Database Users

2.2 (froyo) users and DLNA (allshare)

Currently 2.1 "All Share" will not play mkv's via lan.
Can a froyo user test the following methods.
Using a network file manager app like Astro, are you able to play a MKV from lan?
Via Allshare can you play a MKV from lan?

My Synology 107+ contains 3 small test files : one avi(Xvid), one mpg(MPEG2) and og one mkv(x264)
My I9000 JPK with OCLF could not play any of them!!!
I think they all worked on JM8!!!
Regards,
JKay

I tried avi format with my Philipf 46PFL9704, and it works fine!
But Mkv and default video it doesen't open 'cos it hasn't good codecs..

No luck with mkv or xvid (avi) through allshare on jpk.
Also its worth mentioning that the same files I tested play perfectly directly on the phone..

Trinitronik said:
I tried avi format with my Philipf 46PFL9704, and it works fine!
But Mkv and default video it doesen't open 'cos it hasn't good codecs..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It has nothing to do with codecs. Copy the same file to your device and it will play fine. It is a problem with AllShare, and it seems like it is still broken in the Froyo update. Which doesn't surprise me since AllShare is not part of Android.

Guys, as I understand, Allshare is only used to transfer files to a player. Playing mkv or anything has to do with the player's capability. Firmware won't change the experience!
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

I rename my .mkv files to .avi.
Media Player 11 then picks them up as shareable, and I can stream them without problems via AllShare to my i9000.
Only problem is, you cannot seek, so you have to watch from the beginning.

I've streamed MKVs from my phone to my Western Digital TV box, with JF3 and JM2...

my allshare cannot find my laptop after I upgraded to 2.2 JPM.. anyone else have this issue?

I have reflashed and it still has this problem..
I also have a problem where the phone will connect to one of my routers at home, but will not connect to the repeater bridge router in my room which has identical settings as my main router..
Along with Allshare not working, these two features were working fine before, and now after I flashed froyo JPM, it stopped working..
When I tried going back to stock firmware, it still didnt work..
Any ideas guys? Thanks!

I'm having same problems.
Upgraded my Samsung Galaxy to Froyo and now can't play .mkv files via allshare anymore. This is so frustrating, I thought Froyo was all singing and going to make the Android device the ultimate weapon. I have tried other andriod .mkv players and all have the same problem <media not recognised>

Hi,
actually, after the update, AllShare is more or less completely broken. First of all, a firmware upgrade will most likely not help, because AllShare is not part of android at all.
Regarding another post: A media server does not only offer the video to a network source, it obeys to a certain standard (DLNA), which is why you will always find your MKVs being transcoded to some sort of MPEG stream before playing. The Media SERVER has all the work providing ready-to-go video, most likely with as little compression as possible. DLNA ist not just a samba share. It is way more than that.
Can anyone confirm the MP3 behavior I am experiencing? MP3s play fine for the first 30 seconds, somewhere around that they start skipping around and finally stop when played through my PS3 media client.
Samsung Galaxy S i9000, lagfixed, JPO.
Cheers.
Andreas

This is a real pain in the bum.. there must be a way to get the mkv files to stream from my server to my phone. It worked perfectly on the Android 2.1 version : (
I wonder who makes Allshare and if they are aware of the problem? Alternatively does anyone know any other program that can stream .mkv files to the Galaxy? I really don't want to start having to load an 8gb file on to the card to play it : /

There's another thread on this in the Vibrant forum. No news there either.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=10387971#post10387971

Hmm never tried Allshare but regarding Astro I've never gotten it to play anything from a network share, always had to copy to the SD card first. That does take an annoyingly long time so I'll watch for progress on this as well (for whenever I actually get a working SGS back in my hands ).

Try using ES File Explorer as it seems better than Astro and has its own video player which streams from FTP and file shares OK for me.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

thegadgetman said:
Try using ES File Explorer as it seems better than Astro and has its own video player which streams from FTP and file shares OK for me.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, but it lacks tracking (skipping in a file) and also doesn't support MKV.

Is there a way stream my Nas media in allshare, I can only play pc files?
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

sonci said:
Is there a way stream my Nas media in allshare, I can only play pc files?
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
AllShare is a DLNA program. It is capable of functioning both as a client and as a server. It sounds like you want to play back PC files on your phone. For this you would need something acting as a DLNA server. If your NAS doesn't support this then you could install a server program on something else and point it to your NAS for content. This could be a spare computer, a device specifically made for this, or even some routers.

