DLNA problems and NAS Shares

[Simon_Casey]

Hi All,

I have had my T3 since December '15 after upgrading from DP-S1 which had served me well. The T3 is much slicker though the response time is bit slow.

I still have a couple of problems that someone may be able to help me with. Note that the all of the firmware was up to date as of this poting.

1. DLNA from a NAS doesn't work
I have a ReadyNAS DuoV2 and a Synoloy 412+ that happily serve media via DLNA to various TV's and BluRay players around the house. The T3 picks up the servers in the Network manager and can search through directories and collates the media into videos etc. but when I go to play them, I get a Black screen with a "progress" timer that sticks at 0. This should work..please any clues?

2. Can't playback sound from CIFS/NFS shares unless down mixing is on.
On the same servers above, I can mount the shares "the hard way" using either CIFS or NFS but unless I have down mixing on, there is no sound though the picture plays perfectly. I know the source files have 5.1 and DTS and even if it weren't you would still have some Left or Right Channel sound. Am i missing a codec or something? As a noe, I down loaded the VLC plugin, could that have stuffed up the native video player?

Thanks,

BTW I'm a different Simon Casey to my namesake who I think is a moderator.

Regards

Simon (The other one. )

[simoncasey]

Oh my God

Are you one of these two?

[Simon_Casey]

Nope, another one, though I like to be thought of as an Irish Music Star.

Simon

[simoncasey]

Nope, another one, though I like to be thought of as an Irish Music Star.

Simon

and the first one is fictional, so that was probably unlikely.

[prl]

And "the other" simoncasey isn't a moderator.

[simoncasey]

And "the other" simoncasey isn't a moderator.

No, but I am quite moderate

[Gully]

and the first one is fictional, so that was probably unlikely.

I was about to post that it looked more like Andrew Lincoln but I guess both are really true.

And "the other" simoncasey isn't a moderator.

No, but I am quite moderate

So am I and I am.

[Simon_Casey]

hi,

Now we've sorted out who I am not and the difference between a guru and an moderator, any ideas on the problems I'm having with the T3?

Cheers

Simon

[prl]

If you copy one of the files that doesn't play to the T3's internal HDD, does it play then?

Similarly with the files that don't have audio unless you downmix.

The idea is to see whether the problem is with the T3's ability to play the files as you want them played, or whether it's something to do with the network. I suspect the former.

Also, what's the output chain for your audio? Which outputs on the T3 are used for audio, and how is the audio managed between there and the speakers?

And we haven't established who you are; only who you are not

[Simon_Casey]

Hi,

I'm happy you only know who I'm not at this point...we've only just met.

I'll try the file copy test and let you know.

the audio chain is T3 -> TOSS Link to -> Denon AVR 1802 -> Speakers.

The 5.1 & DTS all work when playing TV so it shouldn't be the audio chain.

Regards

Simon

[MrQuade]

Your AVR appears to have a couple of optical inputs and a coax input for digital sound. I assume then that your TV is using OPT-1 already?

Have you tried swapping the T3 to OPT-1 instead to see if it works in there?
Denon AVRs usually treat each input with a different lot of settings, and maybe OPT-2 has been set to reject Dolby/DTS?
I read some vague instructions in the manual about having to set the input to "Auto" or "DTS" to enable some surround mode. Wasn't really sure what it was getting at.

I've not tried the Optical output on the T3 to know how it behaves, as I have all HDMI equipment.
Maybe time to update to an HDMI equipped model!

Edit: Actually just thinking a bit more about it. Do you get 5.1 sound on the HD channels like GO!, One and Mate? If those work ok, and you get proper 5.1 Dolby from them, them you can ignore my previous comments about the receiver inputs.

[Simon_Casey]

As i mentioned in my last post, the TV sound is 5.1 so the audio chain should not be the problem

Simon

[MrQuade]

Apologies, I took that to mean the sound from your TV's DLNA features.

Did you try copying a file to the t3 yet?
How about 5.1 sound on recordings made by the T3?

Was the sound broken before you installed the vlc plugin?

Your firmware fully up to date? You can try re flashing the firmware and not installing the vlc plugin. It is not needed and an unknown quantity.

[simoncasey]

and the first one is fictional, so that was probably unlikely.

I was about to post that it looked more like Andrew Lincoln but I guess both are really true.

Ah yes, it's a similar question to whether your avatar is Dr Who or Matt Smith

[Simon_Casey]

Ok, now I'm confused. I've copied over one of the media files on to the T3 HDD. I switched off AAC downmixing and lost sound. I reactivated down mixing and the sound returned. However, and here's the kicker, I had 5.1 channels going. I rechecked the AVR and its set to "PRO LOGIC TV" so there is no 2ch->5.1 magic going on. In fact, changing the down mixing seems to have no impact.
I've verified the AVR is detecting Dolby digital as I have found a Dolby digital copy of some media that the T3 identifies as Dolby digital and the AVR accordingly identifies correctly.

Given that 5.1 seems to work inspite of the settings, and I will confirm with some Dts media,my next concern is the DLNA issue.

Why does DLNA work with all of the other players in my house and not the T3?

