Serviio

This popular $100 network media player (touted by engadget as the best competition for the Apple TV 2) appears to be not directly supported by Serviio (and every other DLNA server I've seen). It's very similar to some of the Blue Ray players and the PS3 in terms of capabilities. I'm not tech savvy enough to know how to make a profile for it, so can someone help? Or can someone share a profile they've already made.

PRODUCT INFO:
* review stating codec support: http://www.trustedreviews.com/sony-smp-n100_TV-recorder---set-top-box_review_multimedia-flexibility_Page-2
* Sony Docs on Codec Support: http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&partNumber=SMPN100#specifications

Here is the supported protocols using Device Spy:


I've noticed if I use the Playstation 3 profile, a lot of content plays correctly but WMV files don't show up at all in the list...
Can someone help? Serviio is the ONLY DLNA server that correctly serves files up to this popular player at all... and I'd love to get the WMV and other files transcoded properly (or even to appear... since the device says they should play back)

First, use forum search function...
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2044&p=11399&hilit=smp#p11399
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2502&p=15077&hilit=smp#p15077

And read FAQ for profile edition:
http://www.serviio.org/index.php?option ... icle&id=16
http://www.serviio.org/index.php?option ... icle&id=24

moderated: topic moved to Sony section

Careful, Codecs supported over USB do not presage DLNA supports same codec, device use different firmware for these two features

Looking at its specs it seems very close to the bluray players (the same things seem to be restricted over DLNA). Did you try manually selecting the the Sony Bluray profile in the Serviio GUI? If it works for most formats we could amend the detection string so that profile is used by default for this player.

I'll give the blu-ray player profile a shot an report back, thanks!

OK, the blue-ray profile does allow my device to see the WMV files. Certain files and still appearing as unsupported though. I'll have to investigate the specifics. I want to get it so everything I can play on the PC (which is every file I have) can at least be trancoded to my device. Thanks y'all.

By the way, I did do a search and check the FAQ first. I didn't understand the "build your own profile" instructions at all. It mentions sample syntax but there is no intuitive way for me to know all the possible codecs, containers etc. so I wouldn't know what to enter. I was sincerely hoping that someone else had already done so for this somewhat popular player. A search did return one sample profile but the comments underneath stated that it didn't work well, and not specifically with MP4 files which the SMP-N100 supposedly plays natively.

Building a profile is pretty tricky and requires a lot of testing with a lot of different example media types, and typically by willing volunteers in different geographic regions. Really what you need to try and do is only fall back to transcoding if you have exhausted every other possible trick.

On the Sony Bluray players for instance they restricted certain formats, but only by blocking their DLNA resource names. Serviio allows us to fake those by overriding them in the profile, despite serving up the same actual media file, and sometimes this is all that's necessary to get a particular media type to play natively.

However, Sony also seem to have a habit of restricting players in different ways in different territories which makes building a profile that will work for everyone even more difficult.

As for your MP4 problems - same sort of thing on the Bluray players. The native MP4 playback is shoddy - it doesn't even let you ffwd or rew so the profile is built to remux to all MP4 files to mpeg-ts.

To get a better understanding of the process I'd recommend you read say the bluray profile development thread to get an idea of the methodology (warning - it's very long!):
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=326