Hi, does WD TV Live Plus support playlist with SetAVTransportURI UPnP calls (for video content), if yes where can I find info about supported formats?
Thanks, Jacek
I would like to know the answer to this question as well! WD, can you post a reply?
Someone is currently looking into this.
Thank you. Also, if someone can look into volume issue that I also reported, that would be great.
Hi guys,
I have to say that your question was so unique and specific many of us here wanted to see if we could find the answer. Well long story, we asked one of our partners. Packet Video the makers of Twonky media server. Unfortunately their answer was to us as obscure as your question. If this does not answer your question, or if you have additional questions, please let us know.
Concerning the WDTV Live device, you can’t put play lists directly to the device. Normally play lists are handled by the UPnP Control Point. You would not put a play list directly onto a client.
Jacek,
what volume issue are you refering to? sorry, I only see this post
James_K wrote:
Jacek,
what volume issue are you refering to? sorry, I only see this post
http://community.wdc.com/t5/Networking/Volume-control-is-not-working-when-used-via-UPnP/m-p/54304
Thank you RichUK, yes that is the thread.
James, thank you for looking into it.
The arguments in that thread as the behavior is right are rather incorrect. In UPnP, you should enable only functions that are supported by your device. As such, volume should not be exposed at all (e.g., WDT doesn’t support GetVolumeDB, and is not exposing it via UPnP interface).
The other arguments that since there is no volume on the remote have also nothing to do with UPnP. How about other companies that want to use your exposed UPnP interface to provide a different remote?
Sigma chip provides volume control, and possibly your main code is already using it; however, as remote is not issuing those commands, it was an oversight to not connect your UPnP code to Sigma’s volume API.
Let me know if you need more info.
Best, jacek
If I were the person in charge of interpreting the UPnP specs, I’d go to standardizeddcps/UPnP-av-ContentDirectory-v3-Service-20080930.pdf and look at section 2.6.10 Playlist Manipulation.
Section 2.6.10.1 has a sample DIDL for an object.item.playlist whos points at an m3u file. It does not seem unreasonable to also support .PLS files and anything else in common use on the internet.
Section 2.6.10.2 has an example of a container with a , but I’m not sure how to represent that on the UI. Maybe a “play all” button to the right of the list where the video preview would have gone.
Since that’s the kind of you can expect from a ContentDirectory, i would expect my UPnP AVTransport to accept the very same URL in its SetAVTransportURI call.
I stuck an object.item.playlist in one of my ContentDirectories and the WD TVL+ did not handle it correctly. It instead played every movie from the folder that contained the playlist.
Based on my experiments with playlists I have concluded that their support is rather basic at the moment. It would be nice to hear a timeline from the developers for playlist features, but they’re probably busy actually coding stuff.
Hi Thoth, I was going through the same procedure. I tried pls and m3u formats, but didn’t have any luck with it. I agree that part of the problem could be coming from a DIDL providing a wrong description, on the other hand, DIDL has rather no more info that is already provided in the playlist, so one may argue that most part of DIDL could be easily ignored, and only the URI portion of SetAVTransportURI should/could be needed.
It would be nice if WDC could provide a one/two line playlist that should be working with a WDTV box, and let us know which DMS was used to successfuly serve that playlist.
James,
I am using a UPnP Control Point to talk to WDTV box. Also, the playlist is stored on a separate DMS (not on a HD attached to a WDTV). Therefore, per your explanation, it should work. Unfortunatelly, it doesn’t.
Also, I tried pls, m3u simple and advanced. With a pls playlist it only hits DMS to get the playlist file (doesn’t attempt to HEAD/GET on the media files). A simple m3u when played few times is bringing the WDTV box down (DMS is hit with a bad playlist name, box has to be powered down to recover). With a more advanced m3u WDTV plays the very first file form the playlist, looks like it gets confused and tries to play it again (hits the DMS once again for the first link and displays video progress bar), but then aborts the play.
On the other hand, when I pass the same lists to XBMC, it handles pls/m3u lists quite well. So, maybe a slightly different playlist format has to be provided, or possibly some extra settings via DIDL.
Let me know if you need more info.
Best, Jacek
jacek wrote:
…
So, maybe a slightly different playlist format has to be provided, or possibly some extra settings via DIDL.
The conclusion I drew from my experiments is that the playlist support in the WD TVL+ is minimal, and some bedrock features (like supporting URLs, both absolute and relative, in a playlist) are missing from current firmware. Improved support for playlists may or may not be in WD’s roadmap for the product.
I don’t know how many generations of these hardware players we’ll have to go through before they catch up to the functionality of software solutions like XBMC and mplayer.
