T4 playback of media from NAS

[madmax]

I have a bunch of home movies on my NAS, all .mpg files. They all played fine for many years. Then recently my NAS died, and I had to buy a new one (ReadyNAS 204), and copy all the movies across from a USB backup onto the new NAS (took several days!).

But now the T4 sees some files as .m3u extension and won't play them, while others are still .mpg and play fine. However, when viewing the NAS folders and files on the PC, they all appear as .mpg files and all play happily in Windows Media Player and VLC Media Player, so there is nothing wrong with them. What is going on, and how do I 'change' these files back to .mpg?

[Gully]

.m3u files are usually playlist files rather than media files.

Are you sure you are looking at the same files?

I cannot see why a different NAS would associate them differently and how it would affect the T4.

[madmax]

I can assure you they are .mpg files (checking Properties via the PC confirms it).

I don't even use playlist files. I had to Google .m3u to find out what this extension is.

It affects the T4 because the T4 won't play them. But I don't know if the NAS is 'reporting' them to the T4 incorrectly, or if the T4 is 'seeing' them incorrectly. I'd love to check, but how can I tell?

[MrQuade]

Are you using DLNA or SMB to access the files? I am guessing maybe DLNA,c and the NAS DLNA server is showing the T4 the wrong things. If that's the case try a SMB mount instead.

If you are already using SMB, then I don't know what your NAS is doing. The T4 won't misread files in that way using the standard media player.

[madmax]

I have no idea. My knowledge of all things network-ish is pretty close to zero.

But thanks for the tip. I'll have a play around with mounts and see what I can figure out.

[netmask]

Post a MediaInfo report of the .M3U file

An M3U file is a plain text file that specifies the locations of one or more media files. The file is saved with the "m3u" filename extension if the text is encoded in the local system's default non-Unicode encoding (e.g., a Windows codepage), or with the "m3u8" extension if the text is UTF-8 encoded.

[prl]

Are you using DLNA or SMB to access the files? ...

In the media selection screen, when you're viewing the list of files on the has that has the .m3u files in it, what's displayed on the top right of the screen, above the pinstripe?

If it starts /media/upnp, you're looking at files via a DLNA server. If it starts /media/autofs or /media/net, you're accessing it through an SMB (or perhaps NFS) server.

Given the odd name changes, I'm pretty sure you're viewing the files via DLNA.

[madmax]

I can confirm the path is /media/upnp. I had no idea that using DLNA could cause problems.

I'll do a mount as autofs the next chance I get.

Thanks all.

[MrQuade]

DLNA is a good idea in principle and almost always absolute rubbish in implementation and practice. You trade theoretical interoperability for having two things that can now contain bugs and go wrong (software on both server and client end).

You often find that you are at the mercy of what the server side understands and can interpret for the current. You also lose things like subtitles and alternate audio tracks depending on what hacks the server implements.

It's generally best avoided if you have an alternative.