Notices

Hi,

I have problems getting the mediastreamer work reliably as a control point between a UPnP server (Twonky, latest version) running on an XP box and an SL300i renderer (latest firmware version). I'm using an N800 with latest released version of mediastreamer.

Things sort of work, but it's too unreliable to be useful. I can see both the Twonky and the SL300i from mediastreamer, setup a playlist and playback on the SL300i, switch track etc. But with frequent intervals (2-30 minutes), the N800 looses connection to the SL300i so playback stops until I reselect the SL300i from dropdown menu.

The problem only occurs when I'm using the N800 to control things. I.e. if I start playback from the SL300i remote, it never drops connection. When I use Cidero as a controller instead of N800 it also never disconnects.

It doesn't look like a WIFI connection problem - problem persists even when I run a wire to the SL300i and place the N800 right next to my access point.

Is there a known problem with this setup, or should it basically just work? I have seen several success stories about this setup on a N770, so what I'm interested in is if anyone has actually seen it work reliably on an N800?

Also while I'm at it, I was wondering if there is any recomendations for a good renderer to use in this setup? The SL300i is basically a piece of crap - poor audio quality, useless for video, noisy fan, bad codec support etc. - so I'm looking for a better alternative. Any of the more recent devices that are know to work with N800/mediastreamer as a controller?

Any help will be appreciated.

BroderSalsa.

Just seen your post in Media Streamer forum in Maemo.org and here in InternetTabletTalk

I can confirm that, when using MediaStreamer on my Nokia 770 as a controller to control my SL300i. I believe I have the same issue where after a period MediaStreamer on the Nokia fails to send the next audio track in the playlist (I think and just stops serving media to the SL300i, so the unit does not know what to do next. I agree Cidero on a laptop does not exhibit the same issue as quickly but if you leave it running a very long enough I believe it can?)

As we are waiting for an update to Media Streamer from Nokia which apparently fixes lots of little UPnP bugs as well as providing video streaming support I was waiting to see if this issue is resolved?

When you talk about your SL300i having a noisy fan and being poor at Video, I believe its because the fan is not providing the required cooling to the chips. (I cannot hear the fan, I have two SL300i's where the fan is very quiet even when up very close to the unit)

I agree the SL300i is not perfect, but I do use it for audio playback and XVID and DIVX Video streaming where I am satisfied that recognising it's AV format support and bitrate limitations it works very well, even over a Wi-FI (G) connection.

I use it almost exclusively now with the TVersity Media Server running on my XP PC. (As TVersity ensures Media is transcoded to a supported format/bitrate when required, slightly compromising quality but ensuring smooth video and Audio playback)

I am looking forward to Canola providing improved UPnP Playback support and hope that UPnP renderer control may be provided in a future release too.


---edit---Thinking about it a little bit more, you never lose Wi-Fi connection as well? Did you set your Nokia N800 and the SL300i with fixed IP's on your network?

Oh and I also forgot to mention...

I use Twonky as it makes use of the album art stored with all my mp3's and presents the covers when a track is being played.
I use TVersity to stream my camera pictures as it transcodes them to a size that Media Streamer and Nokia 770 accept without problems

see http://mikesl300i.blogspot.com/2006_10_01_archive.html for more info.

Hi,

Thanks a lot for detailed reply and background info. It saves me a lot of work to know that problem is not only in my setup, but that what I'm trying to probably won't work with current Media streamer SW. I saw you earlier posts and blog on the subject, and kind of got the impression that everything was honky dory and the Media Streamer/Twonky/SL300i setup was rock solid, so it was driving me mad that I couldn't get it to work reliably on my N800.

But even though its to unstable to be useful for me right now, it is still a killer use case to employ the N800 with Media Streamer as a UPnP controller - this is the primary reason I bought my N800 - so I won't give up on it that quick. But it looks like it will be more work than originally anticipated, so I will probably need to set up a blog myself to document the progress :-)

Getting back to the SL300i as a renderer, I agree that it is a neat little device, but my comments on it are in relation to my own use case - as a renderer hooked up to my primary TV and stereo (which would be considered semi decent in an audiophile/hifi forum). I'm probably more picky than most, but audio quality from the SL300i is simply too bad. Not even close to hifi. Same story with the fan. It's not very loud for a fan, but still it's a FAN and I employ a zero tolerance policy for fans im my living room. It's details, but it defies the purpose for the entire setup. If I could live with a fan, I could just hook up a cheap laptop instead. If I would compromize on audio quallity, I could just use an iPod with RF transmitter. I'll probably keep the SL300i for experiment and eventually use it for a bedroom stereo, but it just doesn't do the job for my primary stereo.

So I'm still very open for recommendations for a GOOD UPnP rendering devices that will work with an external control point like the N800 with Media streamer. This is a killer use case, so there must be some device that fits into this gap?

Other renderers I have looked at include:

+ Roku soundbridge. Audio only, but seems to do the job pretty well. Might take a closer look at this.
+ More recent Streamium devices. The SLM 5500 looks like am OK device, but as far as I can tell it can't be operated from an external UPnP control point. Anyone with experience on this device?
+ The D-link devices. The specs for the DSM-520 seems OK, but I can't get confimation that it will work with external UPnP control point. Also the user reviews seem to be a mixed experience.
+ Real hifi devices like the Denon 4306. Still far too pricey, but it might be worth waiting for this and similar devices to drop into the normal consumer range. But still can't confirm whether it will work with external control point.
+ Others?