Try to use another media server like PS3 Media server or tvirsity. DNLA will not support MKV files.
Using PS3 Media server I can stream mkv to my ps3 and my Samsung LCD tv that supports DNLA.

Galaxy Tab as DLNA Client

Does anyone know how to get media streaming to the tab via DLNA? I know twonky works on most files, however, TVersity and PS3 Media Server do not. Does anyone have a supported file type and codec support paper? Has anyone got a way to make all file types work, even if they have to be transcoded?

Dona doesn't transcode. And there's Sammy's Dona client preinstalled - its called allshare.
For crappy transfixing on the fly try vocal stream and convert.though why you want to do this when you have allshare is a mystery.

I know DLNA itself does not transcode. I am looking to see if someone knows of a DLNA server that will transcode into the proper format for Allshare. Allshare has brutal file support, as It will not play any file I have without transcoding. Might also be a MIME type issue, just seeing how everyone is streaming to the Tab.

I have never had to transcode anything in order to dlna share with allshare. My bids are all in avi though as far as I recall. Music and images all work fine too. They are all mp3 and jpg respectively.
Sent from my GT-P1000 using Tapatalk

I don't think it's the codec support as such but rather how the DLNA server is presenting the video to Allshare, it's obviously VERY picky as I've had no luck at all getting it to play anything that plays fine when copied to the Tab itself.
Twonky is a pretty crappy application IMHO, I've always found it very unreliable. PS3 media server might work? TVersity is a bit bloated but is another option. The latter 2 will (I believe) stream and/or transcode as needed.

knightnz said:
I don't think it's the codec support as such but rather how the DLNA server is presenting the video to Allshare, it's obviously VERY picky as I've had no luck at all getting it to play anything that plays fine when copied to the Tab itself.
Twonky is a pretty crappy application IMHO, I've always found it very unreliable. PS3 media server might work? TVersity is a bit bloated but is another option. The latter 2 will (I believe) stream and/or transcode as needed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I use miniDLNA on o rooted, Linux based NAS box. Had no problems so far. If you are or can run Linux I'd recommend miniDLNA.

Have you tried serviio? I use this on Win7 with my Samsung TV.

you can use astro to fiddle with extension headers (but i find allshare works almost flawlessly with the new official jk5 firmware)

ftgg99 said:
you can use astro to fiddle with extension headers (but i find allshare works almost flawlessly with the new official jk5 firmware)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Official JK5, you mean via Kies? Is it out?
If so, is it different from the Samfirmware one? Kies says to me that my device "can not" be updated, not that it "does not" need updating.

ps3 media server possible transcoding?

can someone try to work on ps3 media server settings ,on the fly trans coding maybe is better option then changing whole library of movies.It work for xbox maybe its gonna work on transformer
# ps3mediaserver renderer profile for Android
# Refer to PS3.conf for help
RendererName=Android
RendererIcon=android.png
UserAgentSearch=Android
Video=true
Audio=true
Image=true
SeekByTime=false
TranscodeVideo=MPEGAC3
TranscodeAudio=MP3
DefaultVBVBufSize=true
MuxH264ToMpegTS=true
MuxDTSToMpeg=true
WrapDTSIntoPCM=false
MuxLPCMToMpeg=true
MaxVideoBitrateMbps=0
MaxVideoWidth=0
MaxVideoHeight=0
TranscodeExtensions=
StreamExtensions=hdmov,hdm,flac,fla,dts,ogg,asf,asx,m2v,mkv

it wont work. the only thing you can transcode too is mpeg2 which the transformer cant do over upnp. mp4 cant be live streamed over upnp only over rtsp or rtmp, if you really want live transcoding look at vlc media player and vlc s+c for android. it takes a lot of tweaking but does work.

can you provide some more information about the transcode capabilities such as the lackof mpeg streaming

SangreSlayer said:
can you provide some more information about the transcode capabilities such as the lackof mpeg streaming
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have had no problems streaming mpeg2 even to the native player with Mediatomb. In fact, you can directly play mpeg2 files from an internet site (internet archive) if you have enough bandwidth. Even the matroska format will stream, although without sound and at an unpredictable framerate. Still, I think that problem is on the encoding side.

