Sony NSZ-GT1

[SpockThePain]

I recently purchased Mezzmo and was going to use it with a Pansonic Blu-ray DMP-BDT310. I wasn't impressed with its narrow range of playing formats. But what made me send it back is that every time I tried to play anything on it from a 3rd party (e.g. my phone), it always responded "Cannot Play". Just to be clear I was trying PC(Mezzmo) --> BDT310, by using a plug and play app on my phone. (what is the proper term for this sort of DLNA control?) I can do this with other products I have all over the house (e.g Internet Radios), but with the Panasonic it said "Cannot Play" even with mp3 files.

I am not the only person to complain about this, as I have searched it with no solutions.

To be fair, I could use Mezzmo to play nearly everything on it from its native DLNA app in the box with transcoding, but I wanted remote control.

I am looking at the Sony BDP s580 and its manual clearly says it can do this. But I am also looking at the Sony NSZ-GT1.

Has anyone used the NSZ-GT1? And if so, do you have any comment on its DLNA capabilities? Most importantly I am looking for remote controlling the DLNA as described above. I don't see it in the profile list.

[Paul]

Possibly the NSZ-GT1 has the same formats as our "Sony Google TV" device profile, but if not, we can make a new device profile.

When you were using a phone to control contents sent to the BDP, was the device profile set to "Panasonic BDP" for the phone's IP address in Mezzmo?

[SpockThePain]

Now I see the Sony Google TV profile. That could be it, do you have a description of the profile in the forum? Where I am currently at is trying to find what formats the NSZ-GT1 actually does play. I downloaded all the manuals and it doesn't describe them. So I am searching for a well written review of it. I appears to be rather new.

The Sony BDP s580 is clearer about what it can play, but there is no claim it plays the newer audio formats like DolbyHD (which is one thing I liked about the Panasonic, the audio was really good).

The device profile I am using for my phone is Motorola Droid X. I didn't think that was a problem because I can use it (with Mezzmo as the DLNA source), to play audio on my Sangean (Roberts) internet radio, and also a Yamaha receiver.

[Paul]

The Sony Google TV device profile specifies that the device supports MPEG2/WMV/AVCHD/LPCM/MP3/JPEG (with certain codec combinations). We haven't tested the NSZ-GT1, so I don't know what it will play, but I'll try to find a manual for it online.

When you use a phone to stream contents onto another device (e.g. using your phone as a controller), you need to set the device profile for the phone as the destination device, otherwise files will be formatted to suit the phone, not the end device. Audio plays probably because most devices support MP3/LPCM, but with videos it's a different story of course.

[SpockThePain]

Hi Dennis,

I just found a review of the player by PC-Mag http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372228,00.asp

Its actually fairly thorough, and gives the formats that it will play as:

"For your own files, the Sony Internet TV Blu-ray Disc Player supports playback of MPEG4 and H.264 for video, AAC and MP3 for audio files, and JPEG, GIF, and PNG for photos."

But he doesn't go into remote support and I find most reviews don't in general.

As for the phone, I would have liked to try what you are suggesting, but I already returned the player. I should have asked! But I never suspected this. Just for the record, I got the same result no matter what DLNA app I used and what I used for the source, e.g. an Iomega Network Drive. This was true even with known compatible media that would play natively on the blu-ray player.

This doesn't seem intuitive. I thought the profile was such that media would be transcoded (if necessary) for the Droid X if I wanted to play it on my phone using Mezzmo as the source. Then if I wanted to change what the player was, I would have to come back to the PC and change the profile as well.

[Paul]

Thanks for the link to the review. Unfortunately it doesn't mention whether that's from a USB stick or via DLNA or both, but if we assume it's via DLNA then the "Sony Google TV" should work fine. If it doesn't, we can always tweak it or create a new profile.

Regarding the phone - if you play contents on the phone then yes, you need to select the phone's profile, but if you use the phone simply as a controller and stream contents onto another device, then you need to select a profile corresponding to that device instead of your phone's.

[SpockThePain]

I am probably going to try it. I am going to look for good return policy first because if I can't remotely play, I will send it back. If I do I will let you know how it behaves via this thread.

I suppose this is set for the phone so Mezzmo knows what to do? But can't this information come from knowing the mac addresses? That is, the phone says to play device 1's media on device 2. Or does the phone not send the mac addresses for Device 1 and 2? Forgive the fact that I don't know DLNA internals or program code for it!

[Paul]

Well, if the destination device is also connected to Mezzmo and a correct device profile is set for it, then perhaps it should work. This would depend on how the phone sends the data. To know for sure what's happening in your particular set up, it would help to see some logs, so if you could enable logging (see this thread: http://forum.conceiva.com/showthread.php/419-FAQ-How-to-turn-on-diagnostic-logging), then try streaming a file using your phone from Mezzmo to the device for a few seconds. After that stop the server and send in the logs to support. We'll be able to work out how the file is presented and whether any adjustments need to be made as far as selected profiles go.

[SpockThePain]

I decided to go with the NSZ-GT1 as I just learned there was a major update. Over in the avsforum, there are those who were going to sell theirs now say they wish to keep them. One major change is that the device now supports 3D. This is encouraging. I will probably be able to test it next week hopefully.

As for the phone issue. I will try this if necessary. My thought on it is that the phone acts as an operator and once the connection is made is out of the picture. The phone can be turned off, but the source and player keep playing the item. I do have every thing found on the network defined in the Media Devices table. I try to be thorough. I have been a software/hardware engineer for several decades and try to know the issues. Hopefully I will have more luck with the Sony.

[SpockThePain]

I received the Sony NSZ-GT1 yesterday. I can't describe how happy I am with the Blu-ray player.