Simon

[MrQuade]

Did the first file have AAC audio or Dolby Digital? Be careful about mixing up formats here.

You receiver will not decode AAC audio, so the T3 downmixing must be on for AAC.

The T3 can only downmix to stereo, it cannot output downmixed 5.1. You can especially not transmit uncompressed 5.1 audio over TOSLINK. Not enough bandwidth.

You said you had set your AVR to "Pro Logic"? That mode would attempt to extract the surround channels from a stereo source, so you may be getting some form of 2.0 to 5.1 conversion.

What exactly happened with that second file you tried? You played it on the T3 and the receiver detected it as Dolby Digital and played it ok? But the same file will not play over DLNA?

[Simon_Casey]

What exactly happened with that second file you tried? You played it on the T3 and the receiver detected it as Dolby Digital and played it ok? But the same file will not play over DLNA?

When I try to play a file via DLNA, the screen goes blank and displays the normal progress bar but it's stuck a 0:00, won't seek or move from there. The same file plays ok from the file commander. I am able to control the T3 and exit ok.

So the sequence is "menu" > "sources"> "DLNA" > {select file}>"ok" ........Blank screen stuck at 0:00

If I do "menu" > "sources"> "av_nas" > {select file}>"ok" ........all good, plays perfectly where "av_nas" is the Cifs mount of the same nas that is the DLNA server.

Surprised that an optical link has "insufficient bandwidth" as that's the same way 5.1 was done with DVD players to AVR but I take your point. I'm getting some "Dts" content to confirm the Dts part but I suspect it will be ok.

Simon

[MrQuade]

When I try to play a file via DLNA, the screen goes blank and displays the normal progress bar but it's stuck a 0:00, won't seek or move from there. The same file plays ok from the file commander. I am able to control the T3 and exit ok.

Ahh ok, yes, sorry, I forgot this was a 2 part issue with DLNA failing and mixed sound results via SAMBA.

I'm afraid I don't have much advice for the DLNA side, as I avoid it like the plague whenever I can.

If I do "menu" > "sources"> "av_nas" > {select file}>"ok" ........all good, plays perfectly where "av_nas" is the Cifs mount of the same nas that is the DLNA server.

You say perfectly? So you can play DD and DTS files without downmixing and you get audio? Or do you still need to downmix?

Surprised that an optical link has "insufficient bandwidth" as that's the same way 5.1 was done with DVD players to AVR but I take your point. I'm getting some "Dts" content to confirm the Dts part but I suspect it will be ok.
Simon

That is because Dolby Digital and DTS are lossy compressoin formats and fit within the constraints of TOSLINK's bandwidth limitations. When equipment moved over to Bluray and HDMI, the players were able to downmix to uncompressed multichannel LPCM streams for devices that did not support the compressed formats.

[Simon_Casey]

Thanks for the help thus far.

Still need to downmix the acc to get audio but with dd and Dts content, sound is perfect and all channels are decoded by the AVR.

DLNA may be less than ideal but, the rest of the players work in my house and so should the T3 since it advertises it as a feature.

any ideas on the DLNA issue as I think the audio issue is as good as it can be now.

Regards

Simon

[MrQuade]

Yep, practically everyone will have to downmix AAC. I have a Denon receiver that is less than 2 years old and mine still doesn't support it. The only way I can get multichannel AAC sound is via XBMC/Kodi which downmixes to Dolby Digital by default.

I just had a bit of a play with my T3 and DLNA playback.

My NAS's built in Twonky Server successfully served up a few files of various formats and I had both video and sound.
I did have problems with my "Universal Media Server" software (heh, so much for universal), in that it wouldn't list any files.

Interestingly, when I tried with Plex's DLNA server, I got something that sounds somewhat similar to your issue, black screen and no progress on the timeline.

DLNA is a good idea that is often implemented badly. You get all sorts of inter compatibility issues depending on what server and client software you are using.
You can try an alternate server if the one you have isn't working well.

If your DLNA server is Plex, then you can instead try the Plex plugin for the T3. Some people have reported success with it. I have experimented briefly and it does seem to work though there is something in my TV library that causes it to choke.

Did you try re-flashing the latest firmware so as to completely remove the vlc plugin to see if that helped? If so, then my advice would probably be to simply continue to use Samba. I do, and consider it my first option rather than the often flakey DLNA protocol.

One hint for you is that you can set up bookmarks to frequently accessed folders in your media player. That makes it easy to navigate straight to buried folders in any of your Samba shares.

[MrQuade]

Oh, I also had another play with the T3 acting as a DLNA server. It seems to work ok for any clients that can natively play the files that the T3 is serving (it can serve up its own recordings or any other file you put on the T3.

The T3 doesn't do any kind of realtime (or background) transcoding as that would require far more CPU grunt than the T3 has, so that would limit its use to decently capable client devices.

Not that I am defending Beyonwiz's potentially dodgy DLNA client, but (and there is always a but), I think that the DLNA *server* functionality is the only DLNA functionality that Beyonwiz advertise officially. Or at least I haven't seen anything from them about DLNA client functions.