dlna player - panasonic dmp-bdt220

[spunkyaz]

Updates 01/19/12
AVR on, sound produced from AVR speakers and TV speakers
Continued testing with Golf HD channel
Picture is still good although sound continues to have drops intermittently about every 10 seconds
Continued testing with ESPN HD channel
Picture has dropouts and pixelization especially with rapid movements, sound still has intermittent drop outs
Continued testing with ESPN SD channel
Picture has no drop outs and sound is good.

While running the above tests through the dmp-bdt220 I tested live feed from tuner1 hd prime to my laptop with WIFI 802.11 N connection
I used WMP12, then WMC to watch the same ESPN feed that the dmp-bdt220 was tuned to above. Both applications produced good results on both video and audio. No dropouts on video or audio. (Evidence that new firmware is stable within WMC.) Based on this result I briefly changed the dm-bdt220 to an 802.11 N connection and tried ESPN HD. The video was very badly pixelated and no audio. Both the dmp-bdt220 and my laptop are within 10 feet of the WIFI router.

AVR off, HDMI bypass functioning, sound produced from TV speakers
Continued testing with Golf HD channel
Picture is still good although sound is better, no sound dropouts
Continued testing with ESPN HD channel
Picture has some dropouts and pixelization especially with rapid movements, sound still has intermittent drop outs
Continued testing with ESPN SD channel
Picture has no drop outs and sound is good. Lost sound and video froze after 30 minutes

Tested on FSA HD (Fox Sports Arizona). I watched basketball games, approximately 2.5 hours. Picture and sound were excellent. The only issue I had was the dmp-bdt220 lost the connection with the live tv feed twice during the broadcast. The first time the menu froze and I had to power down the player and restart to get the live tv connection back. The second time I was able to click on the channel to restore the live feed. I suspect this issue may be caused by the dmp-bdt220 software.

Notes: Next I plan to move the dmp-bdt220 to the same LAN segment (switch) as the Prime HD unit for further testiing
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I have been looking forward to this Homerun HD Prime release since it was announced 12/4/12. I went out and bought the Panasonic DMP-BDT220 blu-ray player for the DLNA playback capability. I don't need a Sony Playstation. None of my TV content is copy protected.

I installed the beta update today. The DMP-BDT220 successfully displays live TV from the HD Prime DMS, although not from the Premium Channels Directory.

I used Golf channel and ESPN for my test channels so far.

Golf Channel HD has a fine picture, but suffers from audio dropout intermittently.
ESPN HD had video drop out and audio drop out so I tried ESPN in SD.
ESPN SD video and audio was OK. Once in a while I would lose the connection to the channel.

I don't think I have an issue with the LAN speed. All connections are 1GB ethernet. The DLNA player is 2 switches away from the HD Prime on the LAN.

I briefly checked my WMC PC feeds, but I am not sure if WMC live TV is affected by the update. I was on the 20120405 firmware before today.

Below is my set up.

prime device id 1315B3E6 old firmware 20120405
network 1gb wired ethernet
wmc pc on same lan segment as prime

dlna player - panasonic dmp-bdt220 @1080p on lan router segment
avr - insignia ns-r5101ahd-a
tv - panasonic plasma th-42px60u @1080p

dlna player attached via hdmi to avr.
avr attached to panasonic tv via hdmi

preupdate note: have been playing .wtv files via dlna on the dmp-bdt220. excellent video and audio

lan hardware - cable modem-arris tm822g, router - linksys e3000, switch - linksys se2800, switch - linksys se2500

cable tv = comcast digital starter (no premium channels) no copy protection

hsi = comcast blast! 35 Mbps d/l, 5 Mbps u/l


More later...
SpunkyAZ

[spunkyaz]

Updated with 01/19/12 testing comments


I can't wait for the updated version of the Homerun HD Prime. I just ordered a second Homerun HD Prime and Panasonic DMP-BDT200 from J&R, http://www.jr.com. DLNA makes a big difference in my TV expansion plans. The second "Prime" also gives me some redundancy in case of failure of my current unit.

[spunkyaz]

Installed 20130121beta1 release this afternoon
* Fix problem where channel list reported by DLNA client may be truncated to 10/20/100 channels.
* Log when a DLNA request is refused due to DMP/DMR sending a range request (non compliant DLNA device).

Briefly tested my 4 Win7 WMC pc's...
All worked OK with WMC and WMP12 producing live TV
My main TV will get a workout tonight with live TV and recordings in WMC.
I will do more testing on the Panasonic DMP-BDT220 DLNA player tomorrow.

