Help Attaching my Smart TV and NAS Drive

Johnagall

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Hi guys,

I'm a bit of a noob to this kind of thing but I'm trying to link my Dlink DNS-320 2 bay storage NAS to my LG Smart TV (model 55la660v).

The TV comes with an application which I believe uses DLNA connection called Smartshare. I can't for the life of me get the TV to see my Dlink 320 despite the fact that its attached to the network and is plainly visible in the network section of my computer on my laptop.

I can stream movies to my laptop over the network without a problem but I'd much prefer to be able to do this to my big screen.

Could anybody advise on how I go about this? Is it likely to be a tweak in the NAS network settings or an issue I chase via the LG TV?

Please let me know if you need any more info to advise further

Many thanks in advance
 
Your PC uses network shares, the TV does not and uses a system called DLNA (an extension of UPnP).

DSN-320 go to it's control panel then into management and application management.

Go to the UPnP AV Server area, hit enable then add a folder(s) to be monitored by the server. The refresh all button will manually force a scan of the media so it's worth doing that right away but it should do it automatically in the future.

If you've done all that and still cant see the server
1) Login to your broadband router control panel.
2) Look for UPnP and enable it.
3) Optional - if IGMP multicast is present enable that too.
4) Update the firmware of the DNS-320.
5) Update the firmware of the broadband router.

Also check from phone with UPnP/DLNA client to see if it can access the D-Link UPnP server, use Skifta to try.
 
Really appreciate your reply buddy.

So I went through the steps and you were right un pnp was not enabled. I enabled this and selected the parent folder (Volume 1) that holds all the music and videos in it and then left the NAS working away overnight building the library. I logged back in and clicked refresh all again just to be sure. This finished and told me the refresh was successful.

This morning I can now see my Home NAS as a device on Smartshare but my file structure isn't in there. There are just some standard ones like Videos, Photos, Music and then each of those has sub folders of All Video, All Photos, All Music and then another folder in each of those areas that is named folders.

My movies and TV programmes are mixed up across these sub folders but theres no way that all of my media is available. Those that are there Ive tested and they work fine.

I have managed to select files on Skifta but when trying to play them on my phones media player the .avi files say cannot be played and any .mkv files are automatically downloading to my phone as opposed to streaming (format compatibility issue?) when fully downloaded then again it plays no problem

So how do I get my structure sorted? - Did I select too big an area for the :Library to build? Should I have simply added the Movie, TV, and other folders individually when enabling UN PNP rather than asking it to monitor the big parent folder?

Thanks again
 
Yeah that can be a problem with poorly thought out DLNA servers. DLNA is not a real time representation of the folders on the NAS, it's actually a database of links that your browsing, some do a good job replicating the folder layout whereas others just go nuts with other viewing modes.

Are you looking for a jukebox style media library with because the UPnP server on the D-Link cannot do that, you need something that runs Plex media server.

If your looking for a duplicate of the folder layout on the NAS, I dont think the D-Link UPnP server exposes that kind of option. Your best bet is to remove the volume 1 parent folder from the UPnP AV server and instead add the individual top level folders like "movie" or "TV shows" into the UPnP AV server listings and keep your content organized into those folders.

That will cut down on the drilling down through videos->all videos->folder->movies

Skifta is just a UPnP/DLNA controller it allows you to push media to any DLNA players on the network, your phones native media player cannot play such content, you would have to install another app which supports those media formats. On iOS this is not possible but on Android you can replace the default media player with others like MX Player. For iOS I recommend inFuse or Airplayer to play media from UPnP/DLNA servers.
 
Thanks again for the quick response pal - What I have is workable enough for me to use so I'll do the individual Movie, NZB, TV, Music folders rather than the parent folder and see how that pans out.

Are you looking for a jukebox style media library with because the UPnP server on the D-Link cannot do that, you need something that runs Plex media server.

I wasn't that bothered but having used a Raspberry Pi previously running XBMC from my NAS on my old TV maybe in the future I might go this way. Can you recommend anything that would fit the bill if I were to go this way?

I know this is an aside but further down the line I'm looking to really automate my setup to make life easy. I was thinking something along the lines of:

Select NZB's via my mobile > Raspberry Pi (low power consumption and phisical apperence) running SABNZBD gets the nzb and processes the files for sorting via sickbeard or similar > Movies/TV ready on NAS to be played via Smart TV.

Is that something that seems realistic to you?
 
Well XBMC has a built in UPnP/DLNA server, you set XBMC on the R-Pi to scan the NAS for the media, build the library then share it through the UPnP server to the TV. You will have to use the automatic library update XBMC plugin for it so it auto scans the NAS periodically for content updates.

The only other options involve spending money using a dedicated box on the TV or replacing the NAS with something that runs Plex and sabnzbd like an Asustor AS2 NAS.
 
I'm back again.....

I'm not getting automatic refreshing when adding new files to the NAS. Ideally I'd like this to happen.

Should I try start the procedure above from scratch or is there a manual refresh that I can push through?

Cheers in advance
 
So I have started again and this time asked my NAS to monitor the TV and Movies folders as opposed to the whole Volume1 and we are all good.

What I'm noticing is that when I add another folder that contains video files to the TV or Movies folder then this isn't being mirrored on my tv itself. However if I take out the movies files themselves from their own folders (contained inside TV or Movie folder) and paste them into the TV or Movies folder as just a file it is working.

As most of my collection is contained within sub folders for each TV show is there a way I can get this to work rather than having the NAS look at the 150 individual folders and movies that I have?

Much appreciated in advance
 
That is odd, it sounds like the D-Link UPnP server is only monitoring the top level folder in other words it only checks for files in 'TV' and doesn't check any sub folders that are also in 'TV', if you add the root of volume 1 back in does it monitor the creation of sub folders in 'TV' or 'Movies' again ?

You could try asking over here in the D-Link forum for the DNS-320 it also has firmware updates for the rev A or rev B model (check which is yours). Another option is ditch the terrible UPnP server D-Link use and replace it with Twonky or Serviio but these are fairly technical solutions.


Lastly if this is the way it works I would kick the D-Link to the curb and replace it with another NAS re-using the HDD from the D-Link.

This for £176 is an x86 Asustor NAS it's the very best budget Plex media server capable NAS you can buy, Plex will do all of what your after. It costs a little more than the basic Synology around £120 but these dont have as nice a CPU compared to whats in the Asustor so Plex runs much smoother/faster, for the extra £50 it's worth it.
 
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