A little confused about DLNA

[Zachary Drake]

Hey JellyFriends

So I have reworked my network a bit to allow uPnP. The main devices I will be streaming from will be Xbox. My xbox consoles tell me that uPnP is working yet when I play files from the JellyFin app, my server still seems to be the device doing all the work, as the CPU goes through the roof and playback becomes laggy.

Does the JellyFin app use DLNA when configured? or do I need to access another way like the xbox media app or something else to use DLNA?

Everything is on the same /24 subnet, the server, router and xboxes.

After lowering the Client Discover Interval to 30 seconds (As recommended for some clients), I do now see an xbox showing as a DLNA device in the active devices tab, but not sure its working correctly since the CPU is still running high on the server. I feel like I'm close but missing something still.

Any thoughts or guidance? I have enabled DLNA logs but not sure where to check those, as I dont see them under the logs tab.        

[TheDreadPirate]

uPnP is not needed for LAN playback. It sounds like the Jellyfin DLNA server is using the generic profile and is transcoding. You will need to create or find a DLNA profile for your Xbox and import that into Jellyfin. Assuming your media's codecs match the Xbox's capabilities it will direct play.

[Zachary Drake]

Figured this out last night, it is in fact working now after the network changes, but the file I was testing with initially was 4k HEVC, and it seems my Xbox One cannot direct play at that quality, so the server transcodes it into 1080p, causing the CPU spike. My Xbox series S was showing the same behavior. When I streamed another movie file that was natively 1080p, it direct plays without issue on both consoles.

Also I have seen in several threads that development on the xbox app is basically dead. I find that really surprising with game consoles being so prevalent, especially Xbox and PlayStation. Any way we can request to escalate that to a higher priority? I know many folks would appreciate it. The app isn't bad, but the controller support is no bueno and it freezes at times when content fails to load or is in the wrong format. The browser option has a few more bells than the app, but is even more clunky. Theres gotta still be some kind of dev plan for this, it's not like xbox is going anywhere any time soon.

Also for those scouring the internet for answers later, I was initially using enterprise gear - a Cisco 899-G-LTE router, and 2 3750 switches to run my network. I found after a ton of digging that Cisco's enterprise gear does not support uPnP! I reworked my network with a netgear nighhawk R6700, and my Verizon router acting as a second AP and devices on THIS network can now use uPnP and can direct play as intended.

[mcarlton00]

Any way we can request to escalate that to a higher priority? I know many folks would appreciate it

You can volunteer to work on it.  Basically all of our clients exist because somebody wanted it to exist, and then wrote it.  Or wanted it to be better and started working on it.  As you can imagine, it's kinda hard to be motivated to work on something that you don't use.  And as far as I'm aware, nobody on the team uses an xbox as a playback device.  There's always some basic support going on, but if nobody is using the app on a regular basis, or even worse doesn't even have the console in question, then it's a bit hard to devote a bunch of time to it.  I believe a community member has been trying to do some work on it recently, but I'm not familiar with the situation enough to comment on it.

Playstation isn't an option for us at all.  We've reached out to them to ask, and the response was basically "we have enough media apps.  don't call us, we'll call you."

I'm a little confused as to your setup, because if you have the jellyfin app installed on the device, then DLNA isn't being used.  It's trying to stream over http like every other client does.  DLNA is for devices that don't have a client app.

[Zachary Drake]

Thanks for the reply, the info about the xbox app is appreciated.

Maybe I'm still confused about DLNA, I thought the purpose of DLNA/uPnP was to take advantage of the playback device's hardware (in this case the xbox), rather than having the server do the work? That seems like the ideal setup so that is what I've been working to accomplish.

I didn't realize DLNA only worked in a browser and not in the app. I thought that if the stream quality said "Auto-Direct" that meant a useable profile for the streaming device was found and DLNA was being used to take advantage of the xbox's hardware.

[TheDreadPirate]

DLNA is just a generic protocol for streaming media. Jellyfin goes the extra step of making some attempt to ensure that devices can play the media well. If it doesn't have a profile for your device, it uses a conservative generic profile and converts to very compatible codecs. You can create custom DLNA profiles that specify what your device can handle and then Jellyfin will send the files, unmodified, when the file fits within that custom DLNA profile.

uPnP is not related to DLNA. It is a protocol for clients to create port forwarding rules automatically. Port forwarding is only needed for apps that need to be accessible on the Internet. Since DLNA is LAN only, period, there is no relationship between DLNA and uPnP.