Automatic movie posters, etc

If i use a media server that ill provide automatic thumbnails, correct meta info for movies/tv shows and also will act as a dlna server, can the WD HD TV Live automatically use that info? I have zero interest in manually creating that data and am hoping to use something like XMBC or any other suggestion that will automatically fetch that data. I just dont know if the dlna client on the wd device supports that extra info.

No, none of the above. As far as I know, NO DLNA client or server can do any of that without employing some proprietary extensions, but I could be wrong…

So your saying that DLNA itself only supports a stream and a file name? No more “meta data” than that? I dont think thats right since it can pass the meta data for music cant it? If the client can receive it, there is obviously a way to pass it. Obviously not all dlna servers are created equal and i know that mp3’s store some data internally and all the data for a video file would have to be fetched externally, but still i would tink its possible. This is obviously all theory. I dont know what all data is passed or received in the dlna protocal in general.

Ok, if you’re talking about metadata IN the file, then yes, that would be passed. But it’s not passed separately, the client just pulls the tags out of the media file on receipt. But most MOVIE metadata, such as what XBMC uses, is NOT in the movie file, it’s in a separate NFO file.

But even the WD Hub doesn’t make much use of embedded metadata, it uses external XML files that are almost identical to XBMCs format.

But if its being streamed, its not a file anymore, its a stream, right? Thus the info contained in the file has nothing to do with whats being RECEIVED by the media player. Where the DLNA server gets the data its sending is irrelvent i would think. I could be 100% wrong, just thinking out loud.

The metadata and EXIF thumbnails for music are included in the .mp3 file.  The server just passes them along and its up to the renderer to extract them and make use of them.  It doesn’t send any extra files.

The WDTV devices essentially disregard the video metadata, even with local storage.  It doesn’t matter what metadata you include in your .mkv file, including thumbnails… the WDTV just ignores it.

So, sure… the server can send the metadata if the file has it embedded… it’s up to the renderer to decide what to do with it.

You have to be careful with the use of the word “stream”.  The renderer can still make requests of the server.  It’s not passive.  You can still FF/REW and pick chapters and all that.

I’m not too familiar with how the DLNA protocol works. But my understanding is that, in its basic modes, it’s not sending a stream. It’s actually sending the FILE, as-is, but in a fancy wrapping. One of these days I’ll do a packet snoop of a DLNA session to see if my theory is correct. But not tonight. :slight_smile:

My understanding was that UPnP AV was basically just sending the file (regardless of MIME type) over HTTP, just as if it was being served by Apache or something like that.  You could send anything… even a Word document.

I thought DLNA was based on that, but limited to a very few specific file/MIME types.  Anything else needs to be re-encoded to a valid file type before it can be sent.

Although, I thought DLNA could also optionally use RTP for transport, where the audio and video would actually be sent in separate paths.  In that case, they would be true bitstreams, as opposed to just the HTTP “file transfer” mode, I believe.

www.serviio.org

This DLNA server is one of the few that can send metadata and image posters to a client such WDTV Live. You might encounter other issues but at least the videos will be nicely displayed in any DLNA client with posters and title names.

And is free.