Charles - I was a member of the beta program and was never able to play AVI files throughout the entire test period. I am not able to play the Tokyo Harbor.wmv file that was included in my download of the latest version of the video player.
Am running on a VISTA and Win 7 RC dual boot laptop - tried both hard wired and wireless connection. No difference.
Put me in the same category as others on here. I cannot get Media Manager to stream to my bedroom Home Media DVR at all.
I have turned off the firewall completely, shutdown all other programs on the computer. If I go to the DVR, it will successfully see the media computer, it will actually list all the songs, videos, and photos that are set up to share. Photos will properly show on the DVR, but when I try to listen to music, it appears to be streaming (you can see the progress/play bar move across the screen), but there is no actual audio output by the TV.
As for videos, although it lists the videos on the DVR screen, any attempt to play them results in a long delay followed by the ever-present "There was an error streaming the video. Please try again later."
I've also tried to play the sample music and sample videos, with the same results. Music looks like it's streaming, but no audio is played; videos time out with nothing happening. I've tried using multiple bitrate music files (from 128 to 300) but none work correctly. Neither do multiple varieties of video files.
It will also correctly list all of the internet videos you'd like to play, but none of them will actually play.
There are no other routers on the system other than what was installed by the Verizon tech last month. My firewall, when configured to allow everything through but at least log accesses, shows connections being made to my computer using port 18001, which I gather is the streaming port. Yet, nothing is correctly streaming. By the way, my computer hosting the files is directly wired via ethernet cabling to the router - it is not being streamed wireless.
It's a shame that this isn't working, as it was one of the reasons we went ahead and got the Home Media DVR option. I'm beginning to wish I'd just gotten a regular DVR instead for the lower cost.
Update
I've since tried installing MM on a laptop running WinXP (my home is Vista), and had the exact same results, initially.
It turns out ffdshow is causing a conflict/problem with Verizon's MM. If I enable ffdshow as the codec for playback of videos, but leave "mixing" unchecked under ffdshow's audio settings, then the video never plays on the DVR system. If I turn on "mixing", the video will play as expected.
Furthermore, if I put MM on the "blacklist" of programs that ffdshow won't process codecs for, it works correctly on its own -- for videos.
However, I have yet to get audio MP3 files to play on the TV with actual audio. It will stream (as evidenced by network logs, network activity, etc), but there is no audio coming out of the TV itself. As far as I can tell ffdshow is NOT involved with the MP3 file transfers, as I never see it attempt to load. I don't currently have a computer without ffdshow installed, so I can't test that just yet. (I'm hoping to fire up a virtual pc soon to test that out also.)
So, final summary: got photos, got video (without ffdshow - which also comes with the CCCP codec pack, remember), but still don't have actual audio from MP3 music files, despite their being streamed.
Crazy thought: could using an HDMI cable be an issue? I would think since the audio from the video files is coming in fine that it wouldn't matter, but I haven't had time to hook my DVR up with composite cabling yet.
Also, is pausing (if not rewind/ff) not supported for streamed videos through MM? I would have thought it would act like On Demand (which also streams) and allow those functions.
I tried changing ffdshow settings, still nothing but a timeout error for me. What are you using to see the network activity, the router logs?
Just a note to add on this topic, please try to reinstall media manager too. I'm guessing some of you have already tried doing that with no success.
Sometimes we overlook the easy things.
To check network activity, I'm using a combination of things. To see simple connections, I use the Vista Advanced Firewall log, which although not great since it doesn't show which >program< is opening ports, does at least show the port number, protocol, source, and dest ip. Since I know what IP my computer and DVR is, I can figure it out from there.
I also frequently use Wallwatcher, which is a very good packet analyzer, and that lets me do a better job of seeing the bandwidth being used, ports, etc.
Either way, when I try to play an MP3, I can clearly see the packets going from the office computer to the DVR, but for some reason sound just never makes it there. I'm going to try using a virtual machine with no codecs and a base WinXP or Vista install to see if it can serve the MP3 files correctly. I'm somehow convinced this is a codec conflict/issue.
Oh, and as for ffdshow, did you have a chance to go under the "ffdshow audio decoder configuration", drop down to "Directshow control", and put in "Verizon Media Manager.exe" and "VTServer.exe" in the area for "Don't use ffdshow in:"? I'm not sure if that will help, although in my case not using ffdshow allowed the videos to stream correctly (if a bit blocky, despite the direct ethernet connection and horsepower of my dual-core office PC). You may also want to check the box in ffdshow for "Mixer", and perhaps select "same as input" for the speaker configuration.
Try these things, though I doubt it's a sure cure. It worked a little for me, but I'm still researching the MP3 issue. I'm amazed that MM can stream a 720x480 video file from my office computer (with audio in sync), but yet MM supposedly isn't recommended/can't stream an MP3 with a bitrate of 300? Odd....
Yes, by the way, I did happen to uninstall, reboot, reinstall, reboot, as well as try the LiveUpdate program. No changes.
I did that last week with no change.
I did it today and everything works!!
thanks
sharkman
Hi Sharkman44,
I'm sorry, what was the solution that worked for you exactly?
I probably shouldn't have "solved" it because so many people have had the same problem that I had.
I uninstalled Media Manager completely from my system and then re-installed it from scratch. It worked fine after the re-install.
Good Luck
sharkman
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