# Hopper Home Media



## tommiet

My Hopper has an option to view media on selected supported devices. It appears that my Diskstation SAN server is supported. When I open any video file, I get sound, but no video. Tried multiple, MP4, AVI and ISO. No video. Just sound.... anyone know what video format the Hopper Home Media supports?


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## RasputinAXP

MPEG/MPEG2 as far as I'm aware. I use PlayOn Media Server to transcode.


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## tommiet

TechLess Support says the max file size is 10mg.


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## RasputinAXP

I wouldn't put any stock into what they say.


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## tommiet

RasputinAXP said:


> I wouldn't put any stock into what they say.


3 guesses what the first action is with any Dish techless support..... REBOOT!!!!!

I tried multiple mp4's and found one 4gb file that plays fine. Will try converting another mp4 to the same settings and see if it works. May be the formatting that's not working.


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## RasputinAXP

Their formatting is very, very strict. That's why I use PlayOn, because it'll autosniff what the client wants and serve it up.


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## marcuscthomas

Just spoke to Tech about DLNA not working on my Hopper (either of two) and, after mandatory REBOOT and declining a programming upgrade to include a sports package (I subscribe to America's Everything Package already), the tech said: 

XXX (ID: Z7D): XXX, I will submit a report to engineering to see if the software update will be coming soon, that should fix the issue you are having, some receivers have not updated and do not have the DLNA activated at all, your's could be one of them. If you will be sure to power the Hopper off tonight the software update could occur overnight.

What an odd statement!

No discussion about HIC's or anything. I am direct connected to the router via one of the Ethernet ports on the back of the Hopper.


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## RasputinAXP

You don't need a HIC if you're on the Hopper.


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## scocats

I too was direct connected at the Hopper and DLNA did not work, as well as internet on my other hopper or joeys. So out of curiosity I ordered a HIC from the dish store. Lo and behold everythng works now. I had done 8 zillion resets on the network on the other hopper and joeys to access the internet and it had no effect before the HIC. Now all is well. One of the install bulletins I read said to always use a HIC to get internet to all units but when my installer was here he said nope just need it to one hopper. So may just be a software glitch as I also tried hooking internet to the other hopper and it never shared either. But with the HIC all is well.


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## fmaclean1

Please excuse my ignorance, but what is a/an HIC?


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## mdavej

fmaclean1 said:


> Please excuse my ignorance, but what is a/an HIC?


Hopper Internet Connector. It's a box that connects your Hopper/Joey system to your router. Besides a direct connection (which apparently doesn't work well with DLNA yet), it's the best method. Other methods (wifi, powerline, etc.) work fine, but the HIC is faster, cheaper and more reliable. It's Dish's equivalent to DirecTV's Cinema Connection Kit.


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## chriscpmtmp

This isn't right on point, but my hopper found my old Escient music server. The Hopper would see all the files, but only actually play MP3s, not FLAC files. My guess is that they only support limited formats. My Oppo Blu-Ray player see the Escient, but also sees my NAS. The hopper does not see the NAS.

I'm picky about fidelity, so I doubt I'd really use the Hopper for this stuff - at least not yet. In theory, you could use the optical out to feed a nice (or even super high end) DAC though.



tommiet said:


> My Hopper has an option to view media on selected supported devices. It appears that my Diskstation SAN server is supported. When I open any video file, I get sound, but no video. Tried multiple, MP4, AVI and ISO. No video. Just sound.... anyone know what video format the Hopper Home Media supports?


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## tommiet

My Hopper and my Joey finds my SAN servers media service (Synology Diskstation,) but its just picky about the mpeg movies it will play. All play sound, but only a few show the video. Gotta find the common item that will make all my videos play.

Getting this to work saves me from using an external device to access my video and music collection.


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## P Smith

tommiet said:


> My Hopper and my Joey finds my SAN servers media service (Synology Diskstation,) but its just picky about the mpeg movies it will play. All play sound, but only a few show the video. Gotta find the common item that will make all my videos play.
> 
> Getting this to work saves me from using an external device to access my video and music collection.


Let us know what format of that file(s) what are playing now.


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## tommiet

P Smith said:


> Let us know what format of that file(s) what are playing now.


See this screen shot.. One MPEG4 works, the other does not.


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## P Smith

720x404 ? SD ... 
I would propose to resize it to 704x480 or 540x480 or 354x480. Can you try the formats ?

Same time your HD is looks strange too:1920x818... should be more convenient 1920x1080[1088] or 1280x720.


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## tommiet

P Smith said:


> 720x404 ? SD ...
> I would propose to resize it to 704x480 or 540x480 or 353x480. Can you try the formats ?
> 
> Same time your HD is looks strange too:1920x818... should be more convenient 1920x1080[1088] or 1280x720.


Tried one time, but will try again and see if I can duplicate the working format.


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## tommiet

Issue found! I'm no video expert, but after multiple passes, I found that if I encoded with H.264 no mater what the video size was, it played fine. Encoding with MPEG4 (ffmpeg,) fails 100% of the time.

I Also found a freeware tool that make this easy to test (VidCoder.) This software allowed me to Preview and save a 60 second test of any settings I picked. I just selected a AVI and started making changes. 

Now to find a nice freeware application to re-encode my MPEG4 and ISO images to use the H.264 codec.


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## P Smith

Well, I would add to that: there is no video compression with a name "MPEG4".

The MPEG-4 standard includes (so far): H.264 and VC-1 compression algorithms.


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## tommiet

P Smith said:


> Well, I would add to that: there is no video compression with a name "MPEG4".
> 
> The MPEG-4 standard includes (so far): H.264 and VC-1 compression algorithms.


True, but many Video tools list multiple types of MPEG codec options. Bottom line - find a codec (video tool) that works for you. Different users will get different results using the same video software.


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## P Smith

It would be good to know what video compression was in your files what was mark as MPEG4.


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## PasadenaGeek

I have an Ethernet cable to my Hopper and I ran one to my Joey last night. The Joey took around 5 minutes to see the TVersity server in the office. 

Using Freemake Video Converter, I experimented with various containers. WMVs (for my Xbox360) and MKVs were not recognized. I used an MP4 container, h.264 video and AAC 5.1 audio. On the Freemake preset, I chose HD1080p. This will take DVD VOBs (720x480) and take them to 852x480 (full screen for 16:9), and keep the HD resolution for BluRay m2ts streams.

No problems with audio or video with my test.


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## Marlin Guy

I tried the Home Media feature and found it to be pretty weak and useless.
Sticking to my WDTV Live.


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## RasputinAXP

Home Media/DLNA works great with Playon.


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## Marlin Guy

Perhaps PlayOn is better than it was when I last tried it, about three years back.
It was annoyingly quirky and tricky back then.

Does it handle mkv's now?


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## RasputinAXP

Handles everything great. There's also TVersity. THey both detect-and-transcode. I wouldn't run it on anything less than a Core 2 Duo.


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## tcatdbs

Do I need Playon (or other such software) on my PC just to play MP3's from my music library? I was thinking Windows Media Player was DNLA compliant. I haven't tried the home media feature yet, just curious.


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## P Smith

tcatdbs said:


> Do I need Playon (or other such software) on my PC just to play MP3's from my music library? I was thinking Windows Media Player was DNLA compliant. I haven't tried the home media feature yet, just curious.


If you will go DNLA help page of the h2k you'll see a list of DNLA servers what are supporting.


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## RasputinAXP

WMP12 should at least allow you to play music.


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