TV Periodically Reboots After Mezzmo 5 Upgrade

[vguitarist]

Hello,

I didn't see anything on the forum about this, so here's what's happening. I have a Samsung Series C TV using the Series C compatible profile in Mezzmo. Since upgrading to Mezzmo 5, my TV occasionally reboots when I either stop or pause a movie. The behavior: I press stop or pause, the TV video freezes for about 5 seconds, then the TV reboots. When I restart the video, timing is gone, so I have to fast-forward and find my place. From personal observation, the issue doesn't happen with shorter videos (e.g. TV shows); it only happens with full-length movies (about every 3rd or 4th movie). Again, these shows played fine under Mezzmo 4.

My network is simple: wired gigabit w/ videos stored on a NAS device. Mezzmo is hosted on a dedicated Pentium workstation. The problem feels like a memory/buffer issue or stream corruption. Whatever it is, it is causing my TV to reboot. Any ideas?

I'm currently running Mezzmo 5.1.0.0. All files are H.264/.mkv

Thanks

[Paul]

Thanks for reporting this. We'll try it here with our Samsung C-series TVs. In the meantime, can you provide us with a set of logs? Turn on logging in Mezzmo (see http://www.mezzmo.com/wiki/doku.php?id=using_logging) and restart your Mezzmo server. Now reproduce the TV reboot issue. Once reproduced, stop your Mezzmo server and exit Mezzmo (Windows) app. Zip up all the logs and email them to us at support [at] conceiva [dot] com.

[vguitarist]

Paul -- it happened again last night. I sent you a link to the logs, since they were too big to email. Please let me know what you find. Thanks

[Peter]

The issue may be caused by the setting of the bookmark, when using the Samsung C (Compatible) profile the behavior is slightly different to the Samsung C profile so changing to the Samsung C profile might resolve the issue.

[vguitarist]

Peter,

The Samsung C compatible profile is required to fix a NAS spin-up error when it awakes from a low power state. I will try the standard C profile as requested, but it will cause a different set of problems. Paul and I spent a good bit of time troubleshooting this issue (tracked down to a setting in the genericdevicedescription XML file). The thread is here: http://forum.conceiva.com/showthread.php/7433-4-0-6-0-Sluggish?goto=newpost. I do see that the C compatible profile is actually for the B-series TV. Maybe that's the problem...

[Peter]

I compared the Samsung C and Samsung C (Compatible) profiles and the only difference of note is the use of the SamsungB Generic description which would affect bookmarks, possibly this also affects the retry behavior of the TV if the request fails.

[vguitarist]

As expected, the Samsung C profile causes a timeout error while waiting for my NAS drive to wake up. The issue is in the associated XML files -- and there is a difference.

GenericDeviceDescriptionSamsung (Samsung C)
<sec:ProductCap>smi,DCM10,getMediaInfo.sec,getCaptionInfo.sec,getC aptionInfoEx.sec</sec:ProductCap>
<sec:X_ProductCap>smi,DCM10,getMediaInfo.sec,getCaptionInfo.sec,getC aptionInfoEx.sec</sec:X_ProductCap>

GenericDeviceDescriptionSamsungB (Samsung B)
<sec:ProductCap>smi,getMediaInfo.sec,getCaptionInfo.sec</sec:ProductCap>
<sec:X_ProductCap>smi,getMediaInfo.sec,getCaptionInfo.sec</sec:X_ProductCap>

Here's the email exchange between Paul and I on the topic. It explains the problem and solution. I'm plan to remove DCM10 from GenericDeviceDescriptionSamsung.xml file. It should fix my issues.

From: Conceiva Support [mailto:support@conceiva.com]
Sent: Monday, April 18, 2016 9:21 PM
To: Jeff Kelly <jeff@jeffkelly.net>
Subject: RE: NAS Drive Power Save Issue

Hi Jeff,

Many thanks for bringing this to our attention.

We’ll create a new device profile (e.g. “Samsung C (Compatible)”) for Mezzmo v5.0 that will have the tweaks that you found. We will keep the existing ‘Samsung C” device profile with the DCM10 tag since this is important for resuming and subtitle support for Samsung C-series TVs. It’s a pity that Samsung C-series TV firmware have these quirks, but there’s nothing we can do but to have the above 2 device profile solution.