So what your saying is you can transcode with PS3 media server?
IE: if you were to take a video gotten from a generic source, lets say via bittorrent you can stream that with the PS3 media server?
Any video I try does not work. it only works if I transcode it with handbrake first.
any tips would be greatly appreciated.

SangreSlayer said:
So what your saying is you can transcode with PS3 media server?
IE: if you were to take a video gotten from a generic source, lets say via bittorrent you can stream that with the PS3 media server?
Any video I try does not work. it only works if I transcode it with handbrake first.
any tips would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If I was you I would go and get a WD media player. They go for about 60-90 bucks. I used the PS3 for about a year and I gave up. Mkv is not support on ps3 media server. Videos that it cant play you're pc will need to transcode before sending it over to your display. I ended up getting a dedicated media player. There are tons to choose from. WD, boxee, popcorn hour and dune players. No issues streaming 20-30GB blu ray movies when I had the WD player. PS3 sucks for streaming IMHO.

Actually, mpeg2 can be streamed over upnp.
Try this:
Code:
# ps3mediaserver renderer profile for Android
# Refer to PS3.conf for help
RendererName=Android
RendererIcon=android.png
UserAgentSearch=Android
Video=true
Audio=true
Image=true
SeekByTime=false
TranscodeVideo=MPEGAC3
TranscodeAudio=MP3
DefaultVBVBufSize=true
MuxH264ToMpegTS=false
MuxDTSToMpeg=false
WrapDTSIntoPCM=false
MuxLPCMToMpeg=false
MaxVideoBitrateMbps=0
MaxVideoWidth=0
MaxVideoHeight=0
TranscodeExtensions=
StreamExtensions=

frosty5689 said:
Actually, mpeg2 can be streamed over upnp.
Try this:
Code:
# ps3mediaserver renderer profile for Android
# Refer to PS3.conf for help
RendererName=Android
RendererIcon=android.png
UserAgentSearch=Android
Video=true
Audio=true
Image=true
SeekByTime=false
TranscodeVideo=MPEGAC3
TranscodeAudio=MP3
DefaultVBVBufSize=true
MuxH264ToMpegTS=false
MuxDTSToMpeg=false
WrapDTSIntoPCM=false
MuxLPCMToMpeg=false
MaxVideoBitrateMbps=0
MaxVideoWidth=0
MaxVideoHeight=0
TranscodeExtensions=
StreamExtensions=
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Though it should be worth noting UPnPlay doesn't send a "streaming end" HTTP header to the UPNP server, so after you play one video PS3 media server doesn't know you stopped watching the video and will be stuck in the "streaming mode", causing any other video not to load until you restart PS3 Media Server. This problem only persists iwth PMS, Serviio works fine if you set the transcoding profile. I wish PMS worked as it is the only Server with full softsub support.
Edit: Opps accidentally pressed "Quote" instead of edit...

Just wanted to make sure i am trying with the same player as you.
I am using the "my Net" and selecting the ps3 media server from there.
With the new settings, when I go to play it it just hangs with "please Wait" previously it would just immediately end with "fail to load"

SangreSlayer said:
Just wanted to make sure i am trying with the same player as you.
I am using the "my Net" and selecting the ps3 media server from there.
With the new settings, when I go to play it it just hangs with "please Wait" previously it would just immediately end with "fail to load"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you edit Android.conf with my profile and then restarted the server? Also, use Upnplay combined with MoboPlayer.

I did edit the file with your settings and restart the server. Will download Upbplay (already have mobo installed).
Update in a few minutes

That does seem to work. I am able to play non HD videos.
I was able to play different video's back to back without restarting, I tested with three different videos, watch 1 min of each.
I tested out a topgear episode that is 720p. My PC says its being trans-coded, but moboplayer just says "loading". After 1.5 minutes i cancelled out by going "home"
I then restarted the PS3 media server and reloaded upnplay and tried the video again. my PC still says transcoding and serving but mobo is stuck on loading.
Under Transcoding settings, i don't have Avisynth/FFmpeg or Avisynth/Mencoder available as they are marked red if that means anything
Any suggestions?
Thanks for being so helpful. I really appreciate it.

