Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[jantypas]

What is the likelihood of our getting UPnP support in MC?  There are more gateways ouot there now that support it.

[JimH]

MC does support UPnP but it isn't a reliable standard.  It's known to work with Sony Roomlink.  Anything else would be very unlikely.

[IlPadrino]

Jim,

I've read similar statements from you about this in the past and I've always wondered, but never spoken up.  Now's my chance:  What do you mean by UPnP being an unreliable standard?  As jantypas mentioned, there are lots of routers that support UPnP NAT transversal.  I've always used this feature to avoid having to configure port forwarding settings to get peer-to-peer applications (think Messenger, gaming, and file-sharing) working properly.

What does MC support in the way of UPnP?  Does it communicate with my broadband router to create the NAT necessary for accesing Media Server (behind the router) from a public IP?  I don't see this happening on my system.

[JimH]

I can't provide a lot of detail, but when we implemented support for Sony Roomlink, we had to do it by sniffing packets.  The communication it used was not pure UPnP compared to the standard specification.  We believe that manufacturers are not adhering to the standard.

[xerodiac]

Hello!

You better don't wait too long for implementing uPnp support in Media Center. There will be Windows Media Connect in October which connects to Windows Media Player 10 and on 18. October there will be Nero Reloaded - originally a CD burning software - with a built in uPnp media server.

Why are you not jumping on the bandwaggon and be one of the first with a nice uPnp media server in MC? You will have to do it anyway sooner or later...

[Rob L]

IlPadrino: UPnP covers lots of things and there are a large number of "sub-standards".

What we're talking about here is UPnP AV - the specification that allows receivers to access music on servers and vice versa.

Whilst it's part of the same overall standard as the stuff that routers use, we're not really talking about the same thing here.

[steje]

On top of Rob's sensible comments, here's my two cents about IlPadrino's question and xerodiac's comments...

What Jim said about manufacturers is SOoooooooooo true. Dude, I'm a storage management software developer. Not sure how familar you are with general SCSI related technology, but over the years it's been amazing how fast and loose various manufacturers have played with their interpretations of the "spec". And when Fibre Channel came along... holy cr@p I can't tell you how many hours I've spent writing code to accomodate behavioural quirks in different vendors devices. And iSCSI seems to have taken ages to bring to market considering it's touting of being based on 'standard' IP network communication.

My point here is not to sound condescending towards the multimedia market, but these other technologies I've mentioned have been driven by established multi-billion dollar enterprise markets and T10 standards organizations and blah blah blah... and even they have been unable to escape what is sometimes the hell of developing to a 'standard'.

The more I learn, the more suprised I am ANYTHING ever works at all... . And while many (hardware and software) vendors sometimes truly cheese out and use excuses to avoid doing bear metal research and development, just as many make valid decisions based on their experience which tells them to hold off on investing significant time and effort in developing to a "standard" they do not see to be fully adhered to and realized yet. And you can bet your @ss that Microsoft and the various hardware vendors that have announced support for Windows Media Connect are doing boat loads of joint development and certification testing before you ever see product interoperability in your home.

And again, not to in any way belittle JRiver's specific accomplishments; they seem to support a good numbers of devices (hey man... iPod) but Microsoft obviously has tremendous market power to make it worth other vendors time to work with them. The MC guys got stuck sniffing packets and basically reverse engineering to integrate with Sony Roomlink . And not for nothing, I don't get any hits at all on Nero's website when I search for UPnP... and has ANYONE integrated with the Nero Digital codec yet... and that seems to be honest worthwhile technology.

So don't be too hard on the MC guys for not coming out with guns blazing, b@lls to the wall support for what I would imagine is in their eyes, an as yet unproven standard.

So Jim... when you guys gonna offer full UPnP support?

[eso]

MC does support UPnP but it isn't a reliable standard.  It's known to work with Sony Roomlink.  Anything else would be very unlikely.

Yesterday I installed a "NOXON Audio" device from Terratec. It is a quite inexpensive (< 100 Euros) wireles audio player that is based on UPnP AV. As I've tested it works with Musicmatch Jukebox, Microsoft's MediaConnect, and Ahead's MediaHome. So it seems to me that the the UPnP AV standard must have become reasonable reliable now.

Which of the two MediaCenter 11 server plugins is supposed to support UPnP AV? I've tried both but the NOXON couldn't find any of them. Because I manage my complete music library with MC it would be nice if it would support UPnP devices. With prices like that of the NOXON I think such devices will become widespread soon.

BTW, the UPnP specifications can be downloaded from http://www.upnp.org/resources/default.asp.

[JimH]

Thanks.  We're aware of the standards group.  Some implementations are not standard however.  HP, for example, encrypts their communication on a device we bought about a year ago.

We should have more soon.  Here's another thread on this subject:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?board=3;action=display;threadid=24812

[JimH]

There is a VERY early version of a UPnP plug-in for MC11 here:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=25171.0

[eso]

There is a VERY early version of a UPnP plug-in for MC11 here:

Thanks for the information. Unfortunately I'm  currently on vacation, so I won't be able to test it with the NOXON before mid-january.