Right, so to summarise: streaming avi from running pc with windows media player
streaming turned on to the tv works fine. Then, when I copy those same avi files
onto a portable hard disk that is attached to my router's usb port, my tv cannot
play the avi's anymore (greyed out). The hard disk is formatted using the router's
webpage and a shared folder has been enabled as well as media server. My tv can
see the shared media but cannot play it. EXCEPT if I copy an mpg onto the disk,
this plays fine. I'm totally confused and a total noob about this. If they tell
me the router and tv and so on support UPnP and media sharing and usb hard drives
and sh*t, I get pissed when it doesn't play the media.
I might have overlooked stuff since I'm just not into this stuff but I can't find
any info such as "beware, beware, you cannot play avi files with this device",
neither in the router's manual and neither in the tv manual.
The only chart you talked about I found is page 8 in the blu-ray manual:
http://service.us.panasonic.com/OPERMANPDF/SCBT730.PDF
I don't know why the f**k this is but in this english manual there is no DivX
while in my paper manual there is DivX for DVD and BD. Hell, I don't even know
where to look anymore, do you look in the tv manual, the blu-ray player manual,
the router manual, does it have something to do with codecs on my pc or windows
media player, my external disk,...
All this technology and gimmicks will ultimately lead to the decay and fall of
our western civilisation, just like the roman empire went down.
I always think in terms of the client/server model. One device is a server, the
other is a client. Both have limited intelligence, and sometimes, not even the
manual does justice to the subject. For example, your router won't eat an NTFS
disk drive, and goes with FAT32. And has the usual size limit as well. I don't
think it can accept a 2TB drive. The limit is likely a bit less than that.
I've seen that kind of limit on some NAS boxes, but I'm hard pressed to
explain the number. When a NAS box says "200GB limit", I just throw my hands
in the air, because there is *no* capacity limit in the designs, at the
200GB point. Or at 500GB, or 750GB for that matter. The only capacity
limits I'm aware of, are at 137GB (48bitLBA) and 2.2TB (32 bit sector number).
In this case, both the router and the TV have manuals. The router manual,
is going to acknowledge what formats the router will scan and present
in a menu to other devices. The router is a server, but it may not "stream"
any old thing it finds. If it found a copy of the US Constitution on the
hard drive, it's going to take a pass on that and not bother. Eventually,
after it "scans" the folder, it's ready to pass a "menu" to the other machine.
The client has two interests. It wants to see the "menu", kinda like the
equivalent of a "dir" or "list directory" command. But it's also going
to want to know what kind of movies they are. I presume the "scanning"
the router does, is to classify the movies. The TV will only have certain
licensed codecs in its bag of tools, and the formats supported are going
to be Hollywood formats. So if some Linux guy comes up with something
called "ogg", even though "ogg" is free, the TV is going to laugh at
that format. Maybe the TV company paid $1 for an mp4 license and the
ability to use a codec for it. They're going to want to handle whatever
movie format comes on a DVD, that kind of thing. They're not trying to
build an "all purpose jukebox" in the TV. And apparently, DLNA attempts
to do that, pointing to a limited set of formats as targets for the
client and server. The router isn't DLNA, so may be a bit more open
ended on formats, but you say your TV is DLNA.
If your computer and Windows Media Player, are able to play all the
content, then the router ("server") is able to successfully serve the
movies. If the TV won't touch the meal its served, then we need to
crack the TV manual, as I stated before.
Please provide either the TV make and model, or the URL of the TV
manual itself. There's got to be a table in there, similar to the
example I dug up. If not, the table of formats is floating around
on the Internet, and when you post the make and model, we can look
it up.
Paul