I know this post is asking about ps3 media server, and I have tried to use it also, but what I have found is a media server called PLEX, there is a mac/windows/even Linux server version, then you get the client on the app store for $5. I can not believe how well this app allows me to stream VOB/MKV/MPG,etc, and it allows me to do this all the way up to HIGH PROFILE 1080p MKV, oh and it also allows me to do this on a remote wifi connection or even on 3g, it really is amazing what these guys have pulled together. The other HUGE plus is it is a branch off of XBMC, so you have the same similar interface with all scraping, etc automatically, it can also do music and supports plugins. Anyways I would suggest you try it, server is free to download, and the app is so worth the measly $5, just suggest you get the server all setup and working before you buy the app. but even if you don;t like it the plex team will refund your money if you are not happy so there is really no remorse checking it out. Hope this helps, I am off to watch a 1080p high profile mkv on my transformer >

I think OP is trying to get PMS working so he can watch media on his PS3 too without running 2 servers. As to why HD vids don't play, maybe it didn't detect the need to transcode it, I need to look into this again after exam's over (maybe that'll explain why my videos didn't play properly when I tested), feel free to use the PS3.conf and try different things. It doesn't matter if you have ffdshow/avisynth, it uses bundled mencoder to re-encode. All that matters i that your PC can play the video fine in DirectShow players like Windows Media Player, Media Player Classic, Zoom Player.

I tried the above .conf file settings and still when running an HD video
it won't limit the video size
is there a way to transcode down into say
800x480
I tried this
MaxVideoWidth=800
MaxVideoHeight=480

RobH79: Thanks for the information. So far I am most of the the way to my end goal. The last hold out being the 720p video's.
I believe the OP (like myself) do not want to run 2x renders, one for the PS3, one for the tablet.
Frosty:
The video does play fine on my PC using VLC but not with Windows media player ( I anticipate this is why all my below troubleshooting did nothing based upon your last response.)
I have done some more testing and tried a few different settings in the config, such as
MaxVideoWidth=800
MaxVideoHeight=600
and MaxVideoBitrateMbps=3
so far nothing has worked.
The video does play fine on my PC using VLC. I still see PS3 Media Server using the transcoding buffer, and Mencoder is using varying amounts of CPU and the java memory size is increasing as time goes on (I assume filling up the buffer)
**Update Since I started typing**
I went to: http://matroska.org/technical/guides/playback/windows/index.html and found out that i needed the CCCP pack, i usually dont install it on my system from a bad experience many years ago.
However I installed it and now it plays fine in windows media player.
I loaded up PS3 Media server and tried streaming again from my tablet...
And no luck, same issue as before. I went through all the other variations of the tweaks above and also no luck.
Any other suggestions?

I also tried to get myNet working, but i found this.
myNet uses AwoX as UserAgent name. So copy Android.conf and rename the file and change from:
UserAgentSearch=Android
to
UserAgentSearch=AwoX
But all upnp clients that you can download in the market use Android.conf. I know so far that only AVIs/WMV are working. However no MKVs.

ok... just my 2 cents
I have a tonido plug running ubuntun 9.04 and mediatomb as a server, no transcoding eneabled.
I installed UPnPlay from market as a upnp renderer (audio only, but support to stream video with external palyer)
I got DicePlayer (paid app) and am able to stream mkv, avi, mov, mp4 containers, even some movies that have srt or sub subtitles, however if I connect my tablet to a TV via HDMI I only get the video and not the subs... MyNet app gives a lot of trouble working with m3u playlists and can only render a file at a time, meaning if you want to play continous audio/viedo you need to go one by one manually.
So far I'm happy with this setup, planning on upgragind my local WLAN to "N" standard byt so far 54gb are good, not exellent
On the down side, I haven't got the time to tweak mediatomb to present in a convinient way video files, it throws everything regardless of the folder structure you have on the server hard disk
Edit, if you know how to hard encode and stream subtitles info is appreciated, also if you know to send subs via HDMI to tv I'll be grateful

Streamed MKV to Galaxy Tab via DNLA/AllShare

Just posting mainly to get this to the top of Google if anyone else ever does similar searches to me. The Galaxy Tab's AllShare app (so I assume this also holds for the Galaxy S, Vibrant, and all the other devices that are appearing in the "similar threads we found" prompt as I post this) expects MKVs to be supplied with a mimetype of mkv/x-msvideo. If not, whatever DNLA software you're using, you'll get the unsupported format error. I've just spent the day yesterday wading through every DNLA server known to man trying to get streamed MKVs working. The only combination I've found that works is Twonky plus editing its clients.db file to modify the mimetype of MKVs. Once done, streaming MKVs works a treat.
Hope this is useful to someone in the future (probably incoming people from Google!)

