I have been looking at the issue of DNLA communications from My Zorin 12 laptop to my Panasonic smart TV for some time - without success.
Even before that I had mastered using Plex on my old Zorin 9 laptop and using it to cast content to the previous TV, running a Plex app on a Roku box connected to the TV by HDMI. I could then see films, music, photos (hosted on my laptop) on the TV screen, controlled through the Roku box.
On my latest trawl of the internet on DNLA comms and Panasonic Smart TVs in general I came across the following website:
https://markexpeditions.blogspot.com/20 ... sonic.htmlI already had the Plex Media Server installed on my Z 12 laptop - instructions on how to do this are online.
Following this guide, but using my TV name (found in settings) of 58DX750_Series in the Panasonic Vierra 3D TV.xml file rather than the one he used, I followed his instructions to modify the Pex Media Server folder contents - inserting a Profiles folder containing the .xml file.
I clicked on the plex ICON in /usr/share/applications/, which started the Plex Media Server at:
http://localhost:32400/web/index.html#! ... web/player I saved it to my favourites bar for easy reference and made sure I was happy with the selections.
sudo service plexmediaserver start
sudo service plexmediaserver stop
sudo service plexmediaserver restart also work - I think that once started, it keeps running until you power off (not too sure)
I added my TV's network IP address to the "List of IP addresses and networks that are allowed without Auth List" in the Plex software. This setting can be found under the "Network" options in the Settings of the Plex server.
I signed in to my Plex account at
https://app.plex.tv:
I saved the page which came up
http://app.plex.tv/desktop?secure in my favourites for easy reference and made sure I was happy with the selections.
I loaded content into my photos, movies and music libraries.
Time to try it with my TV.....
Blow me! Panasonic have now developed a Plex app!!!
Time to try the TV plex app : Apps > plex > sign in to your account > e-mail > password.
Open Plex app on Panasonic TV - sign it in > e-mail > password and....
Success!! NOT!!!
I'm leaving all my Plex modifications in place - even if they may not be necessary - but decided to engage brain and take advice.
Decided to read up on things, in particular:
https://support.plex.tv/articles/https://support.plex.tv/articles/200878 ... x-account/and particular:
https://www.howtogeek.com/303282/how-to ... et-access/and
https://www.howtogeek.com/254211/how-to ... -with-vlc/I followed all of their suggestions.
So now I had my Plex media server switched on and securely signed in to my plex web app running locally on my laptop, as well as having logged on to plex.tv in Firefox and also signed in to my plex media server in that remote version of the Plex media server.
In the interim, I had checked my router for uPnP being selected on and with enhanced security (BT Home Hub 5) and defined the network interface in the Plex web app as wlp4s0(plex laptop IP) - what could possibly go wrong!
Well everything did nearly go wrong my Panasonic TV and Roku RarPlex app could log in to my plex TV app at
https://app.plex.tv but not connect to my local server on my laptop.
****!! I thought.
I found that many people, online talked of allowing ports on my laptop by working on my router settings - it looked complicated.
Finally, as I found that nautilus could not see my network, I thought that my firewall software ufw and the graphical user interface might somehow be involved. Perhaps my laptop firewall was stopping my TV and Roku from seeing my laptop's server.
I found a reference, which seemed to confirm this hypothesis
https://gist.github.com/nmaggioni/45dcc ... 1a6ad8c9c9the github entry suggested creating /etc/ufw/applications.d/plexmediaserver
with content of
[plexmediaserver]
title=Plex Media Server (Standard)
description=The Plex Media Server
ports=32400/tcp|3005/tcp|5353/udp|8324/tcp|32410:32414/udp
[plexmediaserver-dlna]
title=Plex Media Server (DLNA)
description=The Plex Media Server (additional DLNA capability only)
ports=1900/udp|32469/tcp
[plexmediaserver-all]
title=Plex Media Server (Standard + DLNA)
description=The Plex Media Server (with additional DLNA capability)
ports=32400/tcp|3005/tcp|5353/udp|8324/tcp|32410:32414/udp|1900/udp|32469/tcp
and
Once you have defined your application file tell ufw to reload the application definitions with:
ufw app update plexmediaserver
Use it with:
ufw allow plexmediaserver
and
ufw allow plexmediaserver-dnla
and
ufw allow plexmediaserver-all
sudo ufw app list will show you the list of applications that ufw is using (to confirm things).
I tried this and switched gufw on using sudo gufw
Finally both my local and remote versions of the Plex app had external connections - YIPEE
Time to find out if my TV and Roku box could see the server on my laptop...
Well - blow me down - the next time I started up local and remote Plex apps, there was no internet connection.
Slight delay, whilst I looked into this setback. It turns out that unless you want your friends to access your Plex Media Server over the internet, an internet connection is not required.
Looking back on this, I think that ufw “home” stops incoming internet whereas “office” would let incoming internet traffic through.
I left things to cool off for some time and when enthusiasm returned turned the router and all other devices off and then restarted all.
Magically, the next time I tried rarPLEX on my Roku box, which is set to “search for servers on start up” Plex finally worked. I think the major thing here was that you have to use the IP of the Plex Media Server (127.0.0.1) and not the host computer.
I have now to try the Plex app on my TV and also DNLA to see if they are also working.
