topic Re: Has anyone managed to stream from a windows 8 system? in Other TVs

Has anyone managed to stream from a windows 8 system?

iomman — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 19:05:17 GMT

I have recently upgraded to a windows 8 computer and the music and pictures stream beautifully to my Bravia TV, the videos however are a different matter.

They are getting reconized and even come up as a picture on my screen but if you try to play them the little cursor spins round for a bit then a sign comes up saying "playback not available"

the only way i can get a video to play is to either make them into a movie which plays in a WMV (.wmv) file or convert the video into AVI (.avi) file but this takes an awful long time to do, is this the only way round it?

If I try to stream directly from DIVX or window media on my computer the little "Play to" box tells me that my lounge TV is not windows certified and the video has "an unexpected error" and won't play.

Looking on the Sony web site it seems that the video formats I am using are all ok to use with a sony Bravia TV, I tried the help line but they just sent me 3 pages of gumph that was not much help at all, I feel i am so close to getting this working and maybe its staring me in the face but I cannot believe that I need to reformat my entire video library.

Just checked the other formats that won't play and they are AVI (.AVI) if having the AVI in upper case makes a difference!, MP4 and WMV (.WMV) again is this case sensitive?

I do have an old WM file which does play on the TV but very badly but thats about it

Anyone out there with a bit more going for them than me that has sorted this out?

Has anyone managed to stream from a windows 8 system?

Nielsen — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 08:03:53 GMT

Personally I haven't updated my win7 pc and isn't planning to. On the win8 compability problems look here : http://www.sony.co.uk/support/windows-8-compatibility-information/eu/tv/g13_bravia_eu.html

On the format issue I'll suggest Homestream, since I'm guessing it works on win8 as well.

Message was edited by: Nielsen

Re: Has anyone managed to stream from a windows 8 system?

iomman — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 09:59:23 GMT

Yes I have already been there but when i try to go to playback options to select Bravia it says there is no device to play too. but is'nt strange that it will play some formats but not the common ones. as i said before it is actually recieving the file on the TV because the opening shot is diplayed but for some reason will not play it.

Is there anything software wise that will make the TV visible to the windows 8 system?

Re: Has anyone managed to stream from a windows 8 system?

Anonymous — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 13:32:32 GMT

Hi there

Try a program called Serviio. (Serviio is the software that Homestream was built on). Reports indicate that it works on Windows 8

www.serviio.org

Have

Re: Has anyone managed to stream from a windows 8 system?

Bravia55HX — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 19:16:45 GMT

Hi,

this is what you need for Sony products

http://www.sony.co.uk/hub/1237485339460

Re: Has anyone managed to stream from a windows 8 system?

Nielsen — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 23:05:57 GMT

The "play to" box will only appear on files with formats supported by Windows Media Player + TV to push to TV.
The term "supported video files format" can be a tricky matter. Each video file container (ex. avi) can contain numerous variations of audio and video codecs and codec settings. If you by using the TV pulls a file with supported container and unsupported condec, the TV will try to start and fail with a reply like "corrupt or unsupported file".
To ease up these format restrains Homestream is the solution - it knows your TV and will transcode on the fly if necessary (Full HD 3D movies demands some PC power). One limitation here is that there is no player (dmp) or controller (dmc) in Homestream ie.no push option, so you need to use the TV as dmp/dmc to pull the video content from the PC (homestream/server/dms). Keeping a good folder and file structure makes this a small issue though imo.

All this is not new on win8.

Re: Has anyone managed to stream from a windows 8 system?

iomman — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 00:53:42 GMT

Thanks very much to all that have bothered to answer and although some of it is above my head i have made some progress. As with these things it sometimes two steps forward and one back.

I have downloaded Homestream and it loaded fine to my TV and after a bit of blundering around a sort of success!

I did mange to play my videos on the TV, but then it stopped and at the moment i am having trouble just to get Homestream to roconized as a network device, so there is hope, I just need to keep at it.

My thoughts are at the moment is that the Homestream seems to have been written for windows Vista as it says in one of the info boxes in the programme, i have tried to get windows 8 to convert the program, the first time I did it it did play the videos but it seems to have died again which is what I will do if i don't get some sleep.

maybe I'll try the servio program unless someone a brighter than me ( which is half the world) has any further ideas. meanwhile my normal life (work) must go on, will update you when i can get back to the task tomorrow.

Re: Has anyone managed to stream from a windows 8 system?

Nielsen — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 01:19:16 GMT

Great feedback. It sounds like your Homestream is working. Now you are on to the next tutorial I guess .Home network can be a fuss. Is it wired or wireless?

Re: Has anyone managed to stream from a windows 8 system?

Bravia55HX — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 18:04:14 GMT

Hi,

you need to go into power options on your computer and stop it from going to sleep, that will solve your problem.

Re: Has anyone managed to stream from a windows 8 system?

Stuwizard — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 11:30:41 GMT

A good one is plex

It has a great user interface and will stream all files inc Mkv

You can also add the plex app to iphone , ipad & android & stream all your files to your devices .

Have been using this and it's great .

Will put them in seasons 1 - 2 etc

Also loads artwork & description on devices

& on tv .

http://www.plexapp.com/

Has anyone managed to stream from a windows 8 system?

iomman — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 14:44:08 GMT

To bring this post to a conclusion, the results are good.

I can now watch my video's from my computer to my Sony Bravia TV ( which is wired by the way)

I just select Homestream on the video options on the TV although the old options are still present they obviously do not work. Homestream is also an option on my pictures and music but i don't use it as the old standard system works fine.

There is a down side though ( is'nt there always?)

The homestream will not work if the computer is in sleep mode, I have discovered that the original system will wake up the computer if you select it and then you can go back to Homestream and it works fine, until the computer slips back into sleep mode, at which point you need to select the original system again to wake it up.

just as well my video's are not very long, to watch a film like this would be a major pain in the ***.

I have looked at the settings on Homestream and it says control is enabled but maybe I need to look a bit deeper.

It is a vast improvement on what it was, to be honest it was all a bit of a suprise that I had the option to veiw pictures, music and videos on my TV anyway so I should be happy but i did feel that something was'nt right.

If anyone has any other options that I am missing or just plainly don't know about please feel free to enlighten me.

Many thanks to all that have contributed and hope it is of some help to others, if I can help I will, but don't count on it, I really am an amateur as far as all this is concerned

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