Latest Version and Sony Bravia KDL46W5500

[MovieFrek]

H264 does not work, unless I need to modify .cfg?

I have a DVB-T transmitter and I can send H264 to the Sony TV with no problems.

I have a PC with a Ryzen 5 CPU 6 cores, 35 Gigs of RAM and NVIDIA GTX 1060.
The OS is Linux Mint 20.04.
Yesterday downloaded latest Universal Media server but the only thing the Sony TV can see is the old MPEG2 and has artefacts. Quality is crap.
The settings on the GUI mention H264 but it doesn't work.

Is this product ready to really give good image? Should I move to Plex?

[mik_s]

There is probably not a .conf file for that model of TV so a new one will need to be made.
It could be easy as tweaking a similar .conf to be used instead. There could be other reasons too why the quality is bad.
Will need logs though so see the section in red above.

[MovieFrek]

Here they are

[MovieFrek]

Ok, there is or are some small details.................

1) Sony DOES NOT support H264 over DLNA hence it is utterly silly to transcode back to MPEG 2. Unreal..............................
2) Converting files with VLC to .ts is a long winding story................BUT if the original format IS NOT 1280 x 720 or 1920 x 1080 then it will go to MPEG2, back to crap.

That is the reason I decided to go with an SDR and TX on my own UHF DVB-T channel low power for inside the house. It never fails.
I have just tried Wild Media server....................same problem. Serviio will not even run, not sure what they have done.

So, I rather let you know as it may be futile, I was not aware that via Ethernet Sony DLNA would go what is doing.

[mik_s]

Logs were not in trace mode so are of limited help. But because of the age of the TV its codec support will be limited so most things will likely need transcoding to be playable (like h265)

Most TVs should support h264 over DNLA now but as it is not defined in the .conf then it must be too old to support it so it falls back to MPEG2 (DVD quality)
The only option to play is to transcode. Other servers will have the same limitation. As long as there is available network bandwidth then the quality should be the same, it just takes a lot more data to stream in MPEG2 at the same quality as H264. I did find a few links to its DLNA compatibility here and here

There is some errors that may be making things worse though. One is that it cannot load the Mediainfo library which is used to determine what format your files are in and if your TV can play it natively so is forcing everything to get transcoded. I can't see why as the logs are not in trace mode. Since you are running on linux you might have to do a bit more setup to get it working but I don't know anything about it. Try searching on here as I'm sure someone has posted a solution. This might give a clue..

Code: Select all

WARN  2022-03-28 15:04:01.520 [main] Error loading libzen: Unable to load library 'zen':
libzen.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
libzen.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Native library (linux-x86-64/libzen.so) not found in resource path ([file:/media/richard/7d65b650-062c-4de1-8c7a-6d5b18a30136/home/richard/Universal%20Media%20Server%202022/ums-10.18.0/update.jar, file:/media/richard/7d65b650-062c-4de1-8c7a-6d5b18a30136/home/richard/Universal%20Media%20Server%202022/ums-10.18.0/ums.jar])
INFO  2022-03-28 15:04:01.521 [main] Loading MediaInfo library
ERROR 2022-03-28 15:04:01.527 [main] Error loading MediaInfo library: Unable to load library 'mediainfo':
libmediainfo.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
libmediainfo.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Native library (linux-x86-64/libmediainfo.so) not found in resource path ([file:/media/richard/7d65b650-062c-4de1-8c7a-6d5b18a30136/home/richard/Universal%20Media%20Server%202022/ums-10.18.0/update.jar, file:/media/richard/7d65b650-062c-4de1-8c7a-6d5b18a30136/home/richard/Universal%20Media%20Server%202022/ums-10.18.0/ums.jar])

To test if videos are capable of being streamed instead of transcoded try playing from the #--TRANSCODE--# folder and choose "No transcoding"
(if you do not see it, enable "show the #--Transcode--# folder" in the GUI on the navigation tab)

[MovieFrek]

Ok, thanks, I did put trace mode, maybe the sequence was wrong

1) Should I put trace mode BEFORE even turning on the TV ? I did it the other way
2) The TV is back year 2008 so is not a new one
3) Via DVB-T transmitter there are no problems in decoding H 264
4) Heaps of bandwidth in my network. I have wired 1 Gig environment. Wireless is a lie to normal people, convenient but...... ( I am a Cisco Academy trainer, know a bit).

Happy to try the logs again. Let me know if I failed in the log sequence. Should I start log trace and then turn TV wait for its discovery and then attempt to play a file?

I did try Serviio latest. On linux mint latest does not work, that rubbish of JAVA ( sorry, I hate Java in the Cisco world for the GUI of appliances turned a headache of the first kind).
I then tried Wild Media server latest, and same drama, MPEG 2.

It is so good to have a DVB-T TX ..............

Summary: let me know happy to get info that could help you guys. I am not an expert in many things..............RF yes, I am king.

[mik_s]

As fas as I can tell h264 over network is not supported on that TV so you are limited to MPEG2.You can try playing without transcoding from the #--transcode--# folder but my guess is that it will fail to play.

Its not really the overall network speed but the speed to the device that is important, Yours shows an estimated speed of 37.20282930315657 Mb/s which may be enough for h264 but not sure about MPEG2. It could be UMS is reducing the quality so keep it under that speed.
I know very little about networking though except that wireless might be too slow and unreliable for streaming video.

I think sometimes UMS fails to switch into trace mode. The order does not really matter as it is the UMS startup, initial communication with devices on the network and the decision making on when to transcode that is important. Also playing a file can give more info on what it is doing and the settings it is using to transcode.

The important thing to fix is MediaInfo, without it everything will be transcoded and not necessarily at the best quality. It should have been installed alongside UMS but may not have or needs configured separately on Linux. Try to download and install it yourself. I have very little experience with Linux to be of any more help. Get that working first before trying new logs.

I have no idea what a DVB-T TX is, at a guess is it a way of creating your own channel? If it is then the communication will only be one way so you can only send video from it but not be able to select what you want from the TV. I have no idea if it is possible for UMS to direct its output over to it.

[MovieFrek]

OK, thanks.

1) DVB-T TX TX= transmitter. I have a low power digital TV transmitter (DVB= Digital Video Broadcasting T = terrestrial). Not to worries.
2) I will try again in Linux and see what I get.
3) Will install in WIN 10 latest and run the logs so you can have both "worlds" sort to speak and compare.
4) Do not know if the Sony Ethernet port can do 1 G/Second or only 100 megabits. The 37 megs should be ok for an MPEG 2 TS. (in 1998 used to sell the TS tested to TV stations in Australia from German company Rhode & Schwarz) It is just that I have moved away from a dying TV world and forgotten many things.
5) Wireless is bad news, is not full duplex and there are many contentions hence Harry Potter won't come to the rescue.
6) In any Ethernet layer 2 network, if one end can do 1 Gig but the other can only do 100 megabits then the auto negotiation falls back to 100. So it can only do what the other can receive in those ocasions.

Will do more logs and send them, but I can see that I will have to stick with my transmitter thing, some close neighbours might find interesting.

[MovieFrek]

Two logs from Linux

[MovieFrek]

WINDOWS 10 21H2 version logs

Not surprised?

Linux is 99 cents, they are always 1 cent away from the dollar. An eternal problem. Again, in Windows MPEG2 is forced in no matter what.

In both situations, this time we manually forced 90 megabits per second in the interfaces.
Lots of errors under Linux