I've actually got .mkvs to stream via "VLC Direct", along with VLC open with a web interface. This works over 3g, but depends heavily on your upstream. You can use this program as a VLC remote for your PC too, as well as stream videos from your tab to your PC.

Loccy
you supposed right, I'm in the same situation with a Galaxy s..
I think this is one of the very few features i really miss right now, having Allshare (or similar) capable of streaming mkv's from a server to the phone
Later today i'll try stekum's solution, i will consider paying the pro version if it works just fine, even if it requires a server side software (that's why i still prefer "regular" pc's over nas).
I've also read about PlugPlayer app. I might give it a try, anyone already did?
I don't mind not having a fancy graphic interface, so i tried EsExplorer over LAN, but with no sucess.. anyone knows if there's a player/file browser wich could handle mkv over lan?
Cheers

I had xvid and mkv's streaming over wifi on my network via SMB shares before I wiped and installed my current rom. Now i've got xvid working, but no matter what combo i try mkv's will not stream.. Thinking about going back to stock to see if the same settings work again to stream mkv's. I'm using a combo of file expert + vplayer. rockplayer seems to try and play streaming mkv's.. but it fails at it (will play, but they are unwatchable)

The thing to remember is that the Tab stock ROM, or those based on stock (eg. Overcome) actually have support for hardware decoding of MKVs in the stock player. Anything that is seen as an MKV file is fine - I suspect the internal mimetype for MKVs is the same as AVIs, so that's why SMB works (although I was never able to get my wifi to push data fast enough to the tab to make that combo work). The internal player treats AVIs and MKVs on the local filesystem identically. SMB shares are mounted on the local filesystem, so when you open an MKV, the OS says "ooh, mkv/x-msvideo" and the player says "great, an AVI file, I can play that". Non stock ROMs don't have that MKV support - in fact most Android flavours don't, as I've found recently with a cheaply 10" tab I bought recently to take over the Galaxy as my video device.
When you get into DNLA it's the server that supplies the mimetype for the file. As most DNLA servers supply the "correct" mimetype for MKV AllShare doesn't know recognise the file type, and (incorrectly) reports that it can't play the file. So if you're using DNLA you MUST modify the mimetype the server sends for MKV.
The VLC solution is fine, but is transcoding, so what you're getting is not actually an MKV at all.
Twonky was the only DNLA server I managed to do this with without similarly resorting to transcoding.

Could you guide us please which section of the clients.db did you modify?
Sent from my GT-P1000 using Tapatalk

a parse of your clients.db would be awesome, tried changing mimetype for Android and samsung TV (added a mkv line to Android and modded the other) No luck
I'm running twonky on my headless ubuntu server if that means anything
edit:
I changed the media reciever in the webinterface to Android and made the android settings in clients.db look like this:
NA:Android
HH:Android
DB:AUTO
WB:webbrowse-n95
TP:MP4,-relocate_moov
MT:mkv video/x-msvideo
after that i can play most of my mkv files, so i guess i got it working.

Ok, I've tried many solutions and combinations so far in my galaxy s .. nothing worked except for VLC DIRECT, as steckums suggested.
I haven't tried twonky yet though..from what loccy explained i can see it still needs an application running server side... i was hoping for something like allshare..but hey we can't have it all
Thanks Loccy and Psymon for the hint, i'll install twonky on the server and see if it works for me..
p.s. with such a little screen i couldn't notice a big loss of quality when VLC streamed, transcoding, my test movie. Maybe with tabs it is different

