Samsung F Series - poor DLNA implementation?

[Andrew Keeley]

I recently bought a UN65F8000 and installed the F series Mezzmo profile.

I could not find how to perform a time search or a chapter search, so I contacted Samsung support and they confirmed that those features are not available on the F series TVs!

I also have a UN46D6420 and 2 x UN40D6420 in the bedrooms and they all support time search just fine. It is a feature that I use a lot and I cannot believe that the new TVs have been downgraded in such a way.

Of course, the Samsung support guy wouldn't tell me if it's planned for a firmware update. With Samsung's history, I am guessing not.

Please, if you have an F series TV, contact Samsung and request that they add these features back. If they get enough demand, who knows? They might just do it.

Andy.

[Misiak]

Hi, I have also a F8000 and chapter and time search work, but only with specific formats. For example it does not work for mpeg videos.... Yes, it is a shame of Samsung. I was discussing this with conceiva stuff some time ago. Only possibility is pre-transcode the video before playing into h264. Very annoying. Also you won't be able to play anything above 1920x1080p and 30 fsp... I can't understand this limitation for quad core cpu.....

Forgot to mention that cinema black does work only with HDMI sources. I really can't get this limitation... So no micro dimming with DLNA or usb :-/

[Andrew Keeley]

Hi, I have also a F8000 and chapter and time search work, but only with specific formats. For example it does not work for mpeg videos.... Yes, it is a shame of Samsung. I was discussing this with conceiva stuff some time ago. Only possibility is pre-transcode the video before playing into h264.

Thank you for the reply.

I am very surprised. I just had a Samsung support guy tell me it's not supported at all and I have tried many formats and cannot even see where it would be selected. I encode all my own rips to MP4 with H264 and AAC/AC3 because my previous living room TV wasn't a Smart TV and I had to use a PS3 to play DLNA content.

Would you please tell me how you access the time search? The best I can do is swipe the touchpad and skip forwards and backwards a few seconds at a time, which is very tedious.

Thanks,

Andy.

[Andrew Keeley]

Something strange happened. I have been fooling around with this since buying the TV a week ago. I returned an ES8000 last year for many reasons so I want to be absolutely sure that I will be happy with this model while I still have a chance to take it back.

Mezzmo stopped working when I selected it as my input source. I would get the purple screen with a loading message and nothing else. After about a minute, the TV would reset. I power cycled the TV and restarted the Mezzmo service but it still wouldn't work. I then stopped Mezzmo and deleted the TV from the media devices list and restarted the service. Now I have time search!

I know for sure that it wasn't there before, even though Mezzmo said the TV was using the F series profile. All I had from the magnifying glass icon was 'title search'.

Anyway, I am much happier now. Thank you Misiak for giving me belief that the Samsung support guy was wrong! I was very close to boxing it back up for return.

Andy.

[Paul]

Glad you are up and running now. Thanks for posting your experience for other Samsung F-series TV owners.

[Misiak]

Something strange happened. I have been fooling around with this since buying the TV a week ago. I returned an ES8000 last year for many reasons so I want to be absolutely sure that I will be happy with this model while I still have a chance to take it back.

Mezzmo stopped working when I selected it as my input source. I would get the purple screen with a loading message and nothing else. After about a minute, the TV would reset. I power cycled the TV and restarted the Mezzmo service but it still wouldn't work. I then stopped Mezzmo and deleted the TV from the media devices list and restarted the service. Now I have time search!

I know for sure that it wasn't there before, even though Mezzmo said the TV was using the F series profile. All I had from the magnifying glass icon was 'title search'.

Anyway, I am much happier now. Thank you Misiak for giving me belief that the Samsung support guy was wrong! I was very close to boxing it back up for return.

Andy.

Heheh, you're welcome. Don't return it, I think it's a pretty good TV also with all the flaws it has :) Picture in HD is outstanding and also 3D. And yes, sometimes I also have the feeling that TV behaves strange, but most of the times it works :) Thanks god the TV supports time search except for mpeg codecs - I just can't get it why it is not supported, so there is no chance to fast forward any DVD content I have. But I don't use DVDs so often so I can live with that. And you always can to pre-transcode into different format ;) Also update to newest firmware which is out from yesterday, don't know what they've fixed, but hopefully there is more pros than cons :-D

One note, don't know if it is connected to this firmware update, but I can't see the thumbnails anymore :-/ So let's wait for Mezzmo 3.3 :)

[Paul]

One note, don't know if it is connected to this firmware update, but I can't see the thumbnails anymore :-/ So let's wait for Mezzmo 3.3 :)

Interesting. Please send us a new set of logs when browsing a folder/playlist of videos to support [at] conceiva [dot] com and we'll take a look at what has changed.

