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The HT Guys HDTV and Home Theater Podcast #264 - DLNA, the Digital Living Network Alliance
By The HT Guys
Braden Russell and Ara Derderian
Posted on April 4, 2008
Category: General Interest
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Today's Show:
Today we discuss what DLNA is and what it can mean for your home theater system. DLNA stands for the Digital Living Network Alliance and began in 2003 when a group of companies came together to create products that worked together. Today, there are more than 250 companies in the alliance.. They include consumer electronics, computer and mobile device manufacturers. DLNA published its first set of Interoperability Guidelines in June 2004 and the first set of DLNA Certified products began appearing in market soon thereafter. The latest version of the DLNA Interoperability Guidelines, version 1.5, was published in March 2006, and then expanded in October 2006. To become certified, products pass through the DLNA Certification Program.

Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA)

What Do you need to make it work?

  • A home network (wired or wireless)
  • DLNA certified devices

That's it! There are some NAS devices that are DLNA certified. In this case you put the files in the music folder and your will be available on your network. The specification supports TV, DVRs, Mobile Phones, Computers, Receivers, and PDAs just to name a few. These devices are split into four classes, Digital Media Server, Digital Media Renderer, Digital Media Controller, and Digital Media Printer.
  • Digital Media Server - These devices store content and make it available to the other classes. These can be PCs and NAS devices.
  • Digital Media Player - These devices find the content on the servers and can play them back. These can be TVs, Receivers, and game consoles.
  • Digital Media Renderer - These devices play content received from a digital media controller, which finds finds content from the server. These can be TVs, Receivers, video displays, and remote speakers for music.
  • Digital Media Controller - These devices find content on servers and play them back on renderers. These can be Internet Tablets, WiFi enables digital cameras and PDAs
  • Digital Media Printer - These devices provide printing services to the DLNA network.

What will it do for you?

DLNA certified devices are designed to give the consumer interoperability between different manufacturers. It is designed to allow you to watch movies from your computer on your DLNA certified TV. It will allow you to listen to music that is stored on your PC or DLNA certified NAS device through your receiver. And the biggie for us, it will allow you to record TV programming on your DVR in the living room and enjoy it on your DLNA TV in your bedroom.

Some of these capabilities are readily available today, mostly the music and photo sharing. There are a decent number of TVs that are DLNA certified. Mostly from SONY, Toshiba and Philips. As far as DVRs go, Toshiba has a few that are DLNA certified but they are made for the Japanese market right now. This is something that we would like to see Dish, DirecTV and Cable companies adopt. It would be nice if these company's DVRs could be server and players. We saw demos of this back in 2004. Here we are four years later and we are still waiting for this capability.

The Future (from the DLNA website)

For the future, the DLNA member companies will continue to refine and expand the DLNA defined capabilities, so that you can enjoy your digital devices and content in new and novel ways. Some future capabilities that could be possible are:
  • Connect the digital devices in your automobile to your DLNA defined network – that is a natural extension of the DLNA capabilities already defined for mobile devices so that you can enjoy your digital content literally on the road.
  • Use not just the current sets of wired and wireless networking and connectivity technologies, but many other ways to network and connect to enable more use cases in more diverse environments. With the adoption of IPv6, you will be able to enjoy your personal content while outside the home just as if you were at home.

Posted by The HT Guys, April 4, 2008 10:33 AM

More from The HT Guys

About The HT Guys

The HT Guys, Ara Derderian and Braden Russell, are Engineers who formerly worked for the Advanced Digital Systems Group (ADSG) of Sony Pictures Entertainment. ADSG was the R&D unit of the sound department producing products for movie theaters and movie studios.

Two of the products they worked on include the DCP-1000 and DADR-5000. The DCP is a digital cinema processor used in movie theaters around the world. The DADR-5000 is a disk-based audio dubber used on Hollywood sound stages.

ADSG was awarded a Technical Academy Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2000 for the development of the DADR-5000. Ara holds three patents for his development work in Digital Cinema and Digital Audio Recording.

Every week they put together a podcast about High Definition TV and Home Theater. Each episode brings news from the A/V world, helpful product reviews and insights and help in demystifying and simplifying HDTV and home theater.