DLNA

The Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) is a non-profit collaborative trade organization established by Sony in June 2003, and has more than 250 member companies in the mobile, consumer electronics, PC, and service provider industries. Alliance members have stated the common goal of using standards-based technology to make it easier for consumers to use, share and enjoy their digital photos, music and videos. As of January 2011, more than 9,000 different devices have obtained "DLNA Certified" status, indicated by a logo on their packaging and confirming their interoperability with other devices. It is estimated that more than 440 million DLNA-certified devices, from digital cameras to games consoles and TVs, have been installed in users' homes.

Member companies

As of Feb 2011, there are 26 promoter members and a much larger list of contributor members. The promoter members are: ACCESS, AT&T Labs, Awox, Broadcom, Cisco Systems, Comcast, DIRECTV, Dolby Laboratories, Ericsson, Hewlett-Packard, Huawei, Intel, LG Electronics, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Panasonic, Promise Technology, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics, Sharp Corporation, Sony Electronics, Technicolor, and Verizon. As of March 2011, Apple Inc. is notably absent; Apple uses its Digital Audio Access Protocol instead of DLNA's UPnP protocols.

DLNA is run by a board of directors consisting of 9 members. There are 8 permanent representatives from the following companies: Broadcom, Intel, Microsoft, Nokia, Panasonic, Samsung Electronics, Sony Electronics, Technicolor and one elected representative selected by the promoter members.

The board of directors oversees the activity of the four following committees:

Ecosystem Committee, planning the future development of DLNA guidelines
Compliance & Test Committee, overseeing the certification program and its evolutions
Marketing Committee, actively promoting DLNA worldwide
Technical Committee, writing the DLNA guidelines

History

Sony established the DLNA in June 2003 as the Digital Home Working Group, changing to its current name 12 months later, when the first set of guidelines for DLNA was published. Home Networked Device Interoperability Guidelines v1.5 was published in March 2006 and expanded in October of the same year; the changes included the addition of two new product categories — printers and mobile devices — as well as an "increase of DLNA Device Classes from two to twelve" and an increase in supported user scenarios related to the new product categories.

Specification

The DLNA Certified Device Classes are separated as follows:

Home Network Devices:

Digital Media Server (DMS): These devices store content and make it available to networked digital media players (DMP) and digital media renderers (DMR). Examples include PCs and network attached storage (NAS) devices.
Digital Media Player (DMP): These devices find content on digital media servers (DMS) and provide playback and rendering capabilities. Examples include TVs, stereos and home theaters, wireless monitors and game consoles.
Digital Media Renderer (DMR): These devices play content received from a digital media controller (DMC), which will find content from a digital media server (DMS). Examples include TVs, audio/video receivers, video displays and remote speakers for music.
Digital Media Controller (DMC): These devices find content on digital media servers (DMS) and play it on digital media renderers (DMR). Examples include Internet tablets, Wi-Fi enabled digital cameras and personal digital assistants (PDAs).
Digital Media Printer (DMPr): These devices provide printing services to the DLNA home network. Generally, digital media players (DMP) and digital media controllers (DMC) with print capability can print to DMPr. Examples include networked photo printers and networked all-in-one printers

Mobile Handheld Devices

Mobile Digital Media Server (M-DMS): These wireless devices store content and make it available to wired/wireless networked mobile digital media players (M-DMP), digital media renderers (DMR) and digital media printers (DMPr). Examples include mobile phones and portable music players.
Mobile Digital Media Player (M-DMP): These wireless devices find and play content on a digital media server (DMS) or mobile digital media server (M-DMS). Examples include mobile phones and mobile media tablets designed for viewing multimedia content.
Mobile Digital Media Uploader (M-DMU): These wireless devices send (upload) content to a digital media server (DMS) or mobile digital media server (M-DMS). Examples include digital cameras and mobile phones.
Mobile Digital Media Downloader (M-DMD): These wireless devices find and store (download) content from a digital media server (DMS) or mobile digital media server (M-DMS). Examples include portable music players and mobile phones.
Mobile Digital Media Controller (M-DMC): These wireless devices find content on a digital media server (DMS) or mobile digital media server (M-DMS) and send it to digital media renderers (DMR). Examples include personal digital assistants (PDAs) and mobile phones.

Home Infrastructure Devices

Mobile Network Connectivity Function (M-NCF): These devices provide a bridge between mobile handheld device network connectivity and home network connectivity.
Media Interoperability Unit (MIU):These devices provide content transformation between required media formats for home network and mobile handheld devices.

The specification uses DTCP-IP as "link protection" for copyright-protected commercial content between one device to another.

Products supporting DLNA

DLNA-certified devices

There are over 9,000 products on the market that are DLNA Certified. This includes TVs, DVD and Blu-ray players, games consoles, digital media players, photo frames, cameras, NAS storage, PCs, mobile handsets, and more. Predictions have been made as to how many DLNA Certified products are shipping:

“According to a study from ABI Research, nearly 200 million such products shipped in 2008; that number will rise to more than 300 million in 2012, and the growth curve accelerates even faster in the years that follow.”

