DLNA - getting confused.

tiptonian · 22 Feb 2013

Hi, I've recently bought a new SONY TV which like many TVs these days will stream video over a network to watch on its nice 40" HD screen. It doesn't work quite like I would expect or want so I'm trying to understand the different aspects so I can optimally set it up, and DLNA is at the the heart of it all.

Now I've read that Windows 7 includes a DLNA server but when I've looked more closely the articles always seem to take an oblique shift and end up tallking about Windows Media Player. Now call me pedantic, but Windows 7 is an operating system, WMP is a media player, 2 completely different and separate things. One I like - Windows 7, the other I go out of my way to avoid having anything to do with.

So my (first) question is simply Does Windows 7 include a DLNA server?

Kaktussoft · 22 Feb 2013

tiptonian said:

Hi, I've recently bought a new SONY TV which like many TVs these days will stream video over a network to watch on its nice 40" HD screen. It doesn't work quite like I would expect or want so I'm trying to understand the different aspects so I can optimally set it up, and DLNA is at the the heart of it all.

Now I've read that Windows 7 includes a DLNA server but when I've looked more closely the articles always seem to take an oblique shift and end up tallking about Windows Media Player. Now call me pedantic, but Windows 7 is an operating system, WMP is a media player, 2 completely different and separate things. One I like - Windows 7, the other I go out of my way to avoid having anything to do with.

So my (first) question is simply Does Windows 7 include a DLNA server?

answer is no. WMP is a dlna server.

SONY TV which like many TVs these days will stream video over a network to watch on its nice 40" HD screen

Most likely the TV doens't stream at all!! You can stream TO tv...

What's the actual problem?

tiptonian · 25 Feb 2013

Thanks for confirming that for me. It forced me to go in and learn how to control the beast that is WMP. I've played around with it for a while now and it is close to what I want, but there is one thing that I cannot find out how to control. When I acccess my PC server from the TV, I am presented with a list of categories such as Actors, Genre, Rating etc. with down on page 2 I get to folders which is the only category I want to see. Apart from anything else, my video files do not have any metadata associated with them anyway.

In WMP I can customise the Navigation pane to only show the folder category (view). Is there any way I can do the same for what is displayed on the TV please? I am assuming that the TV is getting these categories from the media libraries, rather than having them hard coded locally.

Kaktussoft · 26 Feb 2013

tiptonian said:

Thanks for confirming that for me. It forced me to go in and learn how to control the beast that is WMP. I've played around with it for a while now and it is close to what I want, but there is one thing that I cannot find out how to control. When I acccess my PC server from the TV, I am presented with a list of categories such as Actors, Genre, Rating etc. with down on page 2 I get to folders which is the only category I want to see. Apart from anything else, my video files do not have any metadata associated with them anyway.

In WMP I can customise the Navigation pane to only show the folder category (view). Is there any way I can do the same for what is displayed on the TV please? I am assuming that the TV is getting these categories from the media libraries, rather than having them hard coded locally.

Read your TV manual or try using TV media player settings. It's the TV configuration that defines the layout on TV.

MrNeeds · 26 Feb 2013

you may want to check out alternatives to wmp, for example, wmp doesn't transcode different files into formats that are recognised by your sony tv, i use Serviio media server with my sony DLNA tv, works flawless in my eyes.