Media Play and DLNA
These Samsung TVs are capable of playing serveral audio, video and image formats. These media contents can be played from an USB mass storage device (pendrive, USB hard disk), or from a DLNA network server. With firmware modifications it is possible to add support for media play over NFS or SMB/CIFS. This page tries to give detailed info about the playable formats, (the offical list does not go into details and also states that even with a supported media format not all content can be played) and also tries to outline the limitations of playing media content through DLNA using different DLNA servers.
Supported formats
Below is a table of the (more or less officially) supported media formats for USB playing (DLNA support may be different):
| File Extension | Container | Video Decoder | Audio Codec | Resolution | Frame/sec | Mbit/sec |
| *.avi |
AVI | Divx 3.11 | MP3 AC3 LPCM ADPCM (MULAW ALAW) |
800x600 | 6 ~ 30 | 8 |
| Divx 4.x | 800x600 | 6 ~ 30 | 8 | |||
| Divx 5.1 | 800x600 | 6 ~ 30 | 8 | |||
| Divx 6.0 | 800x600 | 6 ~ 30 | 20 | |||
| XviD | 1920x1080 | 6 ~ 30 | 20 | |||
| H.264 BP | 1920x1080 | 6 ~ 30 | 25 | |||
| H.264 MP | 1920x1080 | 6 ~ 30 | 25 | |||
| H.264 HP | 1920x1080 | 6 ~ 30 | 25 | |||
| MPEG-4 SP | 800x600 | 6 ~ 30 | 8 | |||
| MPEG-4 ASP | 800x600 | 6 ~ 30 | 8 | |||
| Motion JPEG | 800x600 | 6 ~ 30 | 8 | |||
| *.mkv | MKV | Divx 3.11 | MP3 AC3 LPCM ADPCM (MULAW ALAW) |
800x600 | 6 ~ 30 | 8 |
| Divx 4.x | 800x600 | 6 ~ 30 | 8 | |||
| Divx 5.1 | 800x600 | 6 ~ 30 | 8 | |||
| Divx 6.0 | 800x600 | 6 ~ 30 | 20 | |||
| XviD | 1920x1080 | 6 ~ 30 | 20 | |||
| H.264 BP | 1920x1080 | 6 ~ 30 | 25 | |||
| H.264 MP | 1920x1080 | 6 ~ 30 | 25 | |||
| H.264 HP | 1920x1080 | 6 ~ 30 | 8 | |||
| MPEG-4 SP | 800x600 | 6 ~ 30 | 8 | |||
| MPEG-4 ASP | 800x600 | 6 ~ 30 | 8 | |||
| Motion JPEG | 800x600 | 6 ~ 30 | 8 | |||
| *.asf | ASF | Divx 3.11 | WMA MP3 AC3 LPCM ADPCM (MULAW ALAW), AAC |
800x600 | 6 ~ 30 | 8 |
| Divx 4.x | 800x600 | 6 ~ 30 | 8 | |||
| Divx 5.1 | 800x600 | 6 ~ 30 | 8 | |||
| Divx 6.0 | 800x600 | 6 ~ 30 | 20 | |||
| XviD | 1920x1080 | 6 ~ 30 | 20 | |||
| H.264 BP | 1920x1080 | 6 ~ 30 | 25 | |||
| H.264 MP | 1920x1080 | 6 ~ 30 | 25 | |||
| H.264 HP | 1920x1080 | 6 ~ 30 | 25 | |||
| MPEG-4 SP | 800x600 | 6 ~ 30 | 8 | |||
| MPEG-4 ASP | 800x600 | 6 ~ 30 | 8 | |||
| wmv(VC1) | Window Media Video v9 | 1920x1080 | 6 ~ 30 | 25 | ||
| *.mp4 | MP4(SMP4) | H.264 BP | ADPCM (HE)-AAC MP3 |
1920x1080 | 6 ~ 30 | 25 |
| H.264 MP | 1920x1080 | 6 ~ 30 | 25 | |||
| H.264 HP | 1920x1080 | 6 ~ 30 | 25 | |||
| MPEG-4 SP | 800x600 | 6 ~ 30 | 8 | |||
| MPEG-4 ASP | 800x600 | 6 ~ 30 | 8 | |||
| XviD | 1920x1080 | 6 ~ 30 | 20 | |||
| *.3gp | 3GPP | H.264 BP | ADPCM (HE)-AAC |
1920x1080 | 6 ~ 30 | 25 |
| H.264 MP | 1920x1080 | 6 ~ 30 | 25 | |||
| H.264 HP | 1920x1080 | 6 ~ 30 | 25 | |||
| MPEG-4 SP | 800x600 | 6 ~ 30 | 8 | |||
| MPEG-4 ASP | 800x600 | 6 ~ 30 | 8 | |||
| *.vro(ps) | VRO VOB |
MPEG2 | AC3, MPEG LPCM |