Hmmm, this project seems to get much bigger than anticipated when I bought the N800.

BroderSalsa

You sound Hooked on the possibilities of personal Media Streaming around the home and beyond like myself :-)

Apologies if my blog provided too positive an impression of a perfect working solution. I think you have higher audiophile requirements than myself as i find the SL300i good with mp3' at VBR 320Kb

I am away this weekend, will look forward to further & future communication on the subject of Media Streaming using the Nokia 770 & N800 as a UPnP Controller for example.

Look forward to reading your blog.

Things have been quite busy for the past week, so I haven't had much time to work on my media streaming setup. But there still has been some progress, so here is a quick update. I still plan to document everything in a separate blog - hopefully I will have some time during the weekend to get the first installment ready to publish.

Anyway, I decided to ditch the SL300i while I could still get a refund, and have a look at other UPnP rendering solutions. So I went over the use cases again and concluded, that for my needs the video part is more of a gimmick than a real uses case. High fidelity audio streaming is the driver and what really matters, so I decided to have a closer look at the Roku offering.

I got a Roku/Pinnacle M1001 yesterday and played around with it for a few hours, and I must say that so far I'm impressed with this little gadget. Sound quality is superb, UPnP implementation seems to be flawless and its finish and other small details (no fan!) makes it suitable for the living room.

I still saw a few glitches, where during full album playback the Media Streamer on N800 would sometimes seem to "forget" that it had changed to next track and get out of sync with the SoundBridge. This would cause same track to be played back twice. But I didn't see it drop connection as it did with the SL300i, and things are definitely MUCH better despite the glitches.

Hopefully I will have time for more experiments during the weekend, so I can report more findings.

Hi,

I bought my 770 mainly to control my Roku Soundbridge with Mediastreamer and I have the same issues. During full album playback, the Soundbridge somehow stops playing and gets out of sync with the 770. It NEVER played a full album without interruption so far.
I also own a Allnet Allsound, a Telegent TG-100 and a Siemens M740AV. I can control all of them via Mediastreamer, but again, devices get out of sync after a couple of tracks. So with the current version of the software it's a quite crappy solution. I hope the next version will solve that issue - I'm already thinking of buying a Sonos System, which might be much more stable.

Cheers
tobiyoo

Hi guys,

I am jsut starting my home media project and will get my N800 next week. I already have a Linux server for a few years for all my digital content. I installed Mediatomb as my UpnP server and that works fine with my XBox and XBMC.

Do you have any more information about the mediastreamer software for the N800? Is there a new release which fixed the problems you mentioned here?

Thanks,
-Marcus

Mediastreamer as controller for external renderer on N800 - any success?


Yes. With this: Playerpal.

I realize this is a pretty old thread, but I did today manage to get this done.

For a renderer: GMediaRender running on Debian Squeeze on a 1998 Dell laptop, using Alsa to drive a USB>S/PDIF converter which feeds a DAC connected to the stereo. The Debian install has no graphic UI, just a command line (and an SSH server so I can open a shell on it from the PC). The necessary packages beyond the base install were Alsa, GStreamer, libupnp.

For a media server: MediaMonkey version 4 (still in beta), which I've been using as my library and player on the PC for a while. (The PC has a direct S/PDIF connection to the same DAC.)

It took a lot of fiddling, of course, because Debian doesn't care if you understand what's going on. I had to install an MP3 plugin for gstreamer (I made my own build of the Fluendo one, so I'm legal); I had to build GMediaRender; I had to change the Alsa defaults to point to the USB-audio instead of the PC speaker.

The big disappointment is, even tho the data should be going direct from server to renderer, MediaStreamer won't allow anything but an MP3 stream. MediaMonkey will convert to MP3 on the fly (say, M4A, which isn't supported on my Debian box at the moment) and that will play. But I want my FLACs to go across as FLAC. FLACs and OGGs stored on the Debian box will play direct from GStreamer, but when selected via MediaStreamer, GMediaRender reports "Error: Stream contains no data" despite seeming to correclty recognize the data type.

Even when successfully playing an MP3 to the external renderer, the progress bar in MediaStreamer is broken: it never progresses, the time display keeps switching from 0:00 to 0:01 to 0:00 to 0:01...

For some reason, tho, I can't get the MP3 to play thru MediaStreamer to the N800's own speakers. It shows "buffering" and advances the progress bar as you'd expect, but no sound. Canola plays thru the speakers fine.

MediaMonkey doesn't have Control Point capability, but it's planned for a release after 4.0 gets out. I'm eager to see if it works better than MediaStreamer.

EDIT: shortly after I posted, I tried again to get sound to play thru the speakers and it did. Not sure what the hangup was.

One problem I've encountered since posting the above is that MediaStreamer has been simply failing to advance from one track to another in the playlist. I thought I had seen it do that while I was testing, but today I tried to just run it like that and it ground to a halt after every song; this happened both for the external renderer and the N800 itself.

This significantly reduces MediaStreamer's usefulness, to say the least.