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PostPosted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 6:33 pm 
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I want to be able to use all this nice media I have organised (for the first time in my life) off my shared folders in my HP MediaSmart EX 470-----with the click of a button on my home TV....

I was walking through Best Buy today and was stunned to see a VERY nice 42 Inch 1080p HDTV that looks like the perfect match for what I want to do----and more...

It was called an HP MediaSmart TV model: HP SL4278N 42-inch MediaSmart High-Definition 1080p LCD TV

Had a ton of features and BestBuy was selling them on a special....

Anyone have experience matching one of these HP MediaSmart TVs to an HP MediaSmart WHS Server???

Thanks for any help.

John

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PostPosted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 11:32 am 
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Hi John,

I have the HP SL4278N 42-inch MediaSmart TV connected to a MediaSmart EX 470 with 1 TB storage. I am thrilled the way the two work together to stream video, pictures and music to the TV. Intitally the TV would see the MediaSmart server, but did not find any content. I called HP and they had me grant the "Guest" account read access to the Videos, Music and Pictures folders. After that everything has worked flawlessly.

I originally had the TV connect wirelessly to the home network and videos seeemed to stream fine. Later I connected via cat 5 since I had to run the cable anyway for my soon to be useless HD DVD. I have had the TV connected this way for the past two months and all videos including HD content have streamed without any glitches.

The TV seems to be able to play most of the common file types and codecs. The menus on the TV occasionally take a moment to initialize, but I believe that maybe after a power outage or the TV was unplugged. The only other complaint I have with the TV is the software that comes with the TV is supposed to run on a PC on your network.

The software allows the TV to download updates and content from CinemaNow. The software works fine, but after I upgraded my antivirus software the TV can no longer see that PC. I haven't had time to troubleshoot the issue and it hasn't been a big deal since I don't use CinemaNow. Once I upgrade the memory in my MediaSmart server I was going to try and install the software on it rather than the workstation.

Please let me know if you have any more questions and good luck if you decide to buy.

Terry


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PostPosted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 6:54 pm 
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Terry----thanks!!

Exactly what I was looking for! I have some additional questions if you don't mind....

Almost all my videos are still in the captured .avi files they were put in straight off the camcorder when I captured through firewire to my PC.

Do .avi'stream OK??

And all of my Home video is the standard 4:3 letterbox instead of 16:9----will the video "stretch-----or do you see a normal picture with maybe some black edges.....

Did you have to load Media Player 11 on the MSS??? Or did it just see the videos folder on the MSS without any thing special? How about any of the TV software----do you have to load it on the Server???----any issues???

Will itunes music play on the TV?----or will I have to duplicate----then convert all that music to mp3

Is internet Radio any good on the TV??

How do photos look?

Do you have to have an additional PC beside the server turned on??

When you were wireless----did you use the G or N Standard???

Sorry for so many questions....

REALLY appreciate the help/advice.

John

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PostPosted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 6:27 pm 
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Hi John,

No problem with the questions, some of them actually got me thinking that I have to experiment more.

AVI files stream fine. I did have one training video I had made using a rare codec (VMWare) that would not play, but all others were fine. The TV does come with DIVX codec.

The TV appears to determine the max size for the video keeping the aspect ratio. Small resolution 4:3 videos will scale up to the height of the screen leaving black borders on the sides. It does give you the option to play at the original resolution. Letterbox videos fill the entire screen.

No I didn't have to load WMP 11. The TV allows to browse the folder structure under the videos, pictures and movies folders you have shared and granted access to the guest account.

Not sure which TV software you are asking about. If you are referring to the software that came with the TV, no I installed it on a Vista workstation as I did not have my MediaSmart server at the time. I am planning on trying it however. Please let me know if you meant some thing else.

Sorry, I don't use iTunes.

Never tried Internet radio. There does seem to be some HP online radio service (Live365,com) coming, but is not available yet. I haven't updated my TV software in about a month, so that might be the reason it still says that it is coming on my TV.

Photos look fantastic again the TV appears to stretch of shrink the picture to fit the height of the screen. When navigating to a folder that has photos the TV creates thumbnails of about 20 or so pictures at a time. It allows you to run a slide show of all the pictures in the current folder.

Yeah I have a Vista Home Premium workstation and 3 notebooks -- Vista Ultimate, XP media center and XP tablet.

Wireless n using a DLink DGL-4500.

Terry


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PostPosted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 9:19 pm 
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Great answers----thanks.....

I bought one todayat a local BestBuy-----am hooking it up now so I may have a ton of questions.

Thank you so much for the help!!!

Quick question....

I assume to use features like Cinema Now----you would have to keep two PCs running----the MSS and another PC which you loaded the Software CD on.

Do you think it would be possible to load WMP 11 and the TV software on just the Server???

That way----even if my PCs were off----all of my media would be available----coming off the server........possible???

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PostPosted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 11:46 am 
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Hi John,

That is what I'm thinking as well. During one of my calls to HP support troubleshooting the issue where the TV could see the MediaSmart server but not any content, the tech indicated that he thought it should be no problem installing the TV software on the server.

I did not want to try it until I added additional memory to the server. I sent off for a 2GB memory module yesterday, so I will be attempting to install the software on the server in a day or so.

Terry


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PostPosted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 7:23 pm 
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I called HP today as well----got the same answer as you...

Should be OK and wonder why we didn't think of that in the first place....

That sort of answer....

I believe other folks have installed WMP 11 with no issues on standard WHS boxes----but I don't know about us HP folks and the MSS---guess it's time to do some searching and posting.....

It just makes sense that this is a smart way to do it with the WHS MSS.....

How will you install??

Copy the TV software install disk to a folder on the MSS??? Then RDP and run it????

Did run into an "issue" today...Standard DV .avi files----the type that are huge----no compression----the ones that are the basic "captured" files off the camcorder will NOT play on the TV---says "format unsupported" even though it is an .avi

No big deal as I can convert them to DivX or Mpeg----but I kinda wanted to keep the base captured files as my raw data to work with in the future----files that don't have any compression and are at their best----so I can build new clips or productions from solid footage.....

Maybe I'll just create another folder on the server and store them there----and keep my converted files in the shared Videos folder....

I'm kind of surprised that the TV won't play them as WMP 11 plays them just fine.....

Maybe if WMP were installed on the server this wouldn't be an issue----but it seems to be a codec problem......

I have read that we (HP MediaSmart Server and TV people) are getting a "software update" in Febuary that has more codecs and makes Streaming easier and better....

Almost the end of Feb----maybe this will come out soon....

let me know your results and techniques on your server software install....

Again----thanks for the help on this....

I've learned more about HD TV, HDMI, BluRay, DVR and you name just about any hot TV term in the last few days----my brain is exploding!!!!

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