[Misiak]

Interesting. Please send us a new set of logs when browsing a folder/playlist of videos to support [at] conceiva [dot] com and we'll take a look at what has changed.

Forget it Paul, it works fine again ;) Using Mezzmo 3.2.0.31 and Samsung F profile rev. 311. However, I've noticed one issue with this element in profile:

<framerate>30</framerate>

This causes that all videos which don't use this framerate are forced to re-encode... However, <maxframerate>30</maxframerate> is correct. So imho it should work in way, that only videos above 30fps will be re-encoded into 30fps. I've removed <framerate> element, but if I have videos over 30fps, these are not re-encoded into 30fps but they keeps their original framerate. So it makes no sense to transcode because TV is neither able to play it.

This is like transcoded video looks like:

ffmpeg version N-50460-g393dcbf Copyright (c) 2000-2013 the FFmpeg developers
built on Mar 4 2013 17:38:17 with gcc 4.6.2 (GCC)
configuration: --enable-memalign-hack --arch=x86 --target-os=mingw32 --cross-prefix=i686-w64-mingw32- --enable-static --disable-shared --enable-zlib --disable-postproc --prefix=/home/peter/ffmpeg/build/gpl --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libx264 --enable-gpl --extra-libs='-lx264 -lpthread' --enable-runtime-cpudetect --extra-cflags=-I/home/peter/cc/include --extra-ldflags=-L/home/peter/cc/lib --pkg-config=pkg-config --disable-w32threads --enable-zlib
libavutil 52. 17.103 / 52. 17.103
libavcodec 54. 92.100 / 54. 92.100
libavformat 54. 63.102 / 54. 63.102
libavdevice 54. 3.103 / 54. 3.103
libavfilter 3. 41.100 / 3. 41.100
libswscale 2. 2.100 / 2. 2.100
libswresample 0. 17.102 / 0. 17.102
Input #0, matroska,webm, from '............\Video\42-matroska_webm-libx264-ac3-sn.mzt':
Metadata:
ENCODER : Lavf54.63.102
Duration: 00:00:14.45, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 24390 kb/s
Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (High), yuv420p, 1920x1080 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 50 fps, 50 tbr, 1k tbn, 100 tbc (default)
Stream #0:1: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp, 256 kb/s (default)
At least one output file must be specified

<MEZZMO>: Child process ended with code: 109, ExitCode=1

Notice 50fps in bold. The TV is just not able to play such video. Would be great if this could be transcoded into highest possible framerate supported by TV (30fps) in new release of mezzmo ;-)

Thx.

[Paul]

Hi Michal,

Many thanks for the feedback. Mezzmo v3.3 will have <maxframerate> defined for the Samsung F-series so no videos with high framerates (>30 fps) will get passed natively to your TV. They will be transcoded to a max frame rate of 30fps. So it should work well :)

[jbinkley60]

Hi, I have also a F8000 and chapter and time search work, but only with specific formats. For example it does not work for mpeg videos.... Yes, it is a shame of Samsung. I was discussing this with conceiva stuff some time ago. Only possibility is pre-transcode the video before playing into h264. Very annoying. Also you won't be able to play anything above 1920x1080p and 30 fsp... I can't understand this limitation for quad core cpu.....

Forgot to mention that cinema black does work only with HDMI sources. I really can't get this limitation... So no micro dimming with DLNA or usb :-/

Which formats work for FF/RW and time search ? Everything I have is in m2ts format. I just purchased an F4600 and FF/RW don't work. Also which version of Samsung firmware are you running ?

[Misiak]

Which formats work for FF/RW and time search ? Everything I have is in m2ts format. I just purchased an F4600 and FF/RW don't work. Also which version of Samsung firmware are you running ?

I don't know what formats are supported by F4600, but F8000 supports FF/RV with m2ts like a charm. Only mpegs does not work...

[jbinkley60]

What version of Mezzmo are you running and which profile ? I am waiting to upgrade to 3.3 . I am still running 2.7.1, which doesn't have a Samsung F native profile. Correction on my model number. It is a 46" Damsung model F6300.

[Paul]

I am waiting to upgrade to 3.3 . I am still running 2.7.1, which doesn't have a Samsung F native profile.

Several users are running a patch with a Samsung F device profile for testing so we could make sure it is all OK before releasing it. Now that users have confirmed the new device profile is working well with their Samsung F-series TV, Mezzmo 3.3 will contain the new Samsung F device profile and quite a few other new device profiles for devices released this year.

[Paul]

Mezzmo v3.3 has been released and it includes the latest Samsung F device profile.