At first I could not find anything DLNA on the menu. It turns out the DLNA capability is built into the stock media player such that a local file could be chosen from a list as well as choosing a DLNA source. Once I started that app, I could then see the entry in the Media Devices list. I chose Sony Google TV as its profile. Just browsing through the files on the Sony was a dream compared to other DLNA capable devices I have seen. The thumbnails filled in within just a few seconds on each page.

Also to send files to it via DLNA on my phone just worked. Absolutely no problems of any kind, and everything I sent to it played. This even included old video clips I have hung unto from 10 to 15 years ago. The phone's Mezzmo profile is still set to Droid X and I will keep it that way unless it becomes a problem.

Most places don't have a complete list of supported media formats. The best list is actually the one half way down on the Google TV features page but that one even has 'other formats' as an item. On thing I noticed is that it lists AAC even though not long ago there were complaints that it was not supported.

http://www.google.com/tv/features.html

This in an incredible device. Even where there isn't a specific app, I have been able to set up bookmarks to various web sites and play movies such as HBO-GO.

Also, since it was my concern, I should mention that the Blu-ray player can be set to pass Audio directly to the Receiver via HDMI 1.4 so that it supports Dolby formats including TrueHD. It is 3D capable, but I don't have a 3D capable TV so I can't test that.

[SpockThePain]

No sooner than I send the previous list I found an extensive one on the Google TV developers web site.

https://developers.google.com/tv/android/docs/gtv_media_formats#GTVFormats

[fletch]

I don't have wireless and I expect that's required for using the phone in the way you describe it. But after only two weeks of playing with this box I concur that the DLNA client is very nice, works well with Mezzmo, and has played everything I've thrown at it - much of which never would play on my TV's DLNA client.

[SpockThePain]

Sometimes there is a difference between what file types the player will play natively and those sent on DLNA. On this one I think there is no difference as they have built the DLNA client into their stock media player.

[Paul]

I'm glad the device works well and thank you for the link - we'll check out those formats and see if any adjustments need to be made.

[SpockThePain]

I have tried a few longer videos using Mezzmo. I did this by selecting Mezzmo as the DLNA source using the built in media player

- a video that played from a file manager browsing the network attached storage (NAS), played. But when using the media player going through Mezzmo it was being transcoded.
- when the file was being played on the Sony, one file reported an end time of 32 seconds (all files reported only a few minutes).

I noticed if I would try to play the file again it reported a longer time, so I think this was the current file size of the transcoded file as it was growing larger.

I wonder what triggered the transcoding?

[Paul]

Can you please right-click on that file in Mezzmo and post the output of the "Get FFmpeg Information" command here and I'll check why transcoding was triggered. If it plays natively, then we just need to modify our device profile to pass it through to the device.

[SpockThePain]

Hi Dennis,

The FFmpeg Info is below.

Just to note I tried two other players apps. One is called aVia. It is not bad but the thumbnails are not as good. The other one is a payed app called GTVBox Player. The DNLA in that was very sluggish. I wanted to rule out the built in player which is not that bad in my opinion.

aVia also got the abbriviated total time and ended early. I wonder how this can be avoided if a longer movie really has to be transcoded.

ffmpeg version N-36036-ga40f43d, Copyright (c) 2000-2011 the FFmpeg developers
built on Dec 22 2011 13:44:49 with gcc 4.6.2
configuration: --enable-memalign-hack --arch=x86 --target-os=mingw32 --cross-prefix=i686-w64-mingw32- --enable-static --disable-shared --enable-zlib --disable-postproc --prefix=/media/ffmpeg --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libx264 --enable-gpl --extra-libs='-lx264 -lpthread' --enable-runtime-cpudetect --extra-cflags=-I/home/dennis/cc/include --extra-ldflags=-L/home/dennis/cc/lib --pkg-config=pkg-config --disable-w32threads
libavutil 51. 32. 0 / 51. 32. 0
libavcodec 53. 46. 1 / 53. 46. 1
libavformat 53. 27. 0 / 53. 27. 0
libavdevice 53. 4. 0 / 53. 4. 0
libavfilter 2. 53. 0 / 2. 53. 0
libswscale 2. 1. 0 / 2. 1. 0

Seems stream 0 codec frame rate differs from container frame rate: 23.98 (65535/2733) -> 23.98 (2997/125)
Input #0, avi, from 'zzzzzzzzzzzzzz':
Metadata:
encoder : VirtualDubMod 1.5.4.1 (build 2178/release)
IAS1 : English
Duration: 01:40:07.92, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 977 kb/s
Stream #0:0: Video: mpeg4 (Advanced Simple Profile) (XVID / 0x44495658), yuv420p, 720x544 [SAR 1:1 DAR 45:34], 23.98 tbr, 23.98 tbn, 23.98 tbc
Stream #0:1: Audio: mp3 (U[0][0][0] / 0x0055), 44100 Hz, stereo, s16, 96 kb/s
At least one output file must be specified


---> DB Level Info: 5, 15
---> Frame rate: 23.98
---> Aspect ratio: 45:34

[Paul]

Thanks for the file information. Our current Sony Google TV doesn't include AVI (DivX) files as a supported type, that's why it is being transcoded. Can you please e-mail support (at) conceiva (dot) com and I'll send you an updated device profile that includes AVI support, so that such files are not transcoded and we'll see if that plays via DLNA?

[SpockThePain]

I will keep on the lookout for other conflicts if they exist.

One warning on this unit to all. Google TV has been shut out of quite a few free network television sites and other venues like Hulu. This is clearly wrong, but is the state of things at the moment. If you have a PC hooked to your TV you can see these sights as you could at your desktop. But if we turn the PC into a convenient set top box as Sony and others are attempting then we cannot view them. This restriction should be lifted by some legal means.