braz+ said:
Ok, I've tried many solutions and combinations so far in my galaxy s .. nothing worked except for VLC DIRECT, as steckums suggested.
I haven't tried twonky yet though..from what loccy explained i can see it still needs an application running server side... i was hoping for something like allshare..but hey we can't have it all
Thanks Loccy and Psymon for the hint, i'll install twonky on the server and see if it works for me..
p.s. with such a little screen i couldn't notice a big loss of quality when VLC streamed, transcoding, my test movie. Maybe with tabs it is different
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your in for treat if you can get it working. Simply play the same file one after the other in the respective format and you instantly appreciate that the higher the resolution the crisper and more vibrant the video quality and watchability (not real work I know) regardless off screen size. The only caveat being the original capture equipment used and post production ect.
My question for this in the know is this; my understanding (basic as it may well be) is that mkv can also handle more colours simultaneously and has the ability to display a much larger range overall. Firstly is this correct? Or reserved for vc1 or blueray and the upper echelon of displays? If correct by changing the mime does this, as would be logical, mean the extra bits are ignored as it believes its a simple avi. Also I find 720p HD avi is the happy middle for me and it can be as complicated to achieve good playback and battery life even using these. I think I may just do some research re the mime difference between regular and HD avi... thank you for the tips... most timely considering the impending awesomeness of BOCA v2.0 . Cheers guys..
Sent from my GT-P1000 using XDA Premium App

Loccy said:
The thing to remember is that the Tab stock ROM, or those based on stock (eg. Overcome) actually have support for hardware decoding of MKVs in the stock player. Anything that is seen as an MKV file is fine - I suspect the internal mimetype for MKVs is the same as AVIs, so that's why SMB works (although I was never able to get my wifi to push data fast enough to the tab to make that combo work). The internal player treats AVIs and MKVs on the local filesystem identically. SMB shares are mounted on the local filesystem, so when you open an MKV, the OS says "ooh, mkv/x-msvideo" and the player says "great, an AVI file, I can play that". Non stock ROMs don't have that MKV support - in fact most Android flavours don't, as I've found recently with a cheaply 10" tab I bought recently to take over the Galaxy as my video device.
When you get into DNLA it's the server that supplies the mimetype for the file. As most DNLA servers supply the "correct" mimetype for MKV AllShare doesn't know recognise the file type, and (incorrectly) reports that it can't play the file. So if you're using DNLA you MUST modify the mimetype the server sends for MKV.
The VLC solution is fine, but is transcoding, so what you're getting is not actually an MKV at all.
Twonky was the only DNLA server I managed to do this with without similarly resorting to transcoding.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd still be inclined to suggest perhaps its a little more involved than a simple trick like that. To achieve real hardware acceleration you would need to split the streams to be piped to respective chips. 5.1 faux surround soumd and a distinct, noticeable difference in the mkv picture quality being played via CPU vs true gpu and sound card decoding with the rather large differences in battery drain and the sharpness and vivid colours the rest make me really think there is a little sophisticated trickery going on here than meets the eye.
A haalil media splitting like service would also need to know to hand then differently. I think it just plays xvid but like xdva or whatever its obliged to to split the streams for their respective processing chips/centres avoiding CPU usage as an extremely important requirement. Simply the CPU would be more involved in the distribution side in regular stuff than the files like x264 and vc1 which are the gpu/hardware accelerated/decoded files.
Could be wrong here honestly not an expert but that's how I have always broken it down when try to wrap my head around it all.
So sleepy.. prolly oodles of sleeping (heh or even spelling) mistakes but they will have wait to be dealt with at a later date. Any resources that you may know of I'd be interested in learning more too. :-D
Sent from my GT-P1000 using XDA Premium App

joshuaauger said:
http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/issues/detail?id=486
Comment #4:
MimeTypesChanges=audio/wav=audio/L16|video/x-matroska=video/avi
Added that to my android.conf on ps3mediaserver. Works for mkv!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Grand will try that, just used mono or vlc for this though and had no issues but always nice to have alternative.
But I end up downloading the file as get great wifi in the house it serves me the best but will definitely try this out next weekend.
Was looking at upgrading the media server in here and transcocing is fine most of the time but.....

