Nokia’s DLNA goodness – N85 to PS3 streaming

Steve O'Hear — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 17:35:40 +0000

A much overlooked feature of Nokia’s Nseries smartphones is their ability to share media with other DLNA-certified devices. In fact, DLNA certification in general is marketed very poorly considering that it goes someway to reaching the holy grail of home media whereby various devices – computers, cellphones, games consoles, hard drives, media streamers and other hardware – can all play nicely together to share and stream media around the home. That’s the aim anyway, although in practice not only is DLNA’s messaging underwhelming, but issues such as copyprotection and varying support for different file formats have held back the technology, which, as I’ve previously noted, offers so much promise. Anyway, back to Nokia.

This afternoon I decided to put the N85’s DLNA support to the test by attempting to stream music, photos and videos stored on the phone to a PlayStation 3. And, perhaps surprisingly, it was all pretty straight forward.

I simply fired up Nokia’s ‘Home media’ application (located in the tools > connectivity folder) and toggled the phone to “visible” so that any DLNA certified device on the same local area network could now connect to the N85 (over WiFi), including my PlayStation 3. After which a Nokia icon popped up in the PS3’s XrossMediaBar Interface. I then needed to tell the N85 which files to make ‘public’; in this instance that would include all music, photos and videos stored on the phone.

After going through these two steps, I was able to browse to the music, photos and video folders respectively on the PlayStation 3 via the Nokia icon labeled N85 (see above screen shot) and stream any of the phone’s media onto my widescreen TV, with one caveat. Although both photos and videos that I’d shot on the N85 played back fine (the PS3 has good support for MPEG4 video, for example), as did MP3 and AAC audio, copyprotected content – a BBC TV show that I’d downloaded via the N85’s iPlayer application- refused to stream.

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iPhone app climbs Apple’s ‘walled garden’ to display photos on TiVo

Steve O'Hear — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:42:12 +0000

DVRPics is a new application for iPhone and iPod touch that enables you to stream photos to a networked TiVo so that they can be viewed on the TV.

Currently only one photo can be selected at a time — a limitation the app’s developer blames on Apple, since third-party developers aren’t given direct access to the iPhone’s photo library. However, a version of DVRPics that supports photo slide shows is next on the app’s road map. The app costs 99 cents from the iTunes AppStore (iTunes link).

Interestingly, DVRPics isn’t the only TiVo-related app for the iPhone. After a quick search I discovered an app called DVR Shows (iTunes link) that enables you to see what recordings are stored on your TiVo via an iPhone or iPod touch, including full program details. Unsurprisingly, you can’t actually stream those recordings to the iPhone or even use the iPhone as a TiVo remote a la iTunes or the recently released iPhone app for Sonos.

Apple’s ‘walled garden’

The workarounds and limitations of both apps reinforce the need for Apple (and TiVo) to become members of the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) and support industry standards for sharing media around the home. As I noted in my recently published guide to DLNA goodness:

Missing in action is a major player like Apple, a company that has done more than most to simplify our digital lifestyles but whose ‘walled garden’ approach to digital media is apparent in its lack of UPnP AV support.

Unless Apple has an unlikely change of heart and decides to support the DLNA’s UPnP AV or similar standards for sharing media between devices, developers will be forced to to climb walls, with limited success.

Image credit: TiVo Community

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Nokia’s DLNA goodness – N85 to PS3 streaming

iPhone app climbs Apple’s ‘walled garden’ to display photos on TiVo