DLNA problems with Bravia KDL-46HX853

[NickL01]

Hi,

I am trying to stream music from my PC to a Sony Bravia 46HX853 TV.

I have set up the DLNA connection, and the TV and PC can see each other, and I have enabled streaming in Windows Media Player. I'm using Windows 8.1.

The TV can see and display photos in my PC's Public Pictures folder without difficulty, but can neither see nor play music in the Public Music folder. It does not even recognise the existence of that folder.

According to Sony support site, the TV is compatible with Windows 8, and capable of playing various music, video and photo file formats, but it only seems to be finding the photos. It's not listing anything else, let alone trying to play it. (I'm using JPGs and MP3s, so nothing exotic.)

I have checked the streaming and sharing options, and everything appears to be set to stream and/or share all media types and the sharing permissions on the music and photo folders appear the same.

Can anyone suggest what may be going on?

(I intend posting a similar query in the Microsoft support forums to come at it from that direction, as obviously I don't know whether this is a Windows or TV problem.)

Thanks for any help.

Nick

[Anonymous]

HI there

I have very little knowledge of WIndows Media Player in regards to DLNA Streaming, however as far as I am aware, WMP does not support many file formats (codecs) for DLNA.

However, what you probably require is what they call a "DLNA Server".  Its simply a piece of software to install on your PC, that can server up content to other devices (ie renderers). 

An excellent (and recommended) software is called Serviio.  Its free, unless you require the advanced features.  It also supports many file formats and codecs, and can even convert them 'on-the-fly' if the TV cannot recognise it.

Its available : http://www.serviio.org/

Hope this helps.

[NickL01]

Hi,

Thanks for replying.

I'd wondered if I needed some other server software. WMP does provide a DLNA server, and does support the basic file formats, but I'v eno experience of other servers, or indeed of DLNA at all before teh last few days.

After my original post, I got even more confused....

My TV is now showing and can play many files (photos, music and video) in my WMPlayer Library, even though that option is definitely not set in WMP. It was earlier on today, but I've unchecked it now, because it didn't seem to work.

And the test files I set up in my Public folders are now available on the TV.

What on Earth is going on? Do you happen to know if streaming settings changes and content lists take a while to propagate over DLNA to the rendering device? It's as though the TV took a while to pick up an index to available content, and is now still able to access that content even though, on the face of things, it shouldn't be available any more.

Very strange.

[Nielsen]

If you just added libraries with tons of media files, it can take several hours for the DNLA server to index all files. Meanwhile indexed files will appear,- not yet indexed will not.

[NickL01]

Ah, so I was probably getting the process in a hopeless mess by chopping and changing settings and expecting to see instant results. It woul dhave been indexing thousands of photos and music tracks.

I'll set it back to what I think I want and wait and see if the situation stabilises. At the moment I have a rather peculiar situation, where many of my picture files have  now disappeared from the Bravia, but the folder tree structure remains. Meanwhile all my music files appear to be still accessible and playable although I thought I'd turned that off!

What I actually want to do is make a subset of my image & video files accessible from the TV. I have no need to stream audio currently. But I was playing with the settings trying to understand what was happening, so I could eventually configure things the way I want.

I suppose if things don't turn out as I want, I'll need to delete the connection from both TV & PC and start again?

[Nielsen]

If you want to play around with the settings, I'll suggest only to select a small amount of different media files (libraries < 100 files). Then it will show within few minutes. Windows Media Player is also showing progress at the bottom I think (I only know ver. 12).