SpunkyAZ

[spunkyaz]

Installed 20130121beta1 release this afternoon
* Fix problem where channel list reported by DLNA client may be truncated to 10/20/100 channels.
* Log when a DLNA request is refused due to DMP/DMR sending a range request (non compliant DLNA device).

Briefly tested my 4 Win7 WMC pc's...
All worked OK with WMC and WMP12 producing live TV
My main TV will get a workout tonight with live TV and recordings in WMC.
I will do more testing on the Panasonic DMP-BDT220 DLNA player tomorrow.

SpunkyAZ

01/23/12 - Update to WMC PC and DLNA player testing

WMC PC Testing 01/21 PM and 01/22 PM

Live TV viewing was excellent both days. There were no video or audio dropouts and no pixelization issues. I did not get any "no tuner available" messages. Most of my WMC PC watching is from recorded TV shows.

The only issue I had was that my first show scheduled to record on 01/21 did not record. When I rebooted the WMC PC the recording schedule resumed normally.

DLNA Player - Panasonic DMP_BDT220

ESPN HD continues to have video and audio dropouts as well as frequent pixelization. Not watchable for any length of time.

ESPN SD worked both days. Today while watching ESPN SD I lost audio, then the video froze after about 1/2 hour. I got dumped to the "player's" tuner menu after a message from the "player" 'that the connection had been lost, check your LAN connections'. This symptom has occurred on several other SD channels in the past two days. Usually I can get the connection back by clicking on the channel again in the "player" menu. One time I had to power off the "player" to resume using the DLNA function from the "prime".

01/22 - I watched news on the local CBS HD station for over an hour without issue.
01/23 - I watched news on the local FOX HD station for over an hour without issue.
01/23 - I watched Fox Sports HD for about 45 minutes without issue.
01/23 - I watched FX SD for about 40 minutes without issue.
01/23 - Currently watching a movie on FX HD. I watched for a little over an hour, before I lost the connection during a commercial. I was able to restart the FX HD connection, but I began to lose audio intermittently so I manually stopped the live TV connection from the "player". I restarted the same channel and have been watching for over 40 minutes without issue.

Other notes: - All testing done with AVR active, no HDMI bypass,
- Video output from "player" is set to "auto".
- All live TV streams are coming to the TV as up-converted 1080P
- ESPN HD issues seem to start when transfer rate is above 17 Mbps
- For me, while on the 20120405 firmware, "no tuner available" messages were very rare. I have been using the HDHR Prime since October 2012.

That's all for today,
SpunkyAZ

[spunkyaz]

Applied the Release 20130125beta1 update

No visible changes for my set up.

Change log details for Release 20130125beta1
* Avoid messages found to causes ehRecvr to crash and WMC to report "Viewing or listening conflict" or "Tuner not found".
* Tweaks to DLNA media type reporting to improve compatibility.
* Improvements to HTTP streaming to improve compatibility.
* Improvements to RTSP handling to improve compatibility.

[ripatter]

Looking for a htpc substitute, in the 100$ range, to watch Netflix/Amazon, optical drive, and dlna for hdhomerun compatibility

Tried sony 370/390 blu-ray players, but they have connectivity issues with hdhomerun. Tried roku, but turns out it’s not dlna

Bought this player specifically to test ( 100mb wired connection, hdmi to 22” insignia LED TV, tv speakers, Comcast limited basic, cable card in hdhomerun )

Happy it could see the device, and play the channels, but performance makes this unusable. 10+ seconds to change channels, pixilation ( cartoons seem better ), and sound is choppy

I think my network is OK, Netflix can stream multiple TVs at a time. I think the HDhomerun is OK, WMC was OK before the beta firmware, and I can also stream on my phone. ( galaxy SIII, bubble upnp, wondershare, pixilation, which I attributed to the wireless connection )

Do you think the performance issues are with the HDHomerun, my network, or with this blu-ray player?

I was looking at Pivos XIOS. It doesn’t have the optical drive, but it might have enough horse power to decode the MPEG stream, and I like the XBMC interface. Any other suggestions?

Thanks everyone

[uncleop]

I picked up this Panasonic BlueRay player about a three weeks ago and my HomeRun arrived just Wednesday. The HomeRun (model reports as hdhomerun3_atsc) seems to work fine when I use the "View" option from Unix. The stock firmware isn't hooking up to my BluRay player, though, so it looks like I'll need to go with an update.

