What media server can stream (transcode) video to my television yet retain surround sound?

Question

As is often the case, in writing this question I found my answer. Posted below to aid others. New and different answers are more than welcome.

My television is a Network Media Device (NMD) and thus able to stream video from "Windows Media Connect or DLNA compliant servers". (My particular TV calls the interface Home Media Gallery.)

I have this working and am able to stream movies over the network from all of the Windows 7 PCs; video types foreign to the television are transcoded on the fly. However I have one major gripe.

Whenever the video requires transcoding (almost always as the TV's codec support is basically limited to DVDs) the audio is converted to stereo. To be clear I don't expect the audio to be transcoded to the Dolby Digital 5.1 format I need, although I would love this. Rather the audio is converted to stereo even when it's already Dolby Digital 5.1 which is natively supported.

It would seem whenever the video must be transcoded the audio is tied with it.

The quest so far:

• TVersity has been great but unfortunately transcoding only video is not supported. Audio becomes stereo (downmixed I'm presuming).
• Windows 7 either doesn't or I don't know how to configure it.
• Serviio seems to actually support this, however after hours of attempts is the only one my TV will not connect to: "not authorized".
• FUPPES looks like it should work as its transcoding configuration is fine-grained, but you must add everything yourself.

Thus far I've been working through this list here, and the media server comparison on Wikipedia.

A free solution would be nice, but I'm not limiting my options.

Answer 1

PS3 Media Server

This thing is awesome. I can adjust video quality almost on the fly and I was shocked at how passable the video quality was even after I lowered it all the way to stream without buffering over Wireless-G. Once I'm connected with ethernet it will be a dream.

The best thing is it transcodes all surround sound to be compatible, for my television that means to 5.1 Dolby Digital only. (It appears to optionally keep DTS audio, as well as transcode to raw PCM 5.1 if you're running HDMI and thus have the bandwidth for it.) There's even an obvious setting for remuxing already-compatible audio rather than re-encoding it, just as you would hope! Not only are all my movies in their various formats instantly watchable but in surround sound!

Here's the steps you'll need to follow to get PS3 Media Server working with your television:

1. Make a copy of PS3.conf in %ProgramFiles(x86)%\PS3 Media Server\renderers and rename it to describe your TV, in my case Pioneer PRO-1140HD.conf.
2. Edit the file to match your TV, it's well documented. I highly recommend setting MediaInfo to true. Your TV's UserAgent will be visible in the Traces tab of the program when you attempt to connect from your television.
3. You may need to manually allow the server through the Windows firewall. It also seemed important that I not run the server with administrative privileges. I didn't thoroughly investigate; I also haven't tried launching it as a service yet.

Here's my TV's current configuration as an example. It was much easier to set up than I expected.

RendererName = Pioneer PRO-1140HD
RendererIcon = kuro.png
UserAgentSearch = DLNADOC/1.00 INTEL_NMPR/2.1
Video = true
# just until I add their supported formats
Audio = false
Image = false
MediaInfo = true
CreateDLNATreeFaster = true
TranscodeVideo = MPEGAC3
TranscodeAudio = LPCM
DefaultVBVBufSize = false
MaxVideoBitrateMbps = 0
MaxVideoWidth = 1920
MaxVideoHeight = 1080
TranscodeFastStart = false

#video
Supported = f:mpegps|mpegts v:mpeg1|mpeg2|mp4 a:ac3|lpcm|aac|mpa m:video/mpeg
Supported = f:wmv v:wmv|vc1 a:wma m:video/x-ms-wmv