Quote:
Originally Posted by
Foxbat121 
DLNA doesn't care about file type but the video content inside the file. It is up to DLNA server to recognize file formats and extract the video stream. The problem with Panny players is that it has a rather limited pickings through DLNA or network drive or USB. Basically, if the video is not from your AVCHD camcorder, you could consider it unplayable in the player. You will have to re-encode and convert your non-compliant video files into the formats the player can accept (basically is AVC or MPEG2 encoded, standard 480p, 720p, 1080i, and 1080p with AC3 or PCM audio).
Well that's true to some extent but not all the way. DLNA is basically file sharing over standard HTTP with UPnp for auto discovery. So a basic DLNA server will simply tell the client (the player) that the file is a "video/x-matroska" (MKV). But it (most DLNA servers support this but not all) can also be configured to "hide" MKVs and tell the client that the file is in fact a "video/mpeg" and re-encode (or transcode) the file upon request.
Actually it can tell the client that both formats exist and let the client decide which one it wants to download but most clients does not support this feature and only downloads the first item.
Some clients like Samsung Smart TVs does not only look at the MIME type (the "video/mpeg" stuff) but it also checks if the file has an extension and greys out files that have a .mkv extension even though the TV can play MKVs over DLNA which is why it works if one renames them to say .avi).
So basically DLNA is very much like a network share only that it can do more with the files than just present them as-is.
It works!!!! I have MKV movies as large as 40 GB and they worked flawlessly!!!!
