WDTV live hub connected to TV and Wifi router, my videos are all on the WDTV live hub
One Windows 7 PC wired connection to router, use it to transfer files to the wdtv
One Ipad, wireless connected to the same router
Generally speaking Im very happy with all the possibilities this offers. Have just one nagging issue:
In my Ipad, I am using Buzz player to stream videos from the WDTV to the Ipad. works like a charm. When I browse the network, the WDTV comes up in 2 flavours: Upnp and SMB. In this situation the PC is switched on.
Now when I switch my PC off, the SMB disappears, leaving only the Upnp.
Now Upnp is fine, video pleays great. BUT, it will not show the .srt subs. Whereas SMB (samba server I guess) will show the .srt subs.
Im a bit confused by this, looking for someone who can explain what role the PC would play in this, why SMB disappears and how I can watch the videos on my Ipad from my WDTV WITH .srt subs?!
One of the network geeks can correct me if I’m wrong, but when you’re using CIFS aka Samba aka Windows File Sharing, one computer needs to ask as the Master Browser… its job is to tell the other devices on the network who is sharing what with whom.
I’d guess that the iPad lacks the capacity to act as a master browser itself… it can work with CIFS, but if another PC isn’t acting as Master Browser, then nothing can be shared over the network.
I think that’s a shortcoming… I think WD should allow it to be the master browser, but they should set the “OS Level” to something like “1” so that it’s the absolute last resort.
If you can’t leave the PC on to act as switchboard when you want to serve from the iPad to the WDTV, then the easiest thing may be to just turn the subs into internal subs.
I’ve done that in the past, with MKVMerge… I just give it an .avi and a .srt as inputs and tell it to mux them into one file… it doesn’t do any transcoding. It just packs the audio stream(s), the video stream(s) and the subtitle stream(s) into one file. On my old, slow computer, it takes about 30 seconds to mux subtitles into a TV episode. You can set up a batch and be done fairly quickly.
If you don’t turn them into internals, then they can’t be served over DLNA/UPnP, because it’s essentially just sending the one file over http… UPnP doesn’t really have the capability of sending more than one file at once, so you can’t really use UPnP for sending the subs file along with the main file.
Well that **bleep**. Prior to me buying the wdtv live i would stream movies from my pc to my ipad. Part of the reason i got the wdtv is not having to leave my pc switched on! Pretty disappointed to see its not going to do what i wanted it to do.
No way to makd the wdtv act as master browser?
Abt 90 pct of my collection is avi files, dont think theyre as easy to mux…plus i dont feel like doing thst to 1500 files…
