W.O.W. → Ultra TV & Home Connect DLNA media player issues with fast forwarding

I have a PC running Serviio DLNA media server. The Ultra TV Home Connect can play view and play all the files fine, but there is no fast forward. You can try to skip forward, but it always brings your right back to the beginning of the video.

Anyone have any experience using the Ultra TV home connect? Perhaps this is a serviio compatibility issue?

We used to have the ps3 play the media files, but when we upgraded to ps4 recently, there is no medai player!

I use the DLNA feature quite a bit, and I can tell you that FF and REW are hit or miss (and it's mostly miss). I am using MediaTomb running on an Amahi server. I'm fairly certain this is a limitation of DLNA, as when I read up on this a while back it sounds like the DLNA standard leaves a bit to be desired. I have my files in MKV format, and I can use the skip feature (about 30 seconds for the one that skips commercials on the DVR recorded stuff and 15 minutes ahead if I use the skip or next button on the remote). REW or skip back...meh.

That being said, I haven't consistently encoded my stuff, and I do have a few files that refuse to skip forward or backward. I encode mostly using Handbrake or VidCoder. My settings are as follows:

Size: I leave it at 1920 x 1080.
Video: H.264
Audio: AC3, 448bits, 5.1 channels (this is the only thing that will consistently play on my TV's and in my home theater.

I include forced-only foreign subs (burned in), and I always include Chapters in the hope that some day my DLNA set up will recognize them. I would love, love, love it if the darn things would resume where I left off the next time I start them.

If you're using different settings to encode, I can always encode something and test it out to see if I get the same results. Just let me know.

~Gary

The latest Ultra TV update polished some other features and added new things. It would be nice to see them do the same the home connect feature.

I can't wait for the Netflix addon to be added so I can get rid of my Roku box on one TV and my other two TV's so I don't have to change the input source (since they are smart TV's).

I've had really good luck using Plex as the DLNA server on a CentOS based server. Fast Forward and Rewind actually work fairly will with Handbrake encoded videos for me.

are you saying ff / rw work better in general or specifically on the arris ultra tv box?

Oh, my latest update has netfilx. i havent tested it out yet though. There is some kind of new streaming channel too i need to look at.

You have to use the skip/next buttons to position forward. It depends on the DLNA server how well it works. If the server is transcoding the stream on the fly it probably won't. If the content is encoded in a format that plays as-is, it probably will.

Yeah, it showed up on mine as well. Netflix just sits there with a "Loading..." spinner. The entire new Apps system has a different User Interface than the rest of the system. It also contains a section for "local" options. Local for Chicago. I'm in a different state. Why they would push out a half baked system with an entirely different interface than the rest of the system is absolutely baffling to me. This clearly didn't get enough Q/A. If this is why my bill went up $30 a month, it was not a good use or their (my) money.

I can't compare with Serviio, as I've never used it. I can say that FF and Rew work well with the videos I've encoded and play through my Plex DLNA server in the Arris box.

I saw Netflix on my box last night.

Entering my username and password took forever though. Don't know what the issue was. Took two to three presses of the remote button to move the cursor around to select the letters for my email and password.

You got further than I did. I let it sit at the "loading..." screen for about 15 minutes while I made some food. Came back, still loading.

Mine hung like that until I pulled the power plug, but came up OK after restarting. Also one of my remote controls was working slowly but that improved after swapping in new batteries.

I have both serviio and plex servers on a Mac - and both work as long as the content plays without transcoding.

...and now this morning I have a new main menu line Netflix icon, rather than the one in the Streamland menu. This one actually works, yay!