1920x1080 | 6 ~ 30 | 40 |
| MPEG1 | 1920x1080 | 6 ~ 30 | 40 | |||
| *.mpg *.mpeg(ps) |
MPEG1 (Program Stream) | AC3, MPEG LPCM |
1920x1080 | 6 ~ 30 | 40 | |
| MPEG2 (Program Stream) | 1920x1080 | 6 ~ 30 | 40 | |||
| others(ts) | MPEG2(Transport Stream) | AAC, HE-AAC MP3 DD+ |
1920x1080 | 6 ~ 30 | 25 | |
| H.264 HP (Transport Stream) | 1920x1080 | 6 ~ 30 | 40 | |||
| VC1 (Transport Stream) | 1920x1080 | 6 ~ 30 | 25 |
Unsupported formats
There are some audio codecs (apart from the exotic propriatery ones) that are unfortunately not supported. These are:
- DTS
- AMR
- OGG
- ALAC
The TV also known to have limitations for H.264 (e.g. MKV playing), the number of supported Reference Frames in the H.264 encoded content is limited. Some say that at most 9 reference frames are supported, however I personally experienced problems (Unsupported video format error, or instant TV poweroff) with 1920x1080 H.264 video with 8 reference frames.
DLNA
Beside the Samsung software (Samsung PC Share Manager), you can also use the open source DLNA servers like uShare or Mediathomb. These can also be used on Mac OS X or Linux. On OSX, they're hard to install because you need to compile them by yourself. Out of the box, none of the media servers below (other than Samsung PC Share Manager) work 100% well. Below are tested programs with comments on current problems, maybe someone can provide some resolutions, and maybe it will help somebody.
Windows XP:
- Samsung PC Share Manager - Subtitles OK, all ok.
- Tversity Media Server - Unsupported file format on every video file, tried transcoding and etc combinations.
- FUPPES - Unsupported file format on every video file.
- TwonkyMedia - DIvX works, rest (including mkv) - Unsupported file format
- PlayOn + with plugin "LocalFiles" - randomly drops out from video, sometimes jamming.
- Mezzmo - Unsupported file format on every video file.
- CyberLinkMediaServer - no subtitles, no pausing, beside this everything works
- Asset - only audio
Linux:
- Mediatomb - By default, unsupported file format on every video file. However it can be configured to support every file the PC Share Manager supports (even with FF, PAUSE and REWIND support where the PC Share Manager would support it), except the subtitles.
- uShare - Unsupported file format on every video file
Mediatomb
Use the latest (svn) version of mediatomb with compiled in ffmpeg support.
Add this to the server section of config.xml:
<custom-http-headers> <add header="transferMode.dlna.org: Streaming" /> <add header="contentFeatures.dlna.org: DLNA.ORG_OP=01;DLNA.ORG_CI=0;DLNA.ORG_FLAGS=01700000000000000000000000000000" /> </custom-http-headers>
Configure mime types this way in section import/mappings/extension-mimetype:
<map from="avi" to="video/x-msvideo"/> <map from="ts" to="video/mpeg"/> <map from="divx" to="video/mpeg"/> <map from="mp4" to="video/MP4V-ES"/> <map from="mkv" to="video/x-msvideo"/>
Extend the protocol info in the server section.
<protocolInfo extend="yes"/>
