Sony BRAVIA network streaming

Since I'm pretty sure TwonkyServer runs fine on Snow Leopard, I have two thoughts about your problem:

1. Sony TVs currenty only play two video formats and this is a cause of many complaints like. Some media servers transode, but this can result in some quality degradation. That might explain your comment about poor video quality.

2. The other potential source of problems could be your router. Keep in mind that it very difficult to stream HD video over a wireless network, due the the limit bandwidth available.

There are 3 solutions to issue #1 that I'm aware of:

1. Setup your mediaserver to trancode your files.

2. Convert your files to a format your TV plays like MPEG2 or AVCHD.

3. Purchase a low-cost digital media player which supports most popular video formats like the WD TV Live.

- Rick

Try PS3 Media Server, it is a free server that works better than MediaLink. It works with many TV models, and convert "over the fly" a lot of video formats.

It is not from Sony, but it works greate with the PS3 without the need of converting videos. It also works with XBOX and a lot of TV models.

Try it, for me it was the right solution for streaming my videos to my PS3 without converting them.

From the PS3 Media Server Website ( http://ps3mediaserver.blogspot.com/): "Other media renderers support, such as connected TVs. It's a work in progress, so not everything works out of the box. Sony Bravia models are the best supported right now."

They are talking about the "Beta" version, but I have it and works like a charm.

Jilo,
I have a new Sony Bravia tv and managed to get it to work with a server software called iSedora (I could not get towny to function). It does on the fly transcoding and so will handle most file types. You can download a trial version to make sure it works for you. The only limitation of the trial is that you have to restart it after an hour.

I also bought an Apple TV2 and that works brilliantly with iTunes.

Just some comments:

There's got to be more sophistication to this idea than setting up another user-level program on an iMac (or other computing device) requiring configuration effort and running around to control what and when it can stream via DLNA/UPnP or another network protocol to a TV.

I wish the industry would be a little bit more progressive and in a sense I wouldn't be surprised to learn one day that Apple and cohorts have already considered a solution that not only avoids clutter around a TV (with yet another box and cables to cast audio/video) but that also avoids software mess and configuration effort on computing devices that provide the stream to the TV.

Concepts such as "VGA to IP" or "desktop to IP", or more sophisticated ideas such as PCoIP will reveal that what I'm referring to isn't new. For example, why not have a laptop have its (or another computing device's) desktop and audio (broad/multi) cast to IP (rather than to the omnipresent VGA interface) in such a way that the TV can render the contents of desktop and reproduce the sounds generated by the laptop. The desktop can be any portion of the screen or vice versa and the stream can be encoded in MPEG2 or another format that the TV understands or it may not be encoded at all. Wired and many wireless home networks can handle clear/unencoded 1080p streams. All of this except the proper communication is supported by state of the art TVs and computing devices.

The laptop example illustrates that firstly no VGA, DVI or HDMI cable is required to connect the laptop (or any other suitable computing device for that matter) to the TV. Secondly, the software that is required on the computing device for the noted purpose requires a lot less user configuration than Twonky (no offence) and its friends. Wouldn't that be nice?

Considering the above, thinking of the (laptop's) keyboard as the remote control opens up another world of user-friendly solutions. You just got to separate and/or divide components of traditional monolithic computer systems and turn the pieces into new devices. Leaving the receiving part of a graphics interface card in the computing device but moving the rendering engine into a TV/monitor may work quite well. Essentially its all an interactive movie bringing a lot of data to the user and returning comparatively little information from user input back to the computing device.

frd

I've got an iMac and Sony Bravia w/ the interlink; both connected to same secondary router (wireless router downstairs connected to a router upstairs with built-in drops throughout house); temporarily connected tv directly to wirelss router which iMac is connected to; iSedora not detecting TV. Troubleshooting notes say to verify port 8080 open. Haven't figured that one out.