HELP!?!?!
Can you put this in stupid plain English??? I'm having the same problem but don't understand how or what to download/change/update... Tx

I know this is old, but as this is the first google result, a hint from the Playback creators, "Samsung TV users have reported mkv streaming working... If you just rename the file .avi instead of .mkv". It's a mime type issue, so just get around it by lying
I worked for me. File didn't play as .mkv, just renamed it. I bet the allshare app can be hacked to fix the mimetype issue, assuming it's in plaintext string, but why bother.
Same for flv videos.

[TIP] Streaming video solutions for your home network

I have a gigantic media server, over 10TB, mostly video (my music collection, while huge, just doesn't take much space comparatively).
While there are a variety of approaches/solutions to distributing this media around the home via a network, I've found that the easiest means for me is to simply mount server share(s) on playback devices when possible, rather than using solutions like TVersity and ORB.
Windows shares (a.k.a. CIFS) are simple to set up, provide full-resolution / quality playback of the material, and for whatever reasons (there are many), is more broadly compatible as a means of streaming. I've run into too many files that AllShare balks at, yet will play just fine when the file is streamed directly.
So what's the point of this thread?
Two-fold. 1) stimulate discussion on technology and methods used for streaming video on a LAN to get the best results, and 2) share my own solutions.
Here's what I've found:
CifsManager is Da Bomb. It does a great job of adding a system-wide Windows Share mounting and access capability to an Android device. Once a share is mounted on your phone, it looks just like any other mounted filesystem to any app, so files can be access on the shares as if they were local.
x264 encoded video plays very nicely on the stock video player. It's obvious that it has been optimized to take maximum advantage of hardware acceleration. I use the stock player to play HD content from a share over my network, which almost always means something in a mkv or mp4 container.
HOWEVER: The stock player can't play AAC encoded audio. This is a problem for mp4 -- these days, many people encoding for mp4 use AAC, so I find I have to demux, transcode audio (usually to mp3), and then remux. This is a PITA, but I haven't found any other solution... None of the third-party alternatives I've tried (most of them) can play x264 HD content and keep up. None.
To make things worse, for some reason hardware acceleration doesn't seem to have been implement for the Divx/Xvid (h263) default codec, so xvid video (usually SD format in avi containers) plays haltingly, and locks up frequently when streaming over CIFS. Oddly, copying a file over to local storage makes this problem go away with the stock player. My theory is that the network processing load combined with the CPU effort necessary to decode h263 without hardware assist just overwhelms the processor. Regardless, the stock player is not an acceptable solution here.
After trying many different players, the one that works best for "avi" files (almost always xvid encoded) is arcMedia (market, free). Close to flawless playback of this type of media streamed via CIFS. Unfortunately, arcMedia is completely useless for h264 (mkv, mp4 containers).
Streaming the direct source media, rather than going through a streaming server that will transcode, gives you the best possible quality and experience. While the above may sound complicated and involved, it really isn't -- in fact, it's the simplest:
Share your media library files in the usual way using the "Sharing and Security..." context-menu item on your windows media server.
Install CifsManager from the market.
Install arcMedia player from the market.
Mount your media shares on your phone with CifsManager.
Using your favorite File Manager, browse your media shares the same way you would your local SD card filesystem. To play an HD media file encoded with h264, click on it and play it in the stock player the same way you would if it was on your SD card.
For h263 encoded media (divx/xvid, virtually always avi container), run arcMedia and use its built-in file browser to navigate to the media file, then play it.
There are many, many advantages of convenience and ease-of-use in this approach over streaming with servers like TVersity, ORB, etc. On a LAN, where bandwidth isn't an issue, this approach works really well!

By the stock Video Player, did you mean on Android? Or Windows?
If Android:
Vital Player
If Windows:
Media Player Classic.

always looking for good info, and this is good stuff. Going to try it out when i get home and see if i have better luck than i've been having getting xvid and mkv's to stream from my network shares...

If you use GB rom, try diceplayer.
diceplayer can play 720p MKV+DTS with full HW acceleration.

I wish we had a thread like this for over the net streaming. If I'm at home I just use upnplay with rockplayer from my mediatomb box which is set to transcode anything ps3 can't play natively.. Haven't had any problems yet.
Cd's or tapes?