Consumers can see if their product is certified by looking for a DLNA logo on the device or by verifying certification through the DLNA Product Search: http://www.dlna.org/products/

DLNA technology components

As the past president of DLNA pointed out to the Register in March 2009:

"The vendors of software are allowed to claim that their software is a DLNA Technology Component if the software has gone through certification testing on a device and the device has been granted DLNA Certification. DLNA Technology Components are not marketed to the consumer but only to industry."

DLNA Interoperability Guidelines allow manufacturers to participate in the growing marketplace of networked devices and are separated into the below sections of key technology components.

Network and Connectivity
Device and Service Discovery and Control
Media Format and Transport Model
Media Management, Distribution and Control
Digital Rights Management and Content Protection
Manageability

DLNA-Certified Software

In early 2011, DLNA began a Software Certification program that makes it even easier for consumers to enjoy and share their digital videos, photos and music across a broader range of popular products. DLNA is now certifying software that is sold directly to consumers through retailers, websites and mobile application stores. With DLNA Certified software, consumers can upgrade products from within their home networks that may not be DLNA Certified and bring them into their personal DLNA ecosystems. This helps in bringing content such as videos, photos and music stored on DLNA Certified devices to a larger selection of consumer electronics, mobile and PC products.

The first application to be certified under the new Software Certification program was Skifta for Android, a product of Qualcomm Services Labs Inc. Skifta is an application-based media shifting service that allows consumers to access and play their digital media from virtually any source, whether it's accessed on the phone, from the cloud, or remotely from home.

DLNA-compliant software

2player a controller, and player, with download support (DMC, DMP, M-DMD), for Android devices.
AllShare™ is Samsung Electronics trademark name which includes DLNA as well as other related features. Look for this in DLNA compatible Samsung devices.
ArcSoft TotalMedia 3.5. Appears to be just a DMS.
AwoX mediaCTRL for iPhone is a commercial controller with upload and push controller (DMC +UP+ +PU+). It is based on AwoX DLNA Technology component software development kits.
Coherence is a complete UPnP python framework including a DMS, a DMR, and a DMC.
CyberLink SoftDMA 2. Appears to be just a DMP.
iMediaShare is a smartphone application that supports Media Server specifications of UPnP/AV.
J. River Media Center A multi-faceted media player/organizer with a DLNA/UPnP server, controller, and renderer, including conversion.
LinuxMCE as a complete free solution has Fuppes integrated, but plans to switch to MediaTomb.
tubeCore a free Windows Media Center Media Receiver plugin that provides a DLNA complaint user interface to DLNA Media Servers.
Windows Media Connect and therefore Windows Media Player 11 reportedly support DLNA, but there appear to be problems, for example, with PS3 consoles.
Windows Media Player 12 (bundled with Windows 7) supports all DLNA roles.
XBMC a free and open source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub for digital media available for Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, as well as the original Xbox game console. XBMC

Servers

Asset UPnP/DLNA, Free Audio specific UPnP/DLNA server for Windows & Windows Home Server. Features album art, audio WAVE/LPCM transcoding from a huge range of audio codecs, replaygain support for streamed audio. Customizable browse tree.
CyberLink Media Server 2. Appears to be just a DMS.
Jamcast, a DLNA compliant media server for Windows that is capable of streaming any audio playing on the PC to DLNA devices.
Mezzmo is a feature-packed UPnP/DLNA media server with on-the-fly transcoding and media organizing features.
PlayOn from MediaMall. Appears to be a DMS, also capable of serving streamed internet media such as Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, CNN, ESPN.
PS3 Media Server. An open source (GPLv2) DLNA compliant UPnP Media Server for the PS3, written in Java, with the purpose of streaming or transcoding any kind of media files, with minimum configuration.
Serviio is a free DLNA media server and works with any DLNA compliant device (TV, Playstation 3, etc.) and some other (XBox 360). Probably, one of the best FREE media server. It is updated frequently.
TwonkyMedia server runs on PC, Mac, Linux and Android and enables media sharing of local and online media among a large variety of devices.
TVMOBiLi - A free DLNA/UPnP Media Server for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Appears to be just a DMS.
TVersity, a free UPnP MediaServer with strong device support and on-the-fly transcoding. Appears to be just a DMS.
Wild Media Server (UPnP, DLNA, HTTP)], a media server for Windows, Wine (Linux), CrossOver Mac (MAC OS), individual device settings, transcoding, subtitles, restricted device access to folders, Internet-Radio, Internet-Television, Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB), etc. It provide a lot of features, however, it is very expensive because you have to play a licences by "MAC Address" instead of device.
Coherence is a framework written in Python to enable applications access to digital living network resources. As a stand alone application it can act as a UPnP/DLNA media server, in combination with a supported client as a media renderer.

External links