Testresults Sony Bravia W5500

[Heathcliff]

Hi, first let me thank shagrath and other devs for this great media-server!!

I recently bought a Sony Bravia 40 W5500. And I wanted to use DLNA to watch my movies. I downloaded all DLNA servers I could find and I tested all of them.

My computer:

Core-2-Duo @ 1.8 Ghz
3 GB Ram
Windows Vista SP2

Tested software:

- TVersity 1.6 (server was not recognized at all)
- Twonky Media Server 5.0.61 (server was recognized, but most video's were not listed)
- Microsoft Media Player 11.0.6002.18005 (server was recognized, but most video's were not listed)
- Mezzmo 1.1.2.0 (server was recognized, but most video's were not listed)
- Nero MediaHome 4.4.26.0 (server was recognized, but most video's were not listed)
- Simplecenter 4.1.4 (could not make it work because the registration server has been offline for the last couple of days)
- PS3 Media Server 1.11.350 (Plays most video files!)

As you can see, PS3 Media Server was the only one that I could get to work with my Sony Bravia. The movies that were not listed were movies that needed transcoding. Although many media servers were supposed to support transcoding, I could not get it to work properly. Mezzmo 1.2 is due to get released and it should support transcoding. TVersity, Twonky Media Server, Nero MediaHome and SimpleCenter as supposed to support transcoding, but it does not work with Sony Bravia. Microsoft Media Player 12 (released with Windows 7) is said to support transcoding, but I haven't been able to test that.

I have tested PS3 Media Server with a Wifi connection with max bandwidth of 25 MBit and a 100 MBit cable connection.

Although I'm very happy with the results so far, I hope someone can help me resolve these problems I ran into:

- PMS does not seem to obey the max bandwidth setting for transcoding. When I set it to 20 MBit, the video chokes when I play it over Wifi and it exceeds 25 MBit. I can also see in the bandwidth meter that it exceeds 20 MBit.

- Everytime PMS is restarted it is seen as a new server. I get a new icon everytime. The old icons are disabled until I manually delete them.

- A movie always needs to be restarted; default is continue which does not seem to work. I get "Out of bounds error" in server log and message on TV: "Playback not available" or "No access to server" (menecoder.exe hangs with high cpu usage).

- I tested two mkv-files. One works and the other one doesn't. Both use AVC codec.
Video that works:
- AVC profile High@L4.1
- AC3 audio
- Size: 1920 x 1080
Video that doesn't work:
- AVC profile High@L5.1
- DTS audio
- Size: 1920 x 800
The Video is in AVC and Sony Bravia should be able to play that. It doesn't matter if I use MEncoder or TsMuxer. In both cases the AVC version of the video looks like this:

This video has good audio. I have MuxDTSToMpeg set to true in the conf-file. Apparently the DTS audio is reencoded correctly to AC3. Someone had a similar problem here: http://ps3mediaserver.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3209&p=13927#p13927. But setting MuxDTSToMpeg to false did not make a difference for the video. It just caused the audio to be scrambled too. I have the option H264Level41Limited set to true in the conf-file. But I don't think the profile is the problem, because it is only an indication for the bandwidth. I suspect the size of 1920 x 800 is the problem, because the video looks awry. Someone describes a solution here: http://ps3mediaserver.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=14014#p14014. But I have not been able to test that so far. When I choose to reencode to MPeg2 using MEncoder it works, but the quality of the video is not really good. The original video is very high quality, but the MPeg2 version is not.

- Fast-forward on many movies result in "Playback not available" or restarting the movie. I believe this is already being discussed here: http://ps3mediaserver.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2908.

- On some movies the default version does not work ("Playback not available"), but another transcode would work.
For example an Avi file with MPeg4 video and AC3 audio:
Default: MEncoder Mpeg2, audio ?? -> does not work
Other: MEncoder Mpeg2, audio AC3 -> works
It is suggested here http://ps3mediaserver.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3159&p=13563#p13563 to force transcoding for certain file-extensions. But when a steam in a container is already supported by Sony Bravia I do not want to force transcoding. Is there another way to let PMS choose whether to default transcode or not?

- I think there a some memory leaks. After some playback I have very high virtual memory size of the java process that is running PMS.

Thank you very much to everyone who is working on PMS and who is supporting this forum!

René

[fabio_m]

Hi René and thank you for sharing your experience.

Please could you confirm the following:
- You used the PS3 Media Server directly with the TV, and not via a PS3 device
- You have successfully transcoded formats that the TV does not support natively, e.g. AVI

If that is the case, would you mind posting a quick, high-level, step-by-step guide.

Thank you in advance.

<Edit>PS: Apparently VideoLAN v1 also supports DLNA and transcoding, but I haven't tried it and at this time both the Wiki and forum are offline...</edit>

[Heathcliff]

Hi Fabio,

Please could you confirm the following:
- You used the PS3 Media Server directly with the TV, and not via a PS3 device

Yes, I did. I have my tv connected to my router with an ethernet cable. I have my laptop with movies connected wireless (or connected with cable when I want to see Full HD movies because of bandwidth). I have only my router between the tv and the computer, no ps3 or xbox.

- You have successfully transcoded formats that the TV does not support natively, e.g. AVI

If that is the case, would you mind posting a quick, high-level, step-by-step guide.

