Sony BDP-S580

[pawnslinger]

I have just gotten a new 580, and have it setup with PS3 Media Server 1.50.1. I have a bunch of mp4 files that I created for use with my iPad, and I tried playing them on the 580. Most of them work perfectly... but about 4 or 5 of them play silently. All files have 128 kbps, 48 kHz, AAC, stereo audio. All of the files play fine if I plug them into the front USB port on a thumb drive. I have tried playing with the settings in the server, but nothing makes any change there. I have played with the audio settings in the 580, and have managed to make the sound better sounding. But the silent videos remain silent. I have played them locally using WMP and VLC, sound is okay there, as well as thru the thumb drive. I wish they would stream.

Any ideas? Or things I could try. The files were all created by backing up DVDs. And "mediainfo" looks identical for all of them. I tried to create them as consistently as I could. Clearly something is different.

[pawnslinger]

I finally solved this problem. I don't know exactly which fix worked, but basically I changed the parameters in the server to try and stop it from altering the audio stream. And that finally worked... all videos now play perfectly.

Now I have to figure out why my PS3 won't connect. The PS3 sees my wife's computer and her WMP server, she is running Windows 7 and not even trying to share anything, yet the PS3 sees it just fine. On the other hand, my computer which shares the same connection to the LAN (thru a switch in my bedroom) is not seen by the PS3!! I have tried everything I can think of, I have opened ports, disabled firewalls, disabled Windows Defender, etc, etc, and still my computer cannot connect with the PS3 in the living room. The s580 that I can connect with is located in my bedroom on the same switch as my wife's and my computers are. The PS3 is on a different switch in the living room, it has a static IP on the same subnet as our computers in the bedroom. The only difference that I can find between our 2 computers is that mine runs Vista, hers 7.

Anyone have any ideas?

[Val Killmore]

I finally solved this problem. I don't know exactly which fix worked, but basically I changed the parameters in the server to try and stop it from altering the audio stream. And that finally worked... all videos now play perfectly.

Now I have to figure out why my PS3 won't connect.

I can only suggest reading this tip thread thoroughly. It may be something as simple as your network adapter set to a "Public" network location or the need for a router reboot.


PS:
Can you post what it is you did your parameters that fixed your audio issue, in case someone else runs into the same problem with Sony BluRay players

[pawnslinger]

Network is totally Private. Because of the recent issues, like the install of the media server, the router has been repeatedly rebooted (cold unplugged). Yesterday I was able to get the PS3 Media Server to talk to my iPad... which I am really thrilled about. So the media server can now talk to my blu-ray player in the bedroom and my ipad. The setup was a bit tricky, I used a client app called "Good Player" and had to manually add the server. It was unable to find the server by scanning for it, but the app has a feature where it allows you to enter an ip address for the server... I typed in the local 192 address of my computer that runs the server and at first it did nothing, I thought it was a dud, then POP, the servers all jumped into the ipad, the WMP servers AND then the PS3 Media Server. Once it found the servers, it has worked fine since.

I will try and find all the changes I had to make to the audio setup to get it working... in the next message, after I have a chance to re-examine the setup.

[pawnslinger]

All work was done under the "Transcoding Settings" tab.

Under "Common Transcode Settings".

I cut back the number of cores to 2 from 8... I run a 920-i7, and
didn't want it to hog all the cores. And I would prefer it didn't
transcode at all.

Since I have already remux'ed all my files to stereo, I changed the
Maximum number of audio channels to 2. Since my files have
been down-shifted for iPad usage, they have at most 128 Kbps
bitrate for the audio, so I changed the AC3 Audio bitrate to 128.

I checked the box for "Remux when audio track is AC3" and
"Remux DVD ISO track". I do not think these had any effect on
my playback, but just trying to be complete.

I checked the box to disable subtitles, and put "mp4" into the
list of extensions to skip transcode.

Under "FFmpeg Audio", I unchecked the box for Automatic audio
resampling.

I do not know what these parameters mean, as I am a newbie
with this program, I was just trying to make changes that
seemed sensible to me and likely to affect my situation.

[pawnslinger]

Okay, here is a strange one. The bluray player can still see my PS3 Media Server AND it plays the videos just fine. But the PS3 Media Server has the big red circle with an X in it... and says it can find no renderers!! If I close the PMS, the bluray can no longer play the videos, when I restart the service, the bluray is once again happy and can play them fine. So clearly the two are conversing with each other, but the main screen says there are no renderers...

What would cause that? What have I done to mess things up? It was all working fine just yesterday.

[Raptor399]

Sounds like another PMS is still running in the background. Check if there isn't an old javaw process still running.

I have not yet seen PMS converse with a renderer and at the same time display a red cross. It either converses and displays a renderer, or it does not converse at all. There is no grey area in between.

[pawnslinger]

It was doing it, the cross and serving at the same time. I figure I messed up somehow, to fix it, I dropped back to a restore point 24 hours previous. That fixed it... it now talks and shows that it finds the renderers. Still can't find the PS3, but finds the WMPs on other machines, and the bluray player. My head is getting sore trying to connect the PS3... you know, knocking it against brick walls.

[pawnslinger]

Another problem. If I select the option to not sleep during streaming... my system won't ever sleep, even if I select sleep from the start menu. I had to go into the advanced settings of the power config to set allow to sleep if streaming in the windows options. It would be nice if PMS unset that when you uncheck the prevent sleep box in PMS. I am assuming that PMS sets that mode in the power config when you request to prevent sleeping during streaming. It is not good to leave that option set when no longer needed, it took me a few hours of digging to find that advanced setting and undo it.