Devices

Overview

UPnP/DLNA

Devices such as TVs interact with BiglyBT via UPnP/DLNA. BiglyBT runs a 'Media Server' that announces itself on the network using 'multicast' messages. TV's announce themselves in a similar fashion. Both listen for multicast messages and discover each other - the TV will show BiglyBT as a 'source' and BiglyBT will show the TV as a 'device' in the sidebar.

Central to this all working is the ability of multicast messages to pass between the two participants. Various things can get in the way of this - your computer's firewall or antivirus software may prevent BiglyBT from sending/receiving the messages, your router may not allow the messages to be routed between the devices.

Generally your computer and the TV will need to be on the same network segment. If you have a single router allocating addresses to devices then this will usually work - issues are more likely to occur when you have two or more routers, for example, an ADSL router terminating your ISP's connection and a separate wireless router connected to the ADSL router and forming a separate network.

Trouble Shooting

My TV used to see BiglyBT and now it doesn't

Do these three things

1. Reboot your computer
2. Reboot your router
3. Unplug your TV from the power, leave it 30 seconds, plug it back in

My TV no longer shows up in the BiglyBT sidebar but shows on the TV

Check that you haven't 'hidden' the device by right-clicking on the Devices sidebar entry and selecting 'show hidden devices'

BiglyBT shows on the TV but there is no content

By default you need to explicitly drag-and-drop content from within your BiglyBT library to the TV's device in the sidebar to make it available on the TV. If you want all of your content to appear on the TV by default then you need to right-click on the TV in the sidebar and de-select the 'only show transcoded content on device'