do at the time!

"I hear you, but it's not an easy thing to implement at all. Not only it would need complicated UI, but also a lot of changes to the underlaying data request layer and services. ATM I'm going with a predefined set of categories, each representing a data drilling command(s). Obviously if you have ideas for additional categories or enhancing the current ones then ideas are always welcome."

It sounds like they had not designed their basic data structures to allow user-defined sorting.

And then I got told off for requesting this, and being told that MC is not a server therefore that's why it allows you to customise your menus!!!

"j river is a Media center AKA a media client and not a server that is how it can add that feature thats the difference"

I don't know if things have changed since then.

[darkhyphenvoid]

i've been happily using MC for all my media uses, including as a server for my Sony Blu Ray player, for a number of years now. I have, however, encountered a few limitations, but i've generally worked around them. I have found that the server works best when set to not convert format, however, by doing this the Sony is only able to pick up AVI or DIVX video files. As most of my library is AVI or DIVX this is ok. Recently more sites have been moving over to MP4 or MKV formats (and the quality of MKV is pretty stunning so why not!) and in order to play these files I need to do one of two things - either stick them on a USB drive and plug in directly into the Sony (which will play pretty much anything you throw at it this way) or set MC18 to convert to MPEG2/DVD PAL stream. Converting does work however, the picture quality isn't always that good - things can get a little blurry in the background, and it reformats everything to 16.9 rather than keeping the original aspect ratio, which is always preferable. Tried using 'convert when necessary' as assumed this would be a best of both worlds option - retain AVI and DIVX as normal, convert MP4 and MKV, but this doesn't work - it converts AVI and DIVX, even though it doesn't need to and still doesn't recognise MP4. So it's either convert everything or nothing. So basically I'm left with a lot of running about changing the options - convert, don't convert, use USB drive. Generally covers all grounds but isn't perfect.

Just out of interest I recently tried out Serviio and discovered that it will stream all media including MP4 and MKV to the Sony without conversion. It did of course have it's own set of problems so I'm still using MC18, however I'm pretty curious to know how Serviio can stream these files to the Sony without conversion but MC18 can't?

[bp-plickner]

i've been happily using MC for all my media uses, including as a server for my Sony Blu Ray player, for a number of years now. I have, however, encountered a few limitations, but i've generally worked around them. I have found that the server works best when set to not convert format, however, by doing this the Sony is only able to pick up AVI or DIVX video files. As most of my library is AVI or DIVX this is ok. Recently more sites have been moving over to MP4 or MKV formats (and the quality of MKV is pretty stunning so why not!) and in order to play these files I need to do one of two things - either stick them on a USB drive and plug in directly into the Sony (which will play pretty much anything you throw at it this way) or set MC18 to convert to MPEG2/DVD PAL stream. Converting does work however, the picture quality isn't always that good - things can get a little blurry in the background, and it reformats everything to 16.9 rather than keeping the original aspect ratio, which is always preferable. Tried using 'convert when necessary' as assumed this would be a best of both worlds option - retain AVI and DIVX as normal, convert MP4 and MKV, but this doesn't work - it converts AVI and DIVX, even though it doesn't need to and still doesn't recognise MP4. So it's either convert everything or nothing. So basically I'm left with a lot of running about changing the options - convert, don't convert, use USB drive. Generally covers all grounds but isn't perfect.

Just out of interest I recently tried out Serviio and discovered that it will stream all media including MP4 and MKV to the Sony without conversion. It did of course have it's own set of problems so I'm still using MC18, however I'm pretty curious to know how Serviio can stream these files to the Sony without conversion but MC18 can't?

I agree

Almost 5 years later and I am still using serviio for this same reason. MC has problems passing large original format video files to my Sony UBP-X800 where Serviio does it.
That is why I use MC for audio and not so much for video

[JimH]

MC's DLNA Server has a setting for Sony PS4.

AndrewFG has a tool that can be used to discover the settings needed to work with the Renderer.  There are many posts about it on the Media Network board.