Are any SiliconDust folk monitoring this topic? I'm used to doing embedded firmware in my day job, and I'd be willing to put in a few cycles if they think it would improve interoperability with this player.

Edit: I don't have a "PRIME", I think. Is there a way I can try it out? The firmware I have ("get /sys/version" -> 20130117) indicates it should do DLNA, but it's clearly not working with this player.


-∇

[nickk]

I picked up this Panasonic BlueRay player about a three weeks ago and my HomeRun arrived just Wednesday. The HomeRun (model reports as hdhomerun3_atsc) seems to work fine when I use the "View" option from Unix. The stock firmware isn't hooking up to my BluRay player, though, so it looks like I'll need to go with an update.

Are any SiliconDust folk monitoring this topic? I'm used to doing embedded firmware in my day job, and I'd be willing to put in a few cycles if they think it would improve interoperability with this player.

Edit: I don't have a "PRIME", I think. Is there a way I can try it out? The firmware I have ("get /sys/version" -> 20130117) indicates it should do DLNA, but it's clearly not working with this player.

-∇

Hi,

The HDHomeRun DUAL (HDHR3-US) does not support DLNA and will not work with DLNA devices. This model will work with Windows Media Center, NextPVR, XBMC, MythTV, EyeTV, as well as BDA based software for Windows.

Nick

[spunkyaz]

As mentioned in one of my previous posts, I have purchased a second HDHR3CC tuner and a second Panasonic DMP-BDT220 Blu-ray player. The additional hardware has been installed for about 10 days. The current beta firmware 20130125beta1 is applied to both HDHR3CC tuners.

Notes and observations on the second HDHR3CC

HDHR3CC #2 is installed on the same LAN segment as DMP-BDT220 #1. A They are both connected to a 5 port Linksys 1GB switch which replaced a direct connection of DMP-BDT220 #1 to my router. AVR and TV connections did not change.

DLNA performance using HDHR3CC # 2 is almost identical to performance with my first tuner. I had the same experiences already reported in my previous posts. The Prime DLNA / DMS server gets used several hours a day for live news and sports. I believe the lost live connections have been reduced.

Note: Panasonic released a firmware update a couple of days ago which has been applied to both DMP-BDT220 players. I have not noticed any difference in DLNA performance since the firmware update.

Overall I am ecstatic to be able to extend my TV entertainment using DLNA. I still get some sound drops occasionally on all HD channels with live TV. Many times if I restart the connection the sound returns to normal. I tried changing the sound output of the DMP-DBT220 from bit stream to PCM Stereo, but that did not help much. ESPN HD channels are sometimes unwatchable due to pixelization and sound drops. Playback of any WMC recorded TV is excellent.

In my unscientific opinion, the issues with DLNA live TV streaming stem from lack of management and conditioning of the TV signal. The cable company STB and WMC through the HDHR3CC produce excellent live TV. I would expect Panasonic would need to improve their application to fix the issues.

Notes and observations on the second DMP-BDT220

DMP-BDT220 #2 is installed in a location without 1Gb ethernet nearby. Since I already had poor performance from WIFI, I decided to try a power line adapter solution. I chose the ZyXEL PLA4205 power line kit rated at 500 Mbps attached to a Gb ethernet switch. The results were less than satisfactory for live TV streaming from the Prime DLNA / DMS server. Pixelization and loss of sound were frequent on all HD channels. SD channels streamed OK. The power line solution also played back WMC recorded TV and Netflix streams without problem. There is no AVR at this location. The DMP-BDT220 is connected via HDMI directly to a 1080P Panasonic 32" LCD TV model TC-L32S1.

With this set up I achieved two of my goals, every room DVR and NetFlix at all TV locations.

[Mediaman]

I have a set of the ZyXEL PLA4205 and have found them to have some sort of upnp issue. I was not using it very often for streaming but would get dropped from internet frequently. Mixed an older actiontec with one zyxel and have had maybe one drop a week where I was getting 2 to 4 a day.

[spunkyaz]

I have a set of the ZyXEL PLA4205 and have found them to have some sort of upnp issue. I was not using it very often for streaming but would get dropped from internet frequently. Mixed an older actiontec with one zyxel and have had maybe one drop a week where I was getting 2 to 4 a day.

