[GRLUG] XBMC

[Philip J. Robar]

Disclaimer: I know just enough about UPnP/DLNA to be dangerous. :-)


On Jul 25, 2011, at 7:36 AM, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:

> That is a serious bummer.  I have AT&T U-verse, which has no support
> for 'other' services like Amazon.  So I keep a Tivo Series 2 online just
> to be able to access Amazon.

I assume you're referring to a limitation of the AT&T set top box and not the internet service itself. You can watch Amazon Instant from a Windows or OS X PC or via a number of devices such as your TiVo.


> Have you tested the DLNA support with any clients, such as Banshee or
> current Android devices?

To a limited extent. I have been trying to get various UPnP/DLNA clients and servers working between two segments of my home network for the last year or so with no success. Since I did most of my video watching is on one segment of the network using file sharing, figuring out what the problem was had never been a top priority. But the acquisition of a new TV and Theater in a Box both with networking built-in and Apple changing windows file serving in OS X Lion so that XBMC can't see shares on my Mac finally motivated me to find out what was wrong.

It turns out that the source of the problem was the switch in a cheap router. We're all used to thinking of unmanaged switches as things that just work—we plug them in and then forget about them. If only life were always that simple. It turns out that a few cheap switches do not deal with multicast packets correctly and UPnP/DLNA depends on multicasting. Good switches use IGMP to route multicast packets, some cheap switches flood the entire network with them, and bad switches just drop them. In the conversations that I found, the problem was seen in a couple of popular cheap gigabit switches. But my problem was with a cheap Rosewill wireless router that I was using as an access point for one end of my house and its 10/100 switch as the connection between my two ethernet segments. After making the Rosewill a leaf on my network as opposed to the middle man my problems went away.

Anyway, I've gotten XBMC to talk to another XBMC, and XMBC and my Samsung TV to talk to a PS3 Media server successfully. The latest Windows Media Player sees the XBMC or PS3 Media Server, but doesn't see any content on them. But that's probably a problem with the Windows installation and not Windows Media Player.

I'm playing with Android clients as I write this. Nothing to report yet.


> I researched DNLA servers and there doesn't seem to be much.


I'm guessing you didn't find this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_UPnP_AV_media_servers_and_clients

Some of the most popular servers are:

XBMC (DLNA certified.)
PS3 Media Server (Java based, multi-platform. Very well thought of.)
TVersity
TwonkyMedia Sever
TVMOBiLi (Main feature is making your media available outside of your local network.)
Windows Media Player

Be aware that the DLNA spec is a piece of crap with very limited functionality due to political infighting amongst its members and set your expectations accordingly. (My summary of an article written by an engineer who was deeply involved in this area.)

Phil


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