Not all files showing on Twonky Media Server / Vodafone Broadband Complete HG553

This post will not be programming related but more of a simple hack on a device I just recently acquired, anyways this post still is technology related and I wanted to share this simple solution that others might find useful.  Recently I moved to a different internet provider as my ADSL modem and Wi-Fi Router is getting old, service price is also expensive compared to the new offers currently on the market and there’s a really good offer on Vodafone NZ where they give a boradband modem device for free while keeping the rates reasonable compared to similar data plans. The device that I am talking about is a ADSL2+ Modem with Wi-Fi Router that has DLNA, 2 USB ports and 1 USB/HSPA port (for wireless modem).  I was searching before for a similar device and the only ones out there are limited to Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH, Netgear N600 and Linksys WAG320N which all are ADSL2+ Modem Wi-Fi Router with DLNA and USB ports, well I am out of luck as we don’t have it here in New Zealand and the next best thing that I could only have is the  Netgear DGN2200M which costs NZ$185 and that’s not DLNA certified yet.  Now you might ask why DLNA, well I have a lot of DLNA devices at home and I want to stream media files such as music, video and photos on those devices and a single device that can integrate them all while staying on a budget would be good.  Given that scenario Vodafone have my answer by giving their device free, now I saved NZ$185 for the device and $15/month on phone and internet bills and my data plan increased by 35GB how good is that (Note: this is not an ad, I am just happy with my experience with Vodafone).

This device that I am talking about is a rebranded Huawei Echolife HG553 for a full information on the product here is a downloadable manual from Vodafone, it’s an amazing device and does DLNA very well now I stream media files from this device to my Smart TV, 3D Home Theatre, Android Devices, iPhones, PS3, PC’s and even an old XBOX with XBMC installed I don’t have to plug and unplug my USB hard drive to share media at home.  The sharing methods are through DLNA, FTP and/or a normal network file share; it also has a Print Server for those who have non-wireless printers at home.  Now let’s go to my problem, when I plugged the 2TB USB hard drive (take note it can take FAT or NTFS formatted drives) it immediately read the media files on it and it indexed it really fast, now I tried to browse the media files on my TV and I only see some of the media files on the USB drive.   I was worried there might be something wrong with the device so I browsed the hard drive though a PC and check whether files are in there, to my surprise it was there and was wondering why it was not indexed.  Knowing that it’s a Twonky software that works on the background, I immediately contacted their support, they replied quick but did not get anywhere as they don’t support OEM device, and here was their response which is fair enough.

Now I contacted Vodafone through their support forum, well I got a really bad answer which is totally unrelated to my question, a Vodafone forum administrator told me that I was posting it in a wrong location, so I moved it to the right one and got no answer after that, I did not mind to call their support as support in any Internet Service providers here in NZ sucks in my experience the average waiting time was 30 minutes and sometimes you don’t get the answer you are looking for specially if I am talking to a less technical person than me.  So anyway here was my post on the forum for those who are interested.

At this point I am on my own, so I tried everything by logging in to the router as support, Vodafone and advanced (all yield a different screen) and the only setting I find regarding DLNA is enabling and disabling it. I even went to the port http://192.168.1.1:9000 as that’s the advanced setup default for Twonky and get the red access denied screen.  Now I browsed through the files in the shared hard drive and found out that it has a twonkymedia.db folder.

So I went in and saw an .ini file, at last there is hope!

While reading the settings it looks like the most probable cause was an item called maxitemsmaxitems=10000#, now I counted how many media files I got on my hard drive and its more than 50K items most of it are images, that definitely is the reason why it’s not showing everything.  So I changed the settings to 100000, saved and rebooted the device. I browsed again once the device started using my TV and no luck, so I went back to the .ini file and found out it went back to its normal state, it looks like the device rewrites the ini file on reboot.  I also tried not rebooting, changed the maxitemsmaxitems=10000# to maxitemsmaxitems=100000# and wait for 60 minutes and that’s also a setting called minutesscantime=60# hoping that it will rescan and change the limit to 100000 but still no luck.  Finally I saw this setting ignoredirignoredir=AppleDouble,AppleDB,AppleDesktop,TemporaryUtems#, and if it’s true to its name it looks like it will ignore anything inside a directory.  So I created an AppleDB folder and placed everything there leaving only the files I want to stream on my PS3, Smart TV and 3D Home Theatre, videos are more logical as they are the ones you usually play on those device, I then rebooted and whoalla!

Now it’s showing all the videos I wanted and not the massive amounts of photos from 1999 to 2011 which kept my videos not showing due to the file count limit imposed.  I don’t care about the photos as we usually view them on Laptops and Android Devices which a normal share and mapped drive to the router will be suitable and no need for DLNA.