Oppo BDP-83/93/95/103/105 DLNA/UPnP thread - Page 2

Cool! Thanks.

(and thanks to Styln for the help via PMs!)

Yes, I think people are getting thrown off by the term server, (which we are using correctly). The DLNA servers will run on your normal, everyday, computer (the one you are reading this post one). Serving up files does not take much in the way of system resources. That is why all the NASs people buy are running slow under/low powered CPUs. Even the new netbook processors (Intel Atom) are overkill for most home server applications. Memory requirements are likewise minuscule needing less than 128 MB in most cases.

Now, it's great if you can run a DLNA server directly on your NAS. If you rolled your own NAS, then you already know how to do this. If you just bought your NAS off the self, you probably have no clue how to do it and therefore shouldn't attempt it. Way beyond the scope of this post, thread, forum. Your best bet is to check with and pester your NAS provider to add a DLNA service to your NAS firmware.

So the thing to do while you're waiting for that NAS firmware update is to download and install the DLNA server of you choice to your computer. As Bill says, just treat it like any other program.

Next you need to configure the DLNA server. Tell it where to find the files you want to play on the Oppo. They could be on the same computer you installed the DLNA server on, they could be on an attached drive via USB, eSATA, firewire, etc, or they could be on your NAS and linked/mounted on your computer. However you normally use those files from your computer, configure the DLNA server to access them in the same way. This can be simple or complicated depending on the DLNA server and the features you need to use. If you need transcoding say to listen to or watch file formats that are not natively supported by the Oppo, then you need transcoding enabled. Look at the top of this thread and you will see some common configuration screens provided by dizziness.

That should do it! Click on the Oppo "Network" icon and you should see your DLNA server. Click on the server name and you should see the files you wanted to share. Click on a file and the Oppo should play it. Notice, there is no configuration to do on the Oppo

Styln

PS Yes, your computer and the DLNA server program must always be running while you are serving files to the Oppo. That is why the best place for the DLNA server IS on the NAS.

For those on linux, here's my (brief) experiences: (Mandriva 2010)

minidlna:
works fine, and it's very lightweight. But no transcoding, so only native formats.

mediatomb:
After setting up the folders to scan, works "out of the box" mostly. With help from Lord Google, I had to edit config.xml to get it to recognize .mkv as a video format.

I've just now tried setting up transcoding, and so far I've managed to get flac>pcm to sortof work. I think the delay is messing up the Oppo. When I try to play track 1, it skips track 1 and starts on 2. I can then chapter skip back to track 1 though.

And now it's stopped automatically advancing to the next track. I have to mess with combinations of forward and back chapter skips to get it to play.

that's it for now. If anyone wants my config.xml to play with, let me know.

I'm starting to get the feeling that my Mac mini may be overkill if I can get this server thing going to my 83. From what's been said, if I install Asset UPnP or TwonkyMedia on my Mac Pro (which is essentially my current NAS: all of my DVD and BD rips, pics, and music - approx 2.7TB - are on the Mac Pro's HDs), the Oppo (hardwire-connected to my network's base station: a 1TB Dual-Band Apple Time Capsule) will "see" any software it can utilize (MKV for example) and I'll be able to play it?

BTW: Mac Pro is connected to the network via 802.11n, but I can connect a direct ethernet wire "extension cord if throughput is too low (sometimes required when streaming BD-rip MKVs to my mini).

Yes, I am having a lot of trouble with full rate files. The files that I am using are transcoded from .tivo HD files into .mpg (using VideoRedo). They seem to play well enough, but they quickly cause the player to stop responding to any of the navigation buttons (i.e. fast forward, play, pause, stop, etc). The player seems effectively locked in a playback or fast forward mode. I tried playing .tivo files directly -- they instantly locked up the player rather than giving any sort of error message...

Does anyone know if folks from Oppo read these forums?

It goes perhaps without saying (but I will anyway) that the ReadyNAS DLNA support (which uses minidlna) also works out of the box. Thus, you can add ReadyNAS to the set of servers that work. [Although video streaming seems to lock up the device as others have noticed].

dizziness,

Thank you very much for the TVerstiy Oppo profile. After updating firmware in the BDP-83 and installing TVersity on my Windows XP based PC, I copied that section into the profiles.xml file and gave it a try.

