I’ve spent hours, days, and weeks searching, reading, testing and trying … even bought a brand new WDTV Live HUB compared to my year old HUB and neither performed as I desired with regards to being a Media Server with Twonky 5.1.9 and .MP4 files
I’m pretty computer literate and technically competent, but this is killing me … I beleive it’s how twonky 5.1.9 is handling the files and trying to stream them, but this is not an area of my expertise.
Here’s what I have, WDTV Live HUB, about 500 .MP4 files (full length movie files .8 Gb to 1.4 Gb in size) which I used handbrake to convert. The files stream and play fine on both my Samsung TV’s (LCD xxxxxxxC650 and xxxxxxxC550) using a netbook computer runnning Windows 7 as a Media Server, they also stream play fine from my new Netgear 6300 router with ReadyShare connected via the USB port. My entire network is hardwired with CAT5e and/or CAT6 completely Gigabit.
Trying to use my WDTV Live Hub, my Samung TV’s fail, after a long time of loading message, preparing to play message, but then display file format not supported error these are the exact files I streamed and played on the netbook w/ Win 7 and Netgear 6300 router. I then connected to the Twonky Media interface using 192.168.1.xx:9000 to get to the UI on a Windows XP computer, I was able to see the media and go to the folder and file where my .MP4 files were recognized by Twonky, I clicked on one and waited about a minute or so before the file actually started to play … It appeared to me it was doing a huge amount of buffering or something, I could see my LAN status was receiving a huge amount of data … I suspect that is what is happening with my Samsung TV’s (they both behave the same way) … Is twonky trying to buffer way to much or something that causes the TV to basically time-out and giving the error message “file format not supported”
I really would prefer not to run the Media server on the netbook as it tends to be a bit slow and with my new Netgear 6300 router seeming to be a great Media Server but not what I want to use it as … Now that I know the files work from other Media Servers with DLNA, and I believe .MP4 is one of the most universally accepted file format, I could do .mkv, but if I recall that didn’t work either, or possibly some other formats, but hate to think how many weeks it would take to re-encode near 500 movie to a different format …
To add to the confusion, some smaller .MP4 files seem to play fine … and I have some home videos I converted with I think Arch soft or something .mpg files which are very large 3 to 4 Gb, but play fine …
I wish I could upgrade my Twnoky version on my WD TV Live Hub … My gut feeling tells me that would probablt fix it, but I’m no expert in video converting file formats and why some work and other dont …
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Mike