Mac OSX DLNA Server for Samsung TV

I got Samsung TV with DLNA client so I wanted to try streaming movies from my Mac to TV. Unfortunately PC Share Manager provided by Samsung works only on Windows platform. Quick search on Google gives inconclusive recommendations. Some servers work for some people so I decided to try few of them to verify which would be good for me.

1. Nullriver Mediallink - You can download trial version, then if you like it will cost $20 to activate it. It comes as preference panel so all you need is to copy it to the right locations and start from Preferences. It supposed to have iTunes and iPhoto integration which I cannot verify cause it simply did not appear on my TV. I tried to share a folder and it only displayed other subfolders without files inside. Could not make it work.

2. TwonkyMedia - It is not native Mac application, it comes as web server and you open a web page to configure it. It looks complicated and gives similar results as first one, empty folders. It's commercial product and if I have to pay $40 for it it should work out of the box.

3. Mediatomb - Open source but there is no installation for Mac so you need to use Fink to install it. I passed.

4. Elgato EyeConnect - It was very promising from the beginning. I downloaded trial version. Installation was easy. You can control it from Preferences. It was recognized by TV. You can browse folders and play files. It cannot handle iTunes m4v files but it plays most other formats. The only problem is that server dropped connection after few minutes of watching. If this is done intentionally I do not know cause they claim that trial version is not crippled. Otherwise it means it is buggy so I am not going to pay $49.99 for it.

5. Vuze - I did not know it has uPnP/DLNA support built in. Unfortunatelly it can play files from it's own library and I could not figure out how to add an external folder. I might try it later again.

6. Serviio - Last one I tried is free DLNA server written in Java. GUI is very limited but it seems to work so far. It takes time to index a folder if you have a lot of subfolders and files (iTunes library) but when it finally finds files it would even look up a DVD cover for you on internet. I actually disabled this feature cause it makes mistakes and I prefer seeing thumbnail generated from my own videos. So far I encountered few problems. First TV may not see it all the time. Maybe because iMac got few network interfaces. It has option to bind a server to specific IP address. I might try it later. Right now, I have sometimes try to open Media Player 2-3 times. Second problem so far is continuous play. It seems to hang when moving from one video to next one. If you exit to Media Player and select another video it works.