Hi, newcomer to Mezzmo here.
I am still trying to find the best way to stream all my media content to my range of devices. My current setup is as follows;
All media is stored on a Windows 7 32-bit AMD Athlon X2 Dual Core 3.01GHz PC with 2GB RAM. Video and Music are on an internal slave HDD, while Photos are on the primary HDD but a different partition to the system . The PC connects directly to my home network via a 100Mb ethernet connection.
Before trying Mezzmo, I used the following media servers on the PC:
InMethod Air Video Player to stream Video to iPad and iPhone (over Wireless G) using the Air Video app
Pro's - Works fine, no problems whatsoever
Con's - only does video and only to its own app
Samsung PC Share Manager to stream Video and Pictures to Samsung TV and HT (UE40C6500 and HT-C5550 both over 100Mb ethernet)
Pro's - Seems to stream almost everything to both Samsung devices just fine
Con's - Refreshing the shared media takes forever, meaning there is no point trying my Music library which is over 200GB. Changes to folder configurations don't always take effect, which leaves things untidy in the player interface. It can sometimes take several days for new/changed files to appear!
TVersity to stream Music to iPad and iPhone using PlugPlayer app, and to Samsungs.
Pro's - PlugPlayer works really well with this, really fast even when searching the entire library
Con's - No album art in PlugPlayer or Samsung. Samsung doesn't display Artist either, just "No Singer" for all tracks.
For Video and Music on the other PCs (wired and wireless) I've just been using shared drives mappings through bog-standard Windows Explorer as it seems to be the quickest and easiest way. Foobar2000, VLC, XBMC, even iTunes all work to a degree but I've found they're just not as consistently reliable as Windows Explorer.
For photos I still haven't found a suitable server I'm 100% happy with, WMP works ok on the TV, TVersity is ok on the iPad/iPhone using olimsoft AirPlayer, but ideally I just want one Media Server to do all content to all devices!
After reading lots of good stuff about Mezzmo I disabled all of the above and installed it on the 15-day trial. Installation was a breeze and after a few hours of carrying out the initial set up stuff it seemed good to go. I've been using it for about 24hrs now and have hit some real frustrations which if I can't fix easily I may have to give up and go back to my old set up.
1.) Streaming Music to PC - Windows Media Player is missing a large number of tracks - they just don't show in the Mezzmo library. I can see them in the Mezzmo on the host PC, but Windows Media Player can't see them (even on the host PC). In lots of albums I can only see a couple of tracks but Mezzmo shows them all to be present. I tried using XBMC instead, which initially worked fine, but navigating playlists or folders is so slow it often times out and says it can't connect to the server.
2.) Streaming Video to Samsung TV - My TV shows and films seem to stream fine initially, but several times playback has simply stopped and the player jumps to the next title. On several occasions this has actually caused the TV to reboot and the Mezzmo server to crash. My home videos recorded on digital camera (AVI) and iPhone (MOV) play with varying success - some eventually play after a long period of "Opening" (30 seconds or so), while others show "File Format not recognised" after the same delay while "Opening".
3.) Streaming Music to Samsung TV - Navigating the library is really slow, and there's a similar delay as with videos before playing anything. If I try and browse anything on the iPad or iPhone at the same time as media is playing on the TV, TV playback is interrupted and hardly ever resumes, displaying "Opening file" before "File Format Not recognised" - even though it's already been playing fine up to that point! I've also renamed and moved a couple of video files and tried using the maintain library function, but the old filenames still show in the player interface and won't play. Trying to play them also seems to make the server crash.
While writing this post Mezzmo has actually just crashed again and on trying to start it back up it's stuck at the "Initializing..." splash screen so I think I'll try a complete removal and reinstall later when I have time.
Any advice/tips/suggestions on any of the issues above are most welcome!
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