Hi! I've always been fascinated with Media Servers and devices since I bought my Fritz! Box over 2 and a half years ago.
DLNA is the protocol devices, Media Servers, Computers and Apps use to communicate with each other. For example, its now common place for a Smart TV to have DLNA compatibility on board which allows the browsing and playing of content on a remote Media Server, this is typically a hard drive or NAS storage unit connected to a Home Network. Many devices available are not accessible to these media servers given their menu systems and no built in speech capabilities so "Dead End" I hear you cry? Well not quite. I have quite a few devices which have DLNA compatibility built into them and I'm able to utilise the DLNA functions of each through DLNA management Apps on my IOS device. When the App is launched on say an iPhone it comes up with a list of DLNA compatible servers attached to your network, these may include hard drives, computers etc. From here you select the type of content you wish to see, you can "Browse Folders" for particular content or select a category such as "Music". What then is displayed depends very much on the category selected, if you select "Music" then you'll see various sub categories such as Artist, Album, Playlist etc. If you select Playlist then a list of playlists will appear and yo u can select the appropriate list from here etc. At this point you can select an output device to play the content to, again these are DLAN compatible devices which could include your Windows PC, your Smart TV, a wireless speaker system, a network media player and so on. Thought some list members may wish to follow this up. ********** Dane Trethowan grtd...@internode.on.net Skype: grtdane12 Phone US (213) 438-9741 Phone U.K. 01245 79 0598 Phone Australia (03) 9005 8589 Mobile: +61400494862 faceTime +61400494862 Fax +61397437954 Twitter: @grtdane
