[GRLUG] Ubuntu Oneiric

[Robar Philip]

On Oct 30, 2011, at 12:01 PM, Mike Williams wrote:

> I'm not sure what the difference is between DLNA and DAAP or if they're two versions of the same thing. I think DAAP might be the protocol that itunes uses while DLNA is an open standard rather than a reverse-engineered one.

Quoting from Wikipedia:

"The Digital Audio Access Protocol (DAAP) is the proprietary protocol introduced by Apple in its iTunes software to share media across a local network. DAAP addresses the same problems for Apple as the UPnP AV standards address for members of the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA)."

Since DAAP is proprietary, Apple is free to change it as they please and thus the link between open source DAAP clients and servers and iTunes have been broken several times. I don’t know what the current state of affairs is.

DLNA is right up there with USB when it comes to brain dead specs (according to a senior engineer who was intimately involved with it), and that it’s implemented by humans of widely varying capabilities and resources. It borrows from and builds on UPnP, though their FAQ failures to distinguish DLNA from UPnP/AV.

DLNA has a deliberately restricted (or castrated, depending on your point of view) set of features—in particular support for only a limited set of codecs is required—thought many server and clients go well beyond what is required by the spec. Also the UI is left to each client and some of them are rather crude to put it nicely.


Phil


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