Before going any farther, let me say that you should reboot your PC after modifying the profile.xml file. Just exiting TVersity and before a reboot, the BDP-83 showed up as a PS-3 device; a home-made movie (avi converted to mpg) and mp3s played but pictures did not display. Did a reboot and BDP-83 showed up as the found device but pictures still did not show up.

Did a little reading and then tried pictures of a smaller size and they showed up - sizes 1024x768 (757KB), 1680x1050 (1.152MB) but not 1920x1080 (2.44M) or larger.
So I successfully displayed some pictures, a movie and mp3s with very little extra effort.

Alan

PS My primary reason for using DLNA is to display pictures and play mp3s which reside on my PC. I use disks for movies (except for the movies I take).

Added later: Been poking and probing a bit and discovered that not being able to show pictures seems related to the maximum image size in profile.xml. I changed the maximum image height last night and am now able to display pictures when the vertical size in portrait orientation is less than the max height limit in the profile. And the Oppo will auto-rotate any JPG picture with its orientation flag in the EXIF tag set to portrait (i.e. bottom left). My image element in the profile looks like:

Cool thread...thanks to the info in here I tried installing Serviio...easy to use, shared some files, and was watching MKV files (without transcoding... streaming is all I really need) within minutes.

If you want to communicate with OPPO it is probably best to send a email.

Be aware that according to the release notes DLNA is still experimental and unsupported. But I'm sure they would like to see technical reports.

-Bill

I have some pretty large shares via Tversity (think files in the thousands). The Oppo is hanging when loading them...I didn't get these issues with the Xbox 360 when accessing them. If I play a media (music) file and then attempt to navigate away to one of these massive shares, the player simply momentarily switches back to the "now playing" screen and I am unable to view these shares. Does this echo any similar experience (using Tversity) from anyone here?

I emailed them but no response yet. Then again I emailed them about a couple of minor broken RS232 commands about 4 months ago, got a generic response back but the December firmware magically fixed the problem so they probably do process most emails.

Does the Oppo support chapters in MKVs?

No.

-Bill

So, I installed TwonkyMediaServer onto my Mac Pro, fired it up, and without changing anything except setting it to use file folders for access, the 83 sees it, and I could select any BD rip (mkv) and play it. One problem though, the picture is 4:3 (at best!). No amount of stretching fixes the view... is there a specific setting others have used to get 16:9 (or some variation thereof) so the widescreen movie actually is wide screen and goes from edge-to-edge on the TV?

Thanks...

This would be great. I would prefer to leave my TV off when listening to music and use my phone or netbook to create playlists or scroll through my files.

I just installed AndroMote on my droid, and it sees Asset and my files, but I can't get it to connect with the Oppo as a media renderer.

Any ideas on how to make this work?

This may be beyond (below? ) the scope of this thread, but:

I use Macs. I managed to follow the instructions above and edit copies of the clients.db and transcoding.db, and replaced the originals (stored safely in another folder for now!) with the edited copies. However, I do not understand what the stuff about *.location files means. In my /cgi-bin directory are 3 .location files: convert.location (open and it shows: %PROGRAMFILES%\\ImageMagick), ffmpg.location (open and it shows: c:\\ffmpeg), and vlc.location (open and it shows: /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC). What (exactly ) am I supposed to do to/with those files?

Sorry to be so ignorant... Thanks for any help.

It's so buggy. UI is very cumbersome. If I hit a stop[sq], I can't get back to browsing, I have to turn off/on the device and start all over again.

I have HDMI audio off because my pre/pro has no HDMI. But each time I click volume/mute on Oppo remote, it activate audio over HDMI and my TV get the audio. Very frustrating. Too man nuisances...I'll wait a little while to see if they get any better.

Using mediatomb and linux, I get the same problem. It seems anytime the requested "listing" has a large number of items, it just hangs...

Thanks for the confirmation, guys. I have had to return my player to Oppo twice due to a defect. I just wanted to be sure this DLNA behavior was normal in the current firmware.

As with any software trying to run on many platforms, different DLNA servers seem to react differently with the BDP-83. I have not experienced any of the problems you mentioned above (change volume in the receiver) using TVersity 1.7 running under Window XP on a PC. In addition to pausing, resuming and stopping, I can >> to the next song or picture and "Return" gets me back to the last screen. I also have HDMI audio off and it stays off.

