Universal Media Server | Forum

Hi guys!

Thanks for the great work on UMS, I've never used a media server before but it already seems a great piece of software to me!

So, a thing, not a real "support" request.
For browsing and playing some media content on my Android Tv (with UMS installed on my laptop), I'm supposed to log-in into UMS via web interface using a browser installed on the TV, or there's another way, more straight-forward?

While it's possible to use UMS' web-interface, that's not the "main" way of accessing UMS. UMS is a UPnP AV/DLNA server, so you need a UPnP AV or DLNA client. "Smart" TVs usually have this built in, called "Media Player" or whatnot. I don't know how this is done on Android TV, you might need to install an "app" that lets you access UPnP AV/DLNA content. I have no idea if this is a good solution for Android TV, but for "normal" Android, the combination of BubbleUPnP and MXPlayer works pretty good. I'd think there would be a better way on a dedicated TV though.

Nadahar wrote: ↑Tue Dec 08, 2020 6:11 am While it's possible to use UMS' web-interface, that's not the "main" way of accessing UMS. UMS is a UPnP AV/DLNA server, so you need a UPnP AV or DLNA client. "Smart" TVs usually have this built in, called "Media Player" or whatnot. I don't know how this is done on Android TV, you might need to install an "app" that lets you access UPnP AV/DLNA content. I have no idea if this is a good solution for Android TV, but for "normal" Android, the combination of BubbleUPnP and MXPlayer works pretty good. I'd think there would be a better way on a dedicated TV though.

Thanks, Nadahar.

These are the first information I needed to know before trying things out.

Now, I'll look if BubbleUPnP and MxPlayer work on Android TV, otherwise I'll look for some other apps suitable for the task.

Thanks again, I'll post!

Here I am!

I've tried BubbleUpnp on my Honor 5X, old enough Android phone, and it worked pretty smoothly. I could use BubbleUpnp to see Universal Media Server and open the files into the directory I've chosen to share without any problems.

On my TV though, I've installed VLC for Android ('cause MX Player isn't there): it sees UMS in his local net section, but it doesn't show the shared folder, just basic folders called "Audio", "Video" and such...

What could I do to see the folders I'm sharing with UMS?

VLC has a problematic UPnP implementation, I'm not sure if it's possible to get that to work properly. If Kodi is available, I would try that instead. I also see that it is possible to install MX Player on Android TV, but Google seems to be making it as difficult as possible. They probably want to force people to stick to "their" services like Chromecast functionality etc.

Regardless of MX Player, BubbleUPnP should be able to browse UMS without MX Player. What MX Player does is to add support for many more formats/codecs than the few supported natively by Android.

Nadahar wrote: ↑Thu Dec 10, 2020 2:31 pm VLC has a problematic UPnP implementation, I'm not sure if it's possible to get that to work properly. If Kodi is available, I would try that instead. I also see that it is possible to install MX Player on Android TV, but Google seems to be making it as difficult as possible. They probably want to force people to stick to "their" services like Chromecast functionality etc.

Regardless of MX Player, BubbleUPnP should be able to browse UMS without MX Player. What MX Player does is to add support for many more formats/codecs than the few supported natively by Android.

Ah, then in order, I'll try to:

- see if Kodi is available on Android Tv;
- look around to see how install Mx Player is.

I've seen BubbleUpnp isn't available on Android Tv (or at least I haven't seen it). Plus, is it safe to say Chromecast app doesn't work with Universal Media Server?

MX Player alone won't do, BubbleUPnP is essential in that "combo". A quick online search doesn't provide any information about installing it on Android TV, so I don't know if it's possible to do "manually" or not. If not, forget about MX Player.

Chromecast functionality exists in UMS (I think it is off by default and must be enabled), but it's quite buggy. Since Chromecast has no UI for browsing or playback control, it requires that you use UMS to "control playback". This is possible either from UMS' GUI or from UMS' web interface, but the implementation isn't very good and looks like whoever made it got bored when "half finished" in my opinion. It is possible to use BubbleUPnP on a mobile device as a control point instead, so that browsing and playback control is done on the mobile device but the actual playback is on the TV. This works better, but still has some issues, not to mention that it makes you dependent on the mobile device for things to work. It's still a possibility though.

Small update:

On Android TV, Kodi does work. Though, it seems less "smooth" than expected?

I mean, it has very easily found UMS server on my local WiFi net, but a curious thing: when I open the shared folder, every file is shown more than one time, with slightly different names, as if every one of those is a different... encoding? or something like that, like ffd show or no encoding...

There's a way to clean this sort of mess making every file showing just one time?

I'm not quite sure what you refer to - it sounds to me like you've entered the "TRANSCODE" folder..? In that folder, there are exactly what you say, all different possible "combinations" for how to play that file. But, if you don't enter this folder, you will find one entry of the same file "outside" which is the one where UMS automatically makes the choice. If this isn't what you're describing, I don't really understand what you mean.

Try slick pnp or Nova Video player