UPnP / DLNA "Push" to Roku 3

[tomcrable]

Hello all. Brand new user of MediaMonkey. I currently use Plex and PlayOn/MyMedia to stream audio and video to my Roku. For audio I am looking to move to MediaMonkey if I can implement the following solution. If I need to upgrade MediaMonkey to the paid version to solve this, no problem.

What I am trying to accomplish is to stream lossless audio to my Roku and control what is playing with my Android phone. I have already configured the MediaMonkey UPnP / DLNA server and I can play audio on my Roku 3 with the Media Player channel, pointing to the MediaMonkey server. When I look at the Options / Library / Media Sharing Menu, I do see the MediaMonkey server and when I double click that entry, I see two devices enabled, my Galaxy S5 and the Roku 3. Flac files, even high-def flacs are playing though I would guess that the Roku might be lowering the bitrates (I don't have any way to determine exactly what rate is actually being played).

The problems with this are:

(1) The UI on the Roku Media Player pretty much sucks.
(2) I have to be in front of the TV and use the Roku remote to manage what is playing.

What I would like to do is use MMRemote on my Android phone to control MediaMonkey on my Windows 10 PC (already have that working) and "PUSH" what is playing to a channel on the Roku 3, I saw on the Tools / Options / Player menu, the first selection is to choose a player. I select the UPnP / DLNA Renderer option but then nothing shows up in the selection box underneath. I assume that this is to select the actual player to push the audio to.

If this is doable, I think I am 95% of the way there. What am I missing?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Lowlander]

I'm not sure the Roku channel allows for this. Make sure it is started and try again to see if the Roku shows up as a target.

It seems that even BubbleUPnP doesn't list this as a capability. You may want to use a Chromecast Audio if you're interested in music streaming.

[tomcrable]

Lowlander,

Thanks for the reply.

I happened to have a regular Chromecast lying around so I did some research.

The BubbleUPnP Server has the ability to define a DLNA renderer on a Chromecast or Chromecast Audio even though UPnP/DLNA protocols aren't directly supported on a Chromecast.

So I installed the BubbleUPnP server on Windows. Note this isn't a full UPnP/DLNA server. The media is still streamed by the MediaMonkey server.

Clicked the button to define the Chromecast client and voila, that renderer now shows up in the MediaMonkey Player options.

Clicked play in MM and sound and Album art are now "pushed" to my AV Receiver. With the Android MMRemote app, I can control volume, media selection, etc.

Reading the documentation, flac files are converted to .wav streams at 16 bit / 44.1 for the regular Chromecast. For the Chromecast Audio, it will support 24 bit / 96. Since the Audio is on sale now at Best Buy for $30, I will probably pick one up.

Life is good. Going out to the patio, sit by the pool and enjoy some tunes

[tomcrable]

One update.

The DLNA renderer created by BubbleUPnP to run on Chromecast does not seem to support gapless playback. I tested my version of Dark Side of the Moon (24 bit / 96 FLAC) on MediaMonkey and MusicBee, both on Windows 10 and confirmed it was truly gapless.

When I direct it to the Chromecast Renderer a two second or so gap exists. This is kind of a deal killer for me as I generally play albums and a lot of them are live where a gap kind of ruins the experience.

A question for the MediaMonkey experts.

I have read that the MM DLNA server has different transcode options with the Gold version. The free version apparently just serves the individual files as they sit on the server.

Is there an option in the Gold version, to create a playlist that contains the entire album and stream that entire playlist using DNLA as a single PCM (.wav) stream? I believe that would then play as gapless on the renderer.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

[Lowlander]

No, the media files serves files as or converted (but as individual files), it's up to the client to do any playback modification (like gapless/equalizer/etc).