I've put the RS232 explorations on hold temporarily, and now moved on to DLNA functionality.

MythTV, to my surprise, has a built-in uPNP media server, which the new Samsung TV finds on the home LAN (ethernet). Cool.

Except when using the TV to play video files directly (over DLNA from MythTV), the FF/REW buttons on the TV remote don't work. Not Available says the TV when they're pressed.

Apparently lots of other people have noticed and complained to Samsung about the same issue. Some people even claim to have gotten them working with older TVs (2008=2009) by patching and reconfiguring various uPNP server software packages, but reports are rather spotty about that.

Bit of a shame, because when the TV reads/plays the media directly, the results are better than from MythTV + NVidia VDPAU. So for now, if I want FF/REW to work, I have to copy the files to a USB drive, and then let the TV read/play from the USB drive. No problem using FF/REW that way. Odd.

Some of the SamyGo project folks even take this a step further, hacking the TV firmware to mount the server's media via NFS or Samba, over top of the usual USB-stick mount point within the TV. So the TV then thinks it is playing from a USB stick, and enables FF/REW. Cute.

But it only works on the 2008-2009 sets, not on my 2010 set with its crypto-signed firmware.

Mmmmm.