Best regards

Paul
Customer Support, Conceiva
Web: http://www.conceiva.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Mezzmo.DLNA.Server
Twitter: https://twitter.com/conceiva_mezzmo
Forums: http://forum.conceiva.com
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From: Conceiva Support [mailto:support@conceiva.com]
Sent: Sunday, May 17, 2015 8:56 PM
To: Jeff Kelly <jeff@jeffkelly.net>
Subject: RE: NAS Drive Power Save Issue

Hi Jeff,

Excellent work. You have discovered something we did not know about.

Just to explain: Samsung firmware is not fully 100% DLNA compliant & they implement their own private messages in their device’s DLNA firmware. Samsung designed this to work solely with their AllShare server that comes bundled with older Samsung TVs.

To get Mezzmo server working well with these older Samsung TV models, we mimic what Samsung’s AllShare server is doing. So that’s why you see special device description XML files for Samsung devices. Generally this works very well - except that you have just discovered it affects browsing speed. The entries in the XML file have been collected from reverse engineering what AllShare is delivering to Samsung devices. An understanding of each attribute is not known as they are undocumented.

The <sec:ProductCap> and <sec:X_ProductCap> sections seem to relate to Samsung’s captions/subtitles/chapter processing. So it would be interesting to see if you have lost any subtitle/chapter features/display with this DCM10 removal.

We’ll make the same change as you have made and we’ll make this available during the Mezzmo v5.0 Beta testing that we’ll be announcing soon. Based on Beta feedback, we’ll keep it for Mezzmo v5.0 – or, if a problem for some users, we’ll just create an FAQ on the forum as a suggested tweak to try in the case of slow browsing speed.

Let us know if you find any side-effects. Thanks for the testing & feedback!

Best regards

Paul
Customer Support, Conceiva
Web: http://www.conceiva.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Mezzmo.DLNA.Server
Twitter: https://twitter.com/conceiva_mezzmo
Forums: http://forum.conceiva.com

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From: Jeff Kelly [mailto:jeff@jeffkelly.net]
Sent: Saturday, 16 May 2015 11:00 PM
To: Conceiva Support
Subject: RE: NAS Drive Power Save Issue

Hi Paul,

As I suspected, changing the xml reference fixed the problem. The other changes had no impact. Here are the differences between the xml files:

GenericDeviceDescriptionSamsungB.xml
<sec:ProductCap>smi,getMediaInfo.sec,getCaptionInfo.sec</sec:ProductCap>
<sec:X_ProductCap>smi,getMediaInfo.sec,getCaptionInfo.sec</sec:X_ProductCap>

GenericDeviceDescriptionSamsung.xml
<sec:ProductCap>smi,DCM10,getMediaInfo.sec,getCaptionInfo.sec,getC aptionInfoEx.sec</sec:ProductCap>
<sec:X_ProductCap>smi,DCM10,getMediaInfo.sec,getCaptionInfo.sec,getC aptionInfoEx.sec</sec:X_ProductCap>


I removed DCM10 from GenericDeviceDescriptionSamsung.xml and the TV works. I went back and forth (adding, then removing) and the behavior is consistent: adding DCM10 causes the error, removing it fixes the problem (TV dwells until the NAS wakes up). Don’t know what the function is for, but I changed it to DCM1000 – didn’t work.

The TV is currently set to SamsungC with DCM10 removed from the xml file. What is the function for and is it required?

Jeff

[Peter]

Hi Jeff,
DCM10 is not clearly documented by Samsung so we do not know all of the behavior it provides when used but we do know that it is required to support bookmarks on the Samsung C. When this value is included and you stop a video the Samsung will send a bookmark position in seconds to the Mezzmo server, then when you start playing the video again the TV will request the bookmark position from the Mezzmo server and offer to resume the video from the bookmarked position.

[vguitarist]

Hi Peter,

I removed DCM10 from GenericDeviceDescriptionSamsung.xml and, so far, everything is working correctly. The dwell time for NAS spin-up from a low power state doesn't error the TV (with DCM10 present, it's a guaranteed error). The "last position" bookmark is working fine (press D to resume). No TV reboots yet...

Does the C series support bookmarks other than resuming from where I left off?

Thanks,

Jeff

[Peter]

Hi Jeff,
The bookmarks in the C series are just resuming from where you left off, on our Samsung C here if we don't have DCM10 then we don't get the prompt for 'press D to resume'. Please let us know how you go with the device profile changes you are currently using and if it works well we can update the Samsung C Compatible profile with the changes.