Comments on: DLNA certified: how your computer, cellphone, games console, media streamer and other devices can play nicely together

By: Carl

Carl — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 23:56:46 +0000

Does anybody know if its possible to stream an online movie service like Hulu or Amazon Unbox to a DLNA client like the Popcorn Hour? Is it possible via something like Tversity?

By: Steve O'Hear, editor

Steve O'Hear, editor — Wed, 28 May 2008 09:57:30 +0000

@ Olivier

I’ll update the post.

By: Dennis

Dennis — Wed, 28 May 2008 07:50:08 +0000

We are currently working on adding real-time transcoding to Mezzmo and the next update will include this useful feature.

By: Olivier

Olivier — Wed, 28 May 2008 03:33:05 +0000

You should have mentionned TVersity, which is by far the best UPnP server, with excellent real-time transcoding.

By: Jeremy Toeman

Jeremy Toeman — Wed, 28 May 2008 00:57:57 +0000

Having been very involved in the early days of UPNP AV and DLNA, I’ll pipe in here - the vision is, and always has been, awesome. The reality check is, in an unfortunate word, fail.

By: Steve O'Hear, editor

Steve O'Hear, editor — Tue, 27 May 2008 21:03:54 +0000

@ Davis

My thoughts exactly, although, as I said, the branding needs to be improved too, alongside better video standards support.

By: Davis Freeberg

Davis Freeberg — Tue, 27 May 2008 19:53:58 +0000

In theory I think that DLNA certification is a good idea, but I also think that they’ve botched it from the start. If you take a look at the current specs, all that is required for DLNA certification is support for .jpg, .bmp and other standard photo files, .mp3 files, and Mpeg2 files. While I’ve got no complaints about the photo or audio options, I do find the video support seriously lacking.

In a digital world dominated by Mpeg4 and H.264 compression schemes, it seems silly to not have advanced codecs as a checklist feature for certification. While many of the DLNA devices will also support Mpeg4, because the MPEG2 standard is all that is required for certification, it creates confusion for those of us who prefer digital video. This opens up the possibility that a consumers will buy a DLNA device expecting that it will work with their video files, only to take it home and realize that they’ve got to convert their video into a less efficient compression scheme before their DLNA devices will support it.

From what I’ve read, later this year DLNA is supposed to including Mpeg4 as a default for certification, but considering that VLC and H.264 is quickly becoming a must have feature for video CE products, it feels like DLNA is still a year behind the curve.