I use this:
http://www.serverelements.com/?target=NASLite-M2_x64
I have a dual core tower with 2 250 gig drives but want to add 5 1 tb drives with 8 gig of ram. This OS runs off a 8 gig jump drive with NO issues. I use UPNP to my Xbox and laptops. I haven't tried on my phone yet but I don't see why this wouldn't work.

schnowdapowda said:
I wish we had a thread like this for over the net streaming. If I'm at home I just use upnplay with rockplayer from my mediatomb box which is set to transcode anything ps3 can't play natively.. Haven't had any problems yet.
Cd's or tapes?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Check or something called Plex its great, I used orb for years and was never happy with playback...Plex is amazing and the android app is awesome.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

see, my whole thing is I don't want to run some extra server software just to have this work. I've got a networked media box (Patriot Box Office) and it plays everything over my network flawlessly from my NFS and SMB shares, and I want to be able to do the same thing from my Epic and Tab (mostly Tab with the bigger screen.) Working on some dev stuff with my Tab so it's not fully setup, but once i've got it back to normal I'm going to test Cifsmanager and see if it's the missing link to the issues I've had with getting mkv's to stream.

pvtjoker42 said:
see, my whole thing is I don't want to run some extra server software just to have this work. I've got a networked media box (Patriot Box Office) and it plays everything over my network flawlessly from my NFS and SMB shares, and I want to be able to do the same thing from my Epic and Tab (mostly Tab with the bigger screen.) Working on some dev stuff with my Tab so it's not fully setup, but once i've got it back to normal I'm going to test Cifsmanager and see if it's the missing link to the issues I've had with getting mkv's to stream.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cifs works with samba. Don't know if you knew that or not.
Cd's or tapes?

pvtjoker42 said:
see, my whole thing is I don't want to run some extra server software just to have this work. I've got a networked media box (Patriot Box Office) and it plays everything over my network flawlessly from my NFS and SMB shares, and I want to be able to do the same thing from my Epic and Tab (mostly Tab with the bigger screen.) Working on some dev stuff with my Tab so it's not fully setup, but once i've got it back to normal I'm going to test Cifsmanager and see if it's the missing link to the issues I've had with getting mkv's to stream.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
schnowdapowda said:
Cifs works with samba. Don't know if you knew that or not.
Cd's or tapes?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, and with ordinary Windows shares.
CifsManager is one of the best pieces of software I've put on my Epic. And I have A LOT of stuff...

Shinydude100 said:
By the stock Video Player, did you mean on Android?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Android, Samsung player that comes with the Epic.
For windows, I swear by CorePlayer. I'd buy it all over again full price if they'd add Android to their platforms (with HW acceleration, of course).

formula84 said:
Check or something called Plex its great, I used orb for years and was never happy with playback...Plex is amazing and the android app is awesome.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm going to find it and try it out right after I finish posting this.
I've been using Orb for years, and it has always had its issues. With Android, it became a major PITA because they only transcode to WM9 as of 6 months or so ago -- and WM codec support on Android is scant.

Great thread. Love this type of info. I've been messing with streamin off and on to my epic and this just pretty much sums up what I've been trying to do. Gonna go try that now...
Thanks!
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

Do I need to be rooted to mount my shares with cifs?
Also, can you recommend a tutorial or software for ripping my dvd collection to my storage server?
As a side note I am pretty happy with twonky for music dlna solution.
Thanks
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA Premium App

Does anyone know how to play mediacenter tv recordings in my htpc on epic?
Tried orb but didn't like the quality.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

PlayOn is amaaaazing. But it's 70 bucks to get it forever. You can stream out of your network over 3g/wifi to your Android and it look great! Even does subtitles. For my PC or PS3 I love PS3 Media Server. It's pretty much perfect and streams HD over WIFI G even.

sethlo said:
Do I need to be rooted to mount my shares with cifs?
Also, can you recommend a tutorial or software for ripping my dvd collection to my storage server?
As a side note I am pretty happy with twonky for music dlna solution.
Thanks
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA Premium App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, Cifsmanager requires root AND a cifs compatible kernel

I run Windows Home Server .v1 and have tried multiple combinations of players/clients without a whole lot of success.. until recently. Movies are in .mp4 and .mkv format. I use UPnPlay for access and MoboPlayer for streaming playback; the combination works great! I have tested on a rooted Nook, rooted Hauwei Ideos S7, Evo Shift (Not rooted.. Darn 2.3.3!), and my rooted Epic.