No Playback on Remote Apps

[RamBear]

Greetings, distinguished forum members! I was referred here from a Ceton help ticket regarding the inability of the mobile apps to start video playback from the "recorded tv" destination drive.

In brief (in case someone has heard of this before and can just jump up and find the problem), I'm on a Win7 PC with Norton 360 and a Netgear WNDR3700 router. The "recorded tv" is stored on a 2T USB drive connected to the PC. (And yes, I use your InfiniTV USB as the tuners.)

1--when I use WMC to play the recorded WTV files on the PC, no problem.

2--when the Ceton mobile apps load, they find the Win7 server PC and correctly load the index to the tv folder. So far, it all seems to be going well.

3--While the app correctly loads the tv folder contents, if you press "watch" or "play"--nothing happens (on Android,iOS and Win8--the bug is identical on all). Whatever communication to begin the playback doesn't seem to be working out. Usually I will get a "playback will begin momentarily" before no further responses from the app occur.

The question--what causes this and how to fix it?

A general rundown of what's been tried so far:
Port forwarding comes up often as a possible culprit. This isn't something I've particularly set up before, but I read the forums and it appears to have been done correctly. I forwarded port 5832 to the internal IP of the PC running the service in the Netgear config, then I also created a rule in Norton 360 to allow that port through. It may be noted that creating the firewall traffic rules under Norton is not something that is intuitive to average users. (I opened the port via rule in Norton because establishing the port forwarding in the router appeared to be unsuccessful.)

I seem to be stuck in a loop over that port 5832. Even with the changes in the router settings, and the rule added to Norton--all the testers say the port is not being properly forwarded. I did remove Norton completely, but it did not appear to affect the problem. Windows firewall says "settings managed by Norton".

This is not to say the port forwarding may be the culprit, but it does appear to be a misconfiguration I've been so far unable to resolve.

Presented for your consideration, I truly don't know what to do next.

[Motz]

Reboot the PC real quick and it will be all fixed up. Most likely it is just a conflict with WMC and the installation of our plugin. And remember that Playback will begin on your HTPC not on your mobile device.

[RamBear]

I've done the PC rebooting several times (which of course requires re-synching the InfiniTV and the tuning adapter)... but I've never seen that have any effect.

Is it possible to remove the plugin and reinstall it? (Or repair?) As part of the process of elimination I managed to jump to a different wired internal IP as I was rebooting the router. I was able to reconfigure the Ceton app easily on the iOS version to reflect the new IP, but not to easy on the Android version! If I touch the server name it just goes to connect, without an (obvious) option to edit.

Per where playback begins, I'm just trying to find what's hanging it up. Whatever I need to scotch tape this back together and make it work..

Oh thanks Mr. Motz, I'm one of your biggest fans.

[RamBear]

I uninstalled and reinstalled the Ceton My Media Center on the PC. Lo and behold that seemed to make the remote apps work. Now I can finally see what they're supposed to do!

Thanks.

[RamBear]

And remember that Playback will begin on your HTPC not on your mobile device.

To be honest, no that was not apparent to me. It certainly was when the PC started executing the "watch" commands.

[foxwood]

Usually I will get a "playback will begin momentarily" before no further responses from the app occur.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, you won't get any further response from the app, because playback doesn't occur on the portable device, it occurs on the PC or Extender. Think "Remote Control", rather than "Remote Playback". We may get playback on our phones and tablets at some point in the future, but there is no timetable.

Port forwarding comes up often as a possible culprit.

I can't stress this enough - it should be a sticky!

Port Forwarding is only relevant for people who want to check their listings when they are not at home. It should always be the last thing that anyone does, and only only after they have everything working 100% on the local network.

[foxwood]

I was able to reconfigure the Ceton app easily on the iOS version to reflect the new IP, but not to easy on the Android version! If I touch the server name it just goes to connect, without an (obvious) option to edit.

As far as I can recall, a long press (press and hold) on the name should give that option

[RamBear]

I was able to reconfigure the Ceton app easily on the iOS version to reflect the new IP, but not to easy on the Android version! If I touch the server name it just goes to connect, without an (obvious) option to edit.

As far as I can recall, a long press (press and hold) on the name should give that option

Thank you so much for the tip! Indeed, the long press brings up the server editing options.