Samsung TV unable to connect to Emby - log details

[Frankie3142 1]

Hi!

I have an old-ish Samsung smart TV (Samsung UE46ES8000). Despite it not being 'the latest' by some distance, it's DLNA implementation is faultless and has been consistently able to connect to anything I point it at for the last 10 years. Except Emby. I've had this problem with Emby for some years in itself and have heeded the forum advice to wait because 'there's a new server release coming out soon'. Well I have the latest server, regularly, and it makes not one jot of difference. When i try to connect it always seems to not explicitly fail the connection, yet says "No video files found" (or words to that effect). I checked the server log and after screeds of output which I won't reproduce in full here (but in the separate attachment) it finishes thus:

.
.
.

http-get:*:audio/mp4:*
http-get:*:audio/x-m4a:*
http-get:*:audio/3ga:*
http-get:*:audio/ogg:*
http-get:*:audio/x-wav:*
http-get:*:audio/x-flac:*
http-get:*:smi/caption:*
http-get:*:video/x-msvideo:*
http-get:*:video/x-ms-asf:*
http-get:*:video/x-divx:*
http-get:*:video/x-ms-wmv:*
http-get:*:video/x-mkv:*
http-get:*:video/mp4:*
http-get:*:video/x-avi:*
http-get:*:video/avi:*
http-get:*:video/x-flv:*
http-get:*:video/mpeg:*
http-get:*:video/3gpp:*
http-get:*:video/webm:*
2022-07-04 22:32:27.824 Error Dlna: Error parsing item Id: V. Returning user root folder.

What is this "item Id V" and can I do anything about it?

Note 1. If I plug in a Roku stick and put an Emby client on that, it works fine, but for various reasons I don't want to be forced to use Roku.
Note 2. It may be unrelated, but I mention this just in case; in the Emby web interface I notice that the left side menu items Devices, Downloads and Camera Uploads all do nothing. The URL changes in the address bar, but never any response from Emby. It just stays on whatever the last page I was looking at.

I do hope someone can tell from the log what I can do to fix this very long term and persistent bug. Thank you - in advance!!

Regards

Frankie.

Emby Log.txt

[Luke 37064]

Hi there, can you please attach the complete emby server log? Thanks.

[Frankie3142 1]

Hi Luke

Thank you for your reply, and so quickly too - much appreciated! And yes, full log attached here too.
You will find the Samsung 'native' connection attempt, sandwiched between two successful Samsung-via-Roku records, towards the end of the log.
Thanks again for looking into this.

Regards

Frankie.

Emby Log.txt

[Luke 37064]

OK so what's going on here is Emby Server does not yet support a technique used by very old Dlna software. It's been on our to do list to look at but essentially we give it a list of libraries along with their Ids, and then it's supposed to send browse and search requests using those top level library id's.

But then in addition to that it will use some hard-coded id numbers as sort of like a set of categories. I don't have the full list from my previous research in front of me right now but it's something like id 1 is supposed to be music, 2 and 3 are photos and videos, something along those lines, and then there's a few more. And best of all, some devices request these as numbers, others as roman numerals, and others as letters of the alphabet. So it's asking for content from a folder Id that doesn't exist on the server, and that's what leads to the error.

I'm not sure what year that model TV is from but the embedded Dlna software must be pretty old at this point, as generally anything from 2014 and beyond doesn't do this anymore. So it's just something we haven't added support for yet.

[Frankie3142 1]

Luke! you're a star!! Thank you for getting to the bottom of this for me. I really am so grateful. Now if only I can get back the wasted hours spent trying to fix this, that is, to do the impossible! Yes, my Samsung is pre-2014 so over 8 years old.

It would be great if, in a near future update, you can put in a piece of code to handle the various aliases you mentioned. My particular Samsung is certainly still going strong, and I suspect that, worldwide, it's far from the only one. Meanwhile, thank you for identifying exactly what's going on here.

Best regards

Frankie.