At first, I tried the ultra-simple uShare server.  It installed easily and worked out of the box.  Configuration was simple, and everything looked fine.  Then I tried to view content on my tv.  No luck: Format not supported.  I couldn’t play mp3, avi, wav, mpeg, nothing.  I needed a transcoder.

I completely removed uShare and started from scratch with MediaTomb.  Bam!  That’s da kine.

It’s not as easy as uServer to configure, but it works.  Let’s get to it. Please note, I didn’t figure this out. I’m just copying here for future reference.

1. Enter mediatomb into a command line just so it creates a directory under my user ID.
   Then I exited mediatomb and edited the ~/.mediatomb/config.xml file and made the following changes
2. Remove the comment tags <!– and –> that were around the <custom-http-headers> section.
3. Add the following two lines to the <custom-http-headers> section:

   <add header=”transferMode.dlna.org: Streaming”/>
   <add header=”contentFeatures.dlna.org: DLNA.ORG_OP=01;DLNA.ORG_CI=0;DLNA.ORG_FLAGS=017000 00000000000000000000000000″/>

4. Change <protocolInfo extend=”yes”/> to say “yes”; it says “no” when it is installed.
5. Add this to your <extension-mimetype> node:

   <map from=”avi” to=”video/mpeg”/>

Reference:

• Ubuntu Forums
• TVersity Support