Paul York has written to let us know about a new Add-In for Windows Home Server v1 that manages and installs the free Serviio DLNA media server. Here is what Paul has to say about his Add-In and the Serviio media server.
If you’re not familiar with Serviio, it is a transcoding-capable media server that “just works.” It streams just about every media file out there to any device, and based on a device profile, transcodes the media only if necessary for that device. It was recently recommended by Sony as “the” server to use for it’s TV’s, Blu-Ray players, and game console.
When you think of a transcoding media server, there are obviously concerns about the horsepower requirements to ensure a smooth usable experience, but Paul alleviates those concerns by telling us that he is successfully running it on the relatively low-end MediaSmart Server EX470.
I’ve got it running flawlessly, transcoding video on my EX470 (only upgraded RAM), so it’s quite a good fit for just about any WHS.
You can learn more about the Add-In and download it here. If you give it a try be sure to let us know how it works for you, either here in the comments or in the forums.
Article by Alex Kuretz
I'm Alex Kuretz, and I'm the founder of MediaSmartServer.net. I was the Lead Test and Integration Engineer at HP for the MediaSmart Server until April 2008 when I moved on to other opportunities outside HP. I've kept active in the Windows Home Server community, creating several add-ins and helping users make the most of their Home Servers.
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I actually set it up a few days ago but haven’t had any luck with. I added several of my devices in the WHS Console (Xbox 360 and Dune Media Players. In the console the source just shows as unknown and they players cannot see the Serviio Media Server. I have had some funky stuff going on with my WHS of late, so it very well may be related to my WHS. More digging around as time permits
Wow, that really is odd. I’ve yet to throw anything DLNA at it that it doesn’t recognize and stream to, though admittedly I’m too poor to have a Dune (I’m guessing SMB is the proper solution for the Dune, anyway). Can you stream from your WHS using any other DLNA/UPnP server?
Yes, I do use smb for Dunes, it was moreso just to test out if it would work. The Xbox 360 would not get recognized either. I have PlayON installed which uses UPnP and all my devices can see from my WHS. Like I said, there have been some Gremlins running around in my WHS of late, so it could very easily be attributed to my WHS and not Serviio
I have not used the WHS addon but I did try the Serviio client installed on my EX495. I was trying to stream to a Sammy LCD 8 Series and Sammy BD. I had some success with the first few files but it went down hill quick. I will say that the support team is very responsive. I was just spending too much time trying to reduce the cost of additional hardware or software by using the DLNA capabilities of my equipment with the various free programs, Serviio, Wild Media Server, Twonky, etc. Plus each device had different UIs which was a turn off. I decided to buy extenders and have never looked back.
I’ve not used the WHS add-in but have been running the Serviio software on my EX95X for good few months now. Don’t use the transcoding feature, just stream videos to DLNA TV and WD Live Plus and I’m yet to find a file format it does not play.
Which extenders are you using?
I just installed it and will test it later this weekend to see what it does and offers. Only thing I can test it with is a WD TV Live.
I did get a chance to play with it and I found it very useful. It actually sorted movies by actor which I found interesting. It appeared to also deliver some internet broadcasting but either I was not patient enough to wait or it just did not work out for me although it appeared to do some buffering then nothing.
I decided to let it do whatever transcoding it wanted to but rather then use my system drive I set it to use a non-storage pool drive instead. Not really sure if it used it or not as the majority of my movies are MKV and the WD TV Live never had an issue playing those.
I also set it up for my music but either I made a mistake or that part doesn’t work. I was not interested in pictures so I never configured that but I will have to take a closer look at the music but even that for me is not a big deal as I am only interested in movies.
What I can say is I like what I see and it does more then what I was expecting it to do.
I installed it on my EX485 to see if I could stream to my Oppo BluRay player. It worked OK but I was unable to create a custom profile that Serviio would load. The biggest problem was that it conflicted somehow with my Squeezebox Server setup. I could find no documentation anywhere on what ports it opened, so I uninstalled it.
Thank God, Finally I can dump Twonky. This works awesome on my Samsung Plasma and thats all I wanted, the rest of the house can pull the stuff to the PC’s from the shares, didn’t want to go outside the network, never did.
It use to take 1-2 mins to open a console, now it is just seconds. If all you want is dlna, go for it and get twonky off, remember you would have to restore to get twonky back, as if.
I’m testing various DLNA servers in preparation of a new SmartTV purchase and Serviio seem to work well on my EX470 – except for it’s limited VIDEO_TS support. It plays individual vob files, but can’t string them together into a coherent movie.
The add-in, however, crashed the console making it unusable. Now I have to figure out how to uninstall the add-in even though I get bring up the console. I can RDP, but the console is blown – as a result of this add-in.
Suggestions on uninstalling a misbehaving add-in?
I used these
http://www.homeserverland.com/wiki/index.php/Windows_Home_Server_Add-in_Manual_Uninstall_Instructions
http://www.wegotserved.com/2009/08/25/how-to-manually-uninstall-a-windows-home-server-add-in/
Had to uninstall a couple more too…ulitimately uninstalled Serviio just because ffmpeg was going nuts. But it’s stable now and will reinstall.