[Codec/DLNA] 42PFL7655K/02 - Support of FF/RWD / mkv / VIERA

[Pfennig]

Hello,

Firstly: Sorry for the long posting, but I want to describe the issues in detail and provide further information. Also I couldn't activate BBCode, so it might be not as readable as it would be with BBCode.

Last Christmas I bought the Philips 42PFL7655K/02 at Saturn in Germany. Haven't seen it a lot somewhere else since, so it might be some special retailer-model. But you can find it on the Philips homepage
http://www.p4c.philips.com/cgi-bin/dcbi ... FL7655K/02

It is DLNA-certified, I installed the latest firmware and I use the latest TwonkyServer 6.0.37 to stream audio, pics and video from my Win7 multimedia-PC to the TV. Most of my audio is mp3 in various bitrates, most of my pics are jpeg, and most of my videos are avi/divx and also some HD mkv's.

When I started, I couldn't get the TV to play any videos at all, so I did some research in forums how to set up the server correctly. So let's get straight to what I found out and what I am still wondering about:

The TV didn't play any videos ("Unable to play file: Unknown format") unless I told the server in its settings, this was "Philips Streamium AV" - just TV or Renderer TV didn't work.
Streamium AV works fine, it even plays mkv files. But I had two problems: Firstly all pictures were in thumbnail size, so for that the was useless. And secondly there was no way to fast forward / rewind during the videos via the TVs remote control.

Some searching later I found a clue to set the device to "Panasonic VIERA", so I did. Now the TV showed the pics correctly and I could FF/REW in videos.
But now the TV wouldn't play mkv files anymore. Annoying. So essentially I want a mix of settings from VIERA and Streamium AV for my TV to get the pics correctly, play mkv and FF/REW. So how to get that?

Some research later I knew, all settings for the different playback devices were in the "clients.db"-file. So I fiddled a bit with it, but didn't get far.

Although I fixed the problem for the Streamium with the pictures: In its section in the clients.db change the "TR:"-line to "TR:JPEG1920x1080,JPEG138x103,MP3,WAV,WMV" (put the higher (HD) resolution in front of the lower resolution). Now it shows all the pictures in full screen size. But that's all I could manage to fix.

Here are some of my further thoughts:

- The FF/REW problem could be linked to the DLNA-setting for the Streamium AV, because there it says "DLNANO" (no DLNA functionality). The VIERA is set to "DLNA15" so it seems to support DLNA natively. But simply changing it didn't work for me, just made all videos unplayable.

- The mkv-Problem for the VIERA could be fixed by setting the "MT:"-part right, but I couldnt get it to work properly. Whenever I changed something, it just made all videos unplayable or nothing happened at all. Maybe some combination like "MT:mkv video/x-mkv" or ".../x-matroska", don't know, didn't get it right.

- I believe the actual codec of the videos is irrelevant (or at least not first priority), because the TV can play all of them correctly. In my opinion it's the problem, how the settings for the different devices are implemented.

I have to say, I don't understand completely, what the all tags and different options mean and how they work and how I could use them correctly. So any help would be appreciated.

At last: The question:
Any proposition how to change the settings, so that I can play all video types, FF/REW during playback and view the pics in the appropriate size?

Any other comments, suggestions, hints?

So long
Pfennig

[roberto75]

hi,
i have found same problems with my Philips 40PFL7605M/08 and Twonky Server 6.0.38

has spent more than a year and the problem is still present!

[Twonky_Rick]

I believe this is a player issue and not a server issue.

- Rick

[Lord_Helmchen]

I think it is a server issue. I have a Philps 32PFL9705 and a Qnap TS-859 Pro. I tried Twonky 6.0.38, played a bit with the settings, than some files (avi, wmv) works with FF/REW, but some other things are not working anymore. Then i installed PS3 Media Server and most of my files works as expected.

One thing that seems to be important is to set HP: chunked in the clients.db for Philips TV Renderer. On my TV i could FW/REW avi and wmv then.

[Twonky_Rick]

That's good feedback. Thanks for sharing this.

I'll mention this to the engineers who may decide to modify the device database based on your suggestion.

- Rick

[Twonky_Rick]

Looks like they are going to look into this in April or May. To check status on this, ask me about DLNA-5870.

- Rick

[Lord_Helmchen]

Hi,
i played with Twonky Server 7.0.6 today. I just changed (in Philips Renderer TV)

<DLNA>
<Version>DLNANO</Version>
</DLNA>

to

<DLNA>
<Version>DLNA15</Version>
</DLNA>

Now i can FF/RW all MPG,WMV and MP4. Can someone else test this?
But AVI and MKV doesn't work. "Unsupported File Type". They are supported as you can see here: http://58pfl9955.files.wordpress.com/20 ... flxxx5.png

Any idea how to get AVI and MKV working?

[Twonky_Rick]

I'm thrilled to hear that you can now fast-forward and rewind MPG, WMV and MP4 after making the above edit! Thank you for letting us know this.

I'll ask them to test MKV and see if anything can be done about this. I didn't see AVI on your chart as a supported format. Is it there?