This is my first experience with power line adapters. Using ZyXEL utility program I got a reading of 150Mbps transfer rate yesterday while I had the DMP-BDT220 tuned to Golf Channel HD. The video was pixelated off and on and the sound broke up often. However I never lost the connection to the Prime DLNA DMS with over 8 hours of continuous live TV streaming. I have used Netflix from this set up for about an hour for testing purposes without issue.

[spunkyaz]

I installed the 20130226beta1 software / firmware yesterday. The firmware was applied successfully to both of my HDHR3 Prime CC units. The software updates were applied to my 4 Win7 PC's running the WMC software.

Here is a summary of my testing after applying the updates.

WMC still working on all PC's normally including live TV and TV recordings.

WMP works the same also on all PC's. I was able to watch live TV from the HDHomerun HD playlist. I did notice new entries under Other Libraries called HDHomerun Live DMS 13170CEC and HDHomerun Live DMS 1315B3ES. These new folders also contained TV channel listings. There were two entries for each channel in both library folders. When I clicked on a TV channel in these folders I got an animated "clocking" symbol, but the live TV window never appeared. The HD Prime GUI program indicated the channel had been claimed by one of the tuners. This scenario could be a source of frustration for someone who had not tried using the HDHomerun Playlist in WMP.

Now to the Panasonic DMP_BDT220 Blu-ray player DLNA testing (Note both units have the current firmware ver 1.52 from Panasonic released on 2/18/13

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, I have two Panasonic DMP-BDT220 units.

DMP-BDT220 #1 is connected to 1GB switch on same LAN segment as HDHR3 Prime CC #2
All HD channels tested had excellent video and no sound dropouts. This is an improvement over the previous firmware version. ESPN HD had annoying video and sound drops with the previous version. It is perfect now.

I briefly tested this unit using 802.11 N WIFI. Previously the live TV was unwatchable due to heavy pixelization and sound dropping. Now the video and sound are much better, but there are still occasional video and sound drops. BTW this unit is about 10 feet away from my WIFI router.

DMP-BDT220 # 2 is connected via ZyXEL PLA4205 AV Line plugs to a 1GB switch attached to my 1GB router. All HD channels including ESPN HD are now watchable. There are occasional video and sound drops. Under the previous beta release no HD channels were watchable.

I briefly tested this unit using 802.11 N WIFI. Previously the live TV was unwatchable due to heavy pixelization and sound dropping. Now the video and sound are much better, but there are still some video pixelization and sound drops. BTW this unit is about 50 feet and 3 solid walls away from my WIFI router.

Thanks to Silicon Dust for making continued improvements to the DLNA live TV streaming. I can now say I have a true solution for expanding my live TV viewing throughout my home.

[spunkyaz]

I applied Release 20130308beta2 firmware to both of my HDHR3-CC units about a week ago. I found solid results comparable to the previous beta firmware release at the end of February. See write up about previous release for details. A few days ago Panasonic released firmware update 1.53 for the DMP-BDT200 player. The Panasonic firmware had no noticeable effect to the HDHR3-CC DLNA performance.

I did observe that both HDHR3-CC units are now rebooting every other night. So far they have both been polite and waited until my TV watching and recording are dome for the day.

Thanks again to Silicon Dust for making continued improvements to the DLNA live TV streaming. I can now say I have a true solution for expanding my live TV viewing throughout my home.

SpunkyAZ

[spunkyaz]

I applied Release 20130315beta2 updates, Saturday March 16. HDHR3-CC Prime units are no longer rebooting every other night. Video and audio results with WMC, WMP, and DLNA are still solid. I will be installing the latest updates released on 03/22/13 very soon.

[spunkyaz]

I applied 20130322beta2 to HDHR3-CC Primes and 2 WMC 7 PC's on Friday evening 03/22/13. I finished the other 2 PC's early Saturday morning. I had a 2 hour delay on the Saturday updates due to a Comcast TV signal outage. I still managed to get all PC's updated and tested before the NCAA basketball games started around 9:15 AM local time.
I did not have any issues with my reserved DHCP IP addresses for my HDHR3-CC Primes.

I applied the 20130323beta1 update Saturday night and Sunday morning anyway. All systems were functional after both updates. However, I began to see some pixelization in both Live and recorded TV in WMC 7. The OOB signal strength seemed lower than normal on Saturday and Sunday after the Comcast outage. This morning the OOB signal strength for both Primes is better. I suspect Comcast did some tweaking after the outage to get their signal back to normal. I will observe for a few days to confirm my theory