2 questions: Remote administering + Samsung Allshare sort support

[Jcl]

Hi, I'll go for 2 questions in 1... maybe they have been answered before, but I haven't been able to find any [recent] thread for them (I didn't look extensively, admittedly).

First... can you administer a remote server at all? I have a home-server where I run Mezzmo... to administer it (i.e., running the database-management application), I need to remotely connect to it. This is usually a hassle and I'd prefer having the application installed on my desktop PC and the server running on the other machine. Is this possible at all? If not, is this a planned feature?

And secondly... I've read on other threads that Samsung seems to have its very own DLNA protocol, thus not allowing Mezzmo to send sorted lists to it. This renders the music (at least, if you use albums) part of it basically useless on these devices, but I'd also love the "last 10 movies" or so folders to be correctly sorted. Are you planning to support sorting on these devices (maybe using a special non-DLNA-compliant profile or something?)? I know the TV is capable of sorting differently since the Samsung AllShare application does indeed sort the media not alphabetically.

If there's plans for any of these features, is there any ETA for them?

Thanks a lot!

[Paul]

Hi Jcl,

Some answers:


At the moment, using remote desktop to connect to your Windows server computer running Mezzmo is the officially supported method. There are some users that have experimented with running Mezzmo app on one machine and Mezzmo server on another. See this thread - http://forum.conceiva.com/showthread.php/5981-Connecting-Mezzmo-quot-desktop-quot-to-Mezzmo-Media-Server-installed-on-2-different-machines.
Samsung does not have its own DLNA protocol - rather it has its own extensions on top of DLNA. Delivering sorted lists works fine for Samsung B, C, D & E-series TVs/BDPs. It seems the problem only appears in the firmware for the newer Samsung F-series TVs/BDPs. We are still investigating this and if we can find a solution, we certainly will enhance Mezzmo to support sorted files lists on Samsung F-series TVs/BDPs.

[Jcl]

...
Samsung does not have its own DLNA protocol - rather it has its own extensions on top of DLNA. Delivering sorted lists works fine for Samsung B, C, D & E-series TVs/BDPs. It seems the problem only appears in the firmware for the newer Samsung F-series TVs/BDPs. We are still investigating this and if we can find a solution, we certainly will enhance Mezzmo to support sorted files lists on Samsung F-series TVs/BDPs.
Uhm, if this helps any, my TV is an E series (46ES5500, to be exact) and it won't show sorted lists from Mezzmo (they show alphabetically). This happens with every DLNA server I've tried, except their own Allshare. I might try to find out more info about this... but before I set up everything, is DLNA network traffic encrypted at all? If not, I might try to sniff it and find more info about what's going on behind the scenes.

Thanks!

[Paul]

Interesting. We'd like to see a set of WireShark logs when you browse your AllShare media server on your TV and get a non-alphabetic sorted list. That will help us get Mezzmo doing the same. I'm not sure if you are familiar with Wireshark (Ethereal as it used to be called), but it's very simple to use. You can download it from http://www.wireshark.org). What you will need to do in Wireshark is the following:

1) turn off your TV

2) stop your Mezzmo server if it's running

3) run Wireshark

4) go to Capture -> Interfaces

5) in the dialog that pops up click the Start button opposite your network card (if you have multiple, please choose the one that's connected to the device)

6) turn on your TV

7) run AllShare and try browsing some folders/playlists on your TV and make sure you see some non-alpha sorted file lists.

8) click on Capture -> Stop in Wireshark

9) click on File -> Save in Wireshark and save the file as a Wireshark/tcpdump format (default)

10) zip it up and email it to us at support [at] conceiva [dot] com.

[Jcl]

I'll do as soon as I have some free time off-work (and off-wife-watching-TV ;-) ) to spend on this. I'll have to disable most services that use the network at home first (and I have pretty busy computers at home :-) ) if I don't want Wireshark logs to be huge and pretty much useless, and that will take some experimentation time, but I'll try to do it ASAP... would really love to see this implemented if at all possible.

Thanks again for the prompt support :-)

[srthomas]

Would love this too...

[Paul]

I'll do as soon as I have some free time off-work (and off-wife-watching-TV ;-) ) to spend on this. I'll have to disable most services that use the network at home first (and I have pretty busy computers at home :-) ) if I don't want Wireshark logs to be huge and pretty much useless, and that will take some experimentation time, but I'll try to do it ASAP... would really love to see this implemented if at all possible.

Thanks again for the prompt support :-)

Don't spend too much time disabling services on your home network. We'll be able to find the relevant parts of the WireShark logs and they compress quite well when zipped up.