DLNA TV's High def?

david howkins · 30-10-2009, 2:40 PM

Hello,

I almost plunged into the world of HD TV this week when I was browsing in John Lewis and saw they had a Panasonic 42 inch plasma - ex display model for £639.

What REALLY caught my eye was the inclusion of an ethernet connection on the rear of the TV and the discovery that it could play video from a DLNA server on a home network.

I didn't buy the TV - I went for a cup of coffee and when I came back it had gone!

When I got home I had a read-up on the internet to find out more about the DLNA capabilities of the set and was startled to discover that it would only play back SD video via its DLNA connection - not HD content!

Can this be true?

Does anyone know which current crop of TV's that have DLNA connection built in will play HD content from a media server? I wouldn't want to lash out on an HD set, only to find that it could only playback SD content delivered by this method.

Thx

andy1249 · 30-10-2009, 2:56 PM

DLNA is relatively new , and to date the range of files that can be played by TV's in this way is very limited.

Remember a TV is not a computer and all the necessary codecs/software for the different file types supported have to be incorporated in the firmware of the set for playback in this way to be possible.

I expect its capabilites will broaden in the future , but for now its no great addition to the selling point of any set.

Video and audio file playback for the moment is better served by additional players and devices.

AndyCob · 01-11-2009, 4:16 PM

This is something that is confusing a lot of people, all the DLNA certification means is that the TV (or whatever device) is capable of connecting to other DLNA devices to transfer data.

What if anything it can actually then do with the data, view photo/video play music etc is a completely seperate issue that is not part of the DLNA standard.

It's a bit like having a piece of media player software on your PC, you can try and play a file but if the player lacks the codec to decode the file you can't play it.

So to view photos device needs to be both DLNA capable and able to read/dsiplay a JPEG. To show video it needs to be DLNA and able to view/playback a DIVX encoded avi file etc. for all other codecs/resolutions.

So you could quite literally produce a DLNA device capable of doing virtually nothing if the additional elements are not present. My current TV is DLNA certified but all it can do is dsiplay a JPEG image and play an mp3, it has no support for any video at all.