Are you still using your Philps 32PFL9705? Just want to make sure you don't also have other models.

- Rick

[Lord_Helmchen]

Yes, my TV is still 32PFL9705.

You're right. AVI isn't in the table, but from Usermanual (Page 92)
http://download.p4c.philips.com/files/3 ... fu_deu.pdf

Wiedergabeformate
• MP3, AAC
• WMA v2 bis v9.2
• Standbilder: JPEG
• MPEG 1, MPEG 2, MPEG 4
• H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC)
• WMV9
• MPEG-Program-Stream und Transport-Stream
• AVI, MP4, MKV, ASF

Also if i connect my external USB-HDD all files playable without problems. It's a bit confusing. Maybe they forgot it on the codec table?

Anyway, is there a good tutorial how to transcode-on-the-fly with twonky? Especially from avi to mpeg? So i would try this.

[Lord_Helmchen]

Finally i got it working with transcoding.

My "Philips Renderer TV.xml"

Code: Select all

<Client>
   <DeviceId>
      <DisplayName>Philips Renderer TV</DisplayName>
      <DeviceDescriptionRecognition>
         <DescriptionText>UPnP Media Renderer 1.0</DescriptionText>
         <DescriptionText>NMR</DescriptionText>
      </DeviceDescriptionRecognition>
      <MappingUpdatePolicy>FIX</MappingUpdatePolicy>
   </DeviceId>
   <Capabilities>
      <Scaling>
         <Target>JPEG1920x1080</Target>
      </Scaling>
      <VideoTranscoding>
         <Source>video/x-matroska</Source>
         <Source>video/x-mkv</Source>
         <Source>video/quicktime</Source>
         <Source>video/x-msvideo</Source>
         <Source>video/x-divx</Source>
         <Source>video/avi</Source>
         <Target>PAL</Target>
      </VideoTranscoding>
   </Capabilities>
   <Adaptations>
      <DLNA>
         <Version>DLNA15</Version>
      </DLNA>
   </Adaptations>
</Client>


My "ffmpeg-any-mpeg.desc"

Code: Select all

# transcode video
#(c) 2008 by PacketVideo
exec: ffmpeg -i $infile -vcodec mpeg2video -b 1000K $outfile
# capabilities
from=video/*
to=video/mpeg
asynchronous
priority=idle

[Twonky_Rick]

I'm glad it's now working after you enabled transcoding.

Also if i connect my external USB-HDD all files playable without problems. It's a bit confusing. Maybe they forgot it on the codec table?

Device often use different player software for USB and UPnP-network-based playback.

Anyway, is there a good tutorial how to transcode-on-the-fly with twonky? Especially from avi to mpeg? So i would try this.

Sounds like you may not need this anymore, but I'll include a link for others. viewtopic.php?f=24&t=5714#p22749

This is now a dated and probably only applies to TwonkyServer 4.x to 6.x. I've asked for an update for 7.0, but haven't gotten it yet.

Phibertron has created some nice transcoding tips for TS 7.x. You can find them here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=10682

Thanks for sharing your findings here.

- Rick

[Lord_Helmchen]

Tested PS3 Media Server once again. It seems that he can stream avi and mkv without transconding to my TV. I looked thru the PhilipsPFl.conf. http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver ... psPFL.conf

Here are the settings for avi. Can we adapt this in Twonky?

Code: Select all

# Mime types working with avi and divx:
# video/avi , video/x-ms-avi , video/msvideo , video/x-msvideo
# ==================ok====ok==ok==ok=
Supported = f:avi v:mp4 a:ac3|mp3|mpa m:video/x-msvideo
# =========================ok==ok==?==
Supported = f:avi v:divx a:ac3|mp3|mpa m:video/x-msvideo qpel:no
#
# My test files with the divx format have no gmc or qpel yes:
# ===================ok=====ok==ok==?============== qpel?
Supported = f:divx v:divx a:ac3|mp3|mpa m:video/x-msvideo

[Twonky_Rick]

I will ask. Thanks for sharing this info. with us.

- Rick

[chrisfa]

Any news on this?

I think transcoding is not working on WD My Book Live

[Twonky_Rick]

I did not hear back about this. There is often a lag between new feature requests and the time they are added to the product.

As far as HD video transcoding on any low-cost NAS, I wouldn't expect that to work. They just don't have enough processing power to do that in real-time.

- Rick

[chrisfa]

Two months have passed:

Any news on this? Or does anybody know, if I can enable transcoding on a Western Digital My Book Live?

[Twonky_Rick]

I'm unaware of any NAS that have enough power to do real-time transcoding or video without problems. MyBookLive is NOT capable of transcoding.

- Rick

[welverin]

Hi Rick,
the problem is THE SERVER !

With Mezzmo, TVMobili, Serviio and Windows Media Server i can FF/REW on philips 7605 without trascoding, without problem or any issue.

Only twonky has the problem, i post in this forum since version 5.1.x and now the version 7.1.2 still has the problem

it's incredibile

now i use tvmobili on qnap nas and i am happy, sadly i paid for twonky