Yes, I did. But PS3 Media Server works quite well right out of the box. Download the latest build here: http://ps3mediaserver.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3217. Install it. Run it. In the sharing-settings add the folder you want to share. In the transcoder settings for MEncoder you could enable these options for better performance: "Improved multicore support for H264" and "Disable deblock filter for H264". On the tv remote control press Home. Go to "Video" and see of PS3 Media Player is listed. If it isn't, you need to go to "Settings" and then "Server list". Press "Options" and choose "Update server list". If it still doesn't show up, you might need to change the firewall-settings on your computer. If you have an interactive firewall, you might need to retry 3 times (and accept to open a different port 3 times), before it works. After that you should be able to browse and play your videos. You might run into some problems, that I described in my first post. But most movies (avi, mpg, mkv, etc) should work now.

<Edit>PS: Apparently VideoLAN v1 also supports DLNA and transcoding, but I haven't tried it and at this time both the Wiki and forum are offline...</edit>

Thanks for the tip. I will try it.

I could really use some help with the issues I described in my first post. I would be very glad if someone could assist me. I'm especially interested in a solution for the mkv with scrambled video. Thanks.

René

[carsten]

Hi,

I found out that this TV won't work with resolutions other than 1920x1080 or similar "standard" ones. I had to reencode
those that had the black bars cut (like 1920x1040 or 1920x880) with borders added.

BR,
Carsten.

[Heathcliff]

Hi Carsten,

I found out that this TV won't work with resolutions other than 1920x1080 or similar "standard" ones. I had to reencode
those that had the black bars cut (like 1920x1040 or 1920x880) with borders added.

Thanks for your response. I have two questions:

- Did you have scrambled video like I did when you used other resolutions?

- Did you reencode with PS3 Media Server or with an external program? Is there a way to reencode to a different resolution with PS3 Media Server in real time?

René

[Heathcliff]

Fabio,

<Edit>PS: Apparently VideoLAN v1 also supports DLNA and transcoding, but I haven't tried it and at this time both the Wiki and forum are offline...</edit>

I did check out VideoLan, but it does not support DLNA as far as I could see. I tried the program and I also searched forums. There was an attempt to implement DLNA for Google Summer Of Code 2008 project, but the project has not been active for the last year. The is also some generic UPNP support, but that has not been merged to the trunk yet. So far PS3 Media Player is still the best DLNA server I've tried.

See these links:
http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=52363
http://wiki.videolan.org/SoC_2008/UPnP

René

[krapo]

Hi Carsten,

I found out that this TV won't work with resolutions other than 1920x1080 or similar "standard" ones. I had to reencode
those that had the black bars cut (like 1920x1040 or 1920x880) with borders added.

Thanks for your response. I have two questions:

- Did you have scrambled video like I did when you used other resolutions?

- Did you reencode with PS3 Media Server or with an external program? Is there a way to reencode to a different resolution with PS3 Media Server in real time?

René

Hi,

Thank you René for the report, it's very instructive !
I tested myself PS3MS 2 weeks ago with my 40W5500, and it finally worked OK on most files after I found the "force transcode" checkbox based on extension.
I still have a lot to learn and plan to do more testing now based on your own findings. I'll post here myself if I find out something useful.

What I can tell so far is that I have the same problem as carsten with non 16/9 aspect ratio files: they get displayed distorted on the whole screen without any obvious option to respect the aspect ratio. However, I never got scrambled video like your pictures show.

For test purposes, it would be good to have some kind of test suite of miscellaneous short video files (w/ various conatainer, codecs and def) so that we could all try on the same files. I used to have such a testsuite when testing my old KiSS 558, but it's now outdated. Would you know of such a suite (free of copyrights) ?

Cheers,
Vincent.

PS: That's a long story... The reason why I couldn't test further DLNA during the past 2 weeks is that my new LCD only worked for 5 or 6 hours after I took it out of the box I have hopes that it will be finally repaired tonight...

[Lascar]

Hi,

Thank you for your report and your experience return.
First, I've purchased a Sony Bravia W5500. I was confusing with all DLNA softs. I've made a lot of tests on Windows XP, Ubuntu Linux.
Personaly, I'm very impressed by PS3 media server, it's exactly what I was looking for.

The main problem is the capability to Fast-forward on movies, as René said the result in "Playback not available" or restarting the movie.

I fixed the resolutions pb other than 1920x1080 by adding borders.

Go to :
1. Transcoding settings/MEncoder/
2. Button Expert settings : codecs specific parameters
3. Add : (width/height) >= 2 :: -vf scale=704:396,expand=0:-132:-1:-1

However, I never got scrambled video like your pictures show.

Hope, It will help you

Phil

[tomeko]

Hi

However, I never got scrambled video like your pictures show.

You can get "scrambled" screen with H264 HD video with aspect ratio other than 16:9 and with level L4.1. In this case audio is plaing to fast, and sound is stutering. (if thits same stream has level set to L5.1, then there is no video, but audio is ok).

[krapo]

Hi,

I could do a few tests yesterday... more to come

The main problem is the capability to Fast-forward on movies, as René said the result in "Playback not available" or restarting the movie.

Fast-forward works for me (sometimes it hangs but I don't get this error message)

I fixed the resolutions pb other than 1920x1080 by adding borders.
3. Add : (width/height) >= 2 :: -vf scale=704:396,expand=0:-132:-1:-1

It worked also for me with the following as seen on another thread :
(width/height) >= 1.8 :: -vf expand=:::::16/9
Indeed I don't do scaling so that I keep the maximum definition (well, I believe that's what It does...) and just specify 16/9 so that MEncoder computes the right width for the black borders depending on the file aspect ratio.

Cheers