I know that information doesn't help you but your problems may not with the BDP-83.

Alan

P.S. And both multi-channel (for stereo) and bitstreaming over the optical interface (for Dolby simulated surround) work well with MP3s

As Bill said, apparently not.

And in my testing it also doesn't support chapters in VOB files from DVD rips(?!)

I have my DVDs backed up to a RAID array on my linux box. They are in multiple VOB files in VIDEO_TS folders. The VIDEO_TS folders contain only the main movie, but as I said it is split into multiple VOBs.

I found a free tool, JoinVobFiles.exe, which can create a single VOB containing the entire movie. I tried streaming it to the Oppo from a miniDLNA server running on my linux box. It worked, but forget about any sort of navigation. Chapter skipping doesn't work, and even FF is sluggish and sometimes unresponsive.

I don't know if the problem is with miniDLNA or with the Oppo.

On a side note, has anyone been able to use handbrake to transcode DVDs to mkv's that can stream to the 83? I'm using the "high profile" preset to create an mkv containing H.264 video and 5.1 AC3 audio passthrough and the Oppo keeps telling me "unsupported format"

I think the chapter info is in the .ifo files which the player knows nothing about.


Not me. I have used mkvmerge to put DVD mpeg2 video and AC3 audio into mkv, and that works well. It's also pretty fast in that there is no transcoding, just a sort of repackaging.

-Bill

Hmm, so is there any streaming file format that supports chapters???

I like the idea of streaming my SD DVDs to the Oppo, but if I can't navigate It's not very useful...

I've always wondered about that. Is it even possible in DLNA? Do other products allow it?

If anyone finds a good version of the specs online, please let us know. All I could find at the DLNA official site was how to become a member for $10,000.

-Bill

I assume that process worked smoothly?

As you would expect.

Found this discouraging rant: Why do I hate DLNA protocol so much?

Maybe things have gotten better since then, eh?

-Bill

1. What I've learned is that for each thing I learn, two more questions appear.

2. I can't get x264 to work out of Handbrake from a DVD rip either. MPEG4 in an MKV works fine but isn't what I'm after, and it's practically as big as the VOB. What *are* the optimal settings for a DVD rip in Handbrake?

3. So far, the only working out of the box solution for a Power PC Mac running OS X 10.4 that worked was Twonky. This worked well enough in the trial that I spent the money for the license. Most other Mac solutions are geared toward Intel. The Mac upgrade mosquito has become a swarm at my house.

3. Twonky runs reasonably well on a PPC Mac, if it's not tied up doing other stuff. I've sent a few 720p 5.1 DTS .mkv files via my Wireless Router to a Wireless Bridge on a lower floor and it's performed fine, but with hiccups if the Mac was otherwise occupied. No transcoding yet, because I can't seem to get ffmpeg onto my machine (which seems weird, because what is Handbrake using when it encodes MP4?). Looks like if I'm going to keep this setup, I'm going to have to put everything in MKV files anyway.

4. The thing I most interested in is transcoding from FLAC to LPCM, and I can't use AssetPnP to do that because it's Intel only.

5. The first time I try to play an "unsupported file" I get a message. The second time it may work, or may only play the audio, or may just bump me back to the browser.

6. Those location files are for the locations of the programs name in the filename. Your vlc.location is pointing to the same location as mine.

Any ideas on transcoding FLAC without using AssetPnP?

Not working at all, or producing blocky video? These links referencing a Mediatek problem appeared in the main thread last month:

• http://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=14134
• http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=212

-Bill

Both. Handbrake using x264 (from VOB into an MKV) produces files that don't play on first access. When they are chosen after that, they play audio only. I have downloaded other files not necessarily created by Handbrake that produce blocky/smeary artifacts, which I'm assuming is the weighted p-frame issue. Or it may just be an issue with the older Handbrake available to OS X 10.4 users (Handbrake 0.9.1).

More testing needed. I'll try the weightp=0 option and report back.

Anyone been successful in viewing subtitles (externally as a .srt file in my case) over DLNA?

I've only tested embedded subtitles, but they work the same over DLNA as from USB or data disc.

-Bill