How to create a AllShare DLNA Server for a Samsung Smart TV

If you really want to stream all those torrents you download from the Internet and watch them on your TV set then you’re in the right place.

For this you will need at least a linux machine. A Raspberry PI using using a 4GB SD should be more than enough to have a few episodes. If not you can use any debian/redhat based linux system. Including the one and only Ubuntu.

So let’s start. First of all check that your distro has minidlna. A Raspberry will output the following.

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ apt-get update
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ apt-cache search minidlna
minidlna - lightweight DLNA/UPnP-AV server targeted at embedded systems

Well if you are lucky to have the following output on your OS then you are in for a treat. Just install it then

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo apt-get -y install minidlna

Now you need to check an important detail regarding the placement of your videos. Edit /etc/minidlna.conf (vim /etc/minidlna.conf) and edit the following line to point to the place you want your files in.

media_dir=V,/var/lib/transmission-daemon/downloads

And that’s all you need for now. After editing the config file make sure you restart the minidlna server.

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo service minidlna force-reload
[ ok ] Restarting DLNA/UPnP-AV media server: minidlna.

Samsung AllShare

Missing videos on DLNA Client using minidlna server

Whenever your movie’s list disappears its quite easy to recover:


pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo rm /var/lib/minidlna/files.db
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo service minidlna restart
[ ok ] Restarting DLNA/UPnP-AV media server: minidlna.


How to create a blank video with no audio

If you need to create an empty movie with blank audio and no video you can use ffmpeg to do this

 

ffmpeg  -i n.png -ar 48000 -ac 2 -f s16le -i /dev/zero -c:v libx264 -f mpegts -streamid 0:1002 -t 00:00:00.250  n.ts

All you need is a blank picture – n.png. You can create one using Paint or whatever image editor you have.