Media Devices problem,

[sanzer]

I'm having problems with Mezzmo properly recognizing and in one case even seeing my upnp devices. Mezzmo shows my Patriot Box Office as a Brite-View CinemaTube, My HTPC running Windows Home Premium x64 shows up as Unknown Device while my other 2 PCs also running Windows Home Premium x64 show up as Microsoft Windows Media Player. My WDTV Live Plus doesn't show up at all. All the upnp devices except the WDTV Live Plus are connected to my gigabit wired network. The WDTV Live Plus is connected via Cat 5 patch cable to a Dlink 601 running DDWRT set up as a repeater bridge. It in turn connects wirelessly to a Dlink 655 running stock firmware which is connected via Cat 5 patch cable to a TPlink 24 port unmanaged switch. I've attached a screenshot of the Media Devices screen.

[Paul]

Hi sanzer,

Given you are using a bridge, the problem may be MAC address related. Check your bridge settings to see if it has settings to allow MAC forwarding (or MAC bypass). Turn on MAC forwarding and this may help your problem. Reboot your bridge and devices, and delete all devices from the Media Devices dialog in Mezzmo after making any bridge setting changes. If your bridge does not have MAC forwarding, then you should turn on the "Use only IP addresses to identify devices" checkbox in the Media Devices dialog and assign static IP addresses to your devices so you can get reliable device detection.

If no success, then send us a set of logs. Turn on logging (see http://forum.conceiva.com/showthread.php/419-FAQ-How-to-turn-on-diagnostic-logging). Go to the Media Devices dialog and delete all your devices. Restart your Mezzmo server and wait until all your devices are populated back into the Media Devices dialog. Then stop your Mezzmo server and exit Mezzmo. Zip up all the logs and email them to us at support [at] conceiva [dot] com.

[sanzer]

I tried a wired connection and my WDTV Live Plus showed up. I haven't been able to find information on MAC forwarding with DD-WRT so I assume it's not possible. Would it be possible to assign a static ip address to only the WDTV Live Plus and leave the rest of the devices on the network with DHCP supplied addresses? Also why is my HTPC showing up as a Unknown Device? Finally how to I get my Patriot Box Office (PBO) to show up as a PBO instead of as a Brite-View CinemaTube?

[Paul]

If you turn on the "Use only IP addresses to identify devices" checkbox in the Media Devices dialog, then you will need to assign static IP addresses for all your devices.

Your HTPC is listed as unknown device because it is responding to "are there any UPnP/DLNA devices?" messages broadcast by Mezzmo server when it starts up. So your HTPC must have some UPnP software/component running on it, but Mezzmo server does not what it is - so it is listed as unknown. That's fine/normal - since you will not be using it to stream & play media files.

You will need to manually change the device profile for your Patriot Box Office. Go to the Media Devices dialog and edit your device to change the device profile.

[sanzer]

The only program I'm running on my HTPC is Windows Media Center 7 and the software for my TV Tuner cards. I have one Ceton PCIe Infinitv 4 CableCard tuner and four SiliconDust HDHomerum Dual Over the Air (OTA) tuners and one HDHomerun Prime CableCard tuners. Both types of HDHomerun tuners are connected to my HTPC via wired LAN. I think that the HDHomerun Prime tuners have some DLNA support even I've never used it and it isn't supposed to work very well. Could that be the cause of the Unknown Device message? If so, how do I fix it? What I want to do is stream WTV TV recordings from my HTPC to my WDTV Live Plus using Mezzmo to do so and have Mezzmo transcode them on the fly into a form the WDTV Live Plus can play. My WTV files aren't copy protcted.

[sanzer]

If you turn on the "Use only IP addresses to identify devices" checkbox in the Media Devices dialog, then you will need to assign static IP addresses for all your devices.

So do I have to assign static addresses to ALL the devices on my network or just the devices I wan to use Mezzmo with?

[Paul]

Just the devices you want to use with Mezzmo. This will ensure that Mezzmo can identify each of device uniquely when they communicate with Mezzmo using the IP address that you assigned to each of them.

[sanzer]

Would setting the router being used as a bridge to clone the WDTV Live Plus's MAC address work? And how do I deal with the HDHomerun TV tuner software replying as a uPNP server on my HTPC?. I DO want to stream WTV files from my HTPC to the WDTV Live Plus and use Mezzmo on the fly to transcode them to a format the WDTV Live Plus can play.

[Paul]

The problem with network bridges is when you have many devices attached to it and the network bridge only presents it's own MAC address for these devices rather than presenting the MAC addresses of the devices connected to it. This makes device identification by MAC address impossible. So the "Use only IP addresses to identify devices" checkbox in the Media Devices dialog is available for those users that cannot adjust their bridge settings to turn on MAC forwarding or MAC bypass. If you only have one device connected to your network bridge, then the device identification problem is not too bad since Mezzmo will not get confused by multiple devices having the same MAC address when using MAC addresses for device identification.

I would share the folder on your HTPC that contains your TV recording videos so that you can add this shared network folder into Mezzmo. Then, you can use Mezzmo server to stream your HTPC-based media files to your devices in your home (rather than using HDHomerun as a UPnP server). If that works well for you, you can turn off the UPnP server features in HDHomerun (not sure if that is possible?).