dlna vs samba for media playing?

[paperwastage]

What is/is there a difference between the two?

From what I can see so far,

samba is a network share, and anyone can see it, but I can put a password. Everything in the share in broadcasted out to whoever authenticates properly, but I can obviously only play media files. Media player makes a list/cache of such files

dlna:cache is saved in the router, any media player can access it without a password

Hardware:
Asus RT-N16 with tomato firmware, HDD hooked via USB
Seagate Theater+ media player network linked to router

 

[Dion]

DLNA is better for high bitrate movies. Bluray's basically. It has better throughput. There is quite a number of threads in here about stuttering over the network. It's because they all use Samba. SD content is fine with samba tho.

 

[paperwastage]

thanks.

the read/write throughput of the RT-N16 router is ~2MB/s, below any bluray bitrate. i'll stick for samba for now with SD content

EDIT: up to 6MB/s with a ext3 hdd... but nothing spectacular for bluray

 

[Dion]

6MB is enough for BluRay.

 

[kac77]

I use samba as well. It's more than enough for blu-ray. My extenders use it and don't have any problems. A good Intel NIC on your server BTW can go a long way.

 

[Dion]

I use samba as well. It's more than enough for blu-ray. My extenders use it and don't have any problems. A good Intel NIC on your server BTW can go a long way.

I does not have enough throughput for high bitrate movies. Granted not many blurays go over the 38000bitrate peak. Also with DLNA you don't need a better network card.. Any 100 will work.

 

[-Sn1PeR-]

I average ~35MB/s off of my samba share on my ubuntu box over gigabit ethernet, but I believe that is CPU limited due to the raid itself. Regardless, it's plenty for hd movies.

 

[kac77]

I average ~35MB/s off of my samba share on my ubuntu box over gigabit ethernet, but I believe that is CPU limited due to the raid itself. Regardless, it's plenty for hd movies.

I run Linux too... I'm able to do it as well. It might come down to the type of front end, but I have no problem viewing it over 100Mbit. You can do the calculations a Blu-Ray movie only takes half of that bandwidth actually slightly under half.