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More => Old Versions => Media Center 12 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: danvm on January 27, 2007, 11:34:42 am

Title: UPNP Devices To Display Photos On Televisions
Post by: danvm on January 27, 2007, 11:34:42 am

Media Center 12 is an amazing piece of software.  Friends and family love the way it can serve audio and photos to my TiVo using playlists.

Is anyone using or know of a device other than the TiVo, perhaps a UPNP compatible device, that can serve up audio and image files to a TV?

Title: Re: UPNP Devices To Display Photos On Televisions
Post by: John Gateley on January 29, 2007, 10:46:51 am

Most of the UPnP devices will do audio, photos, and video...

j

Title: Re: UPNP Devices To Display Photos On Televisions
Post by: danvm on January 30, 2007, 12:40:51 pm

Could someone offer a recommendation for a UPNP device that they have used with MC to display photos on their TV?

Title: Re: UPNP Devices To Display Photos On Televisions
Post by: dcwebman on January 30, 2007, 01:56:03 pm

Take a look through the Other Hardware forum (http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?board=10.0).  I just bit the bullet and purchased a D-Link DSM-320 which others have used here. There are other ones mentioned too.

Also check out http://wiki.jrmediacenter.com/index.php/Supported_UPnP_Devices

Title: Re: UPNP Devices To Display Photos On Televisions
Post by: danvm on January 30, 2007, 04:17:31 pm

Do you like it?  Does it offer you a direct connection to the Smartlists for Images?

Title: Re: UPNP Devices To Display Photos On Televisions
Post by: dcwebman on January 31, 2007, 08:57:19 am

When I said "just" that's what I meant as I just ordered it yesterday. Some of the others here will need to answer your question for sure, but from what I understand, it uses MC's theater view so you should be able to.

Title: Re: UPNP Devices To Display Photos On Televisions
Post by: John Gateley on January 31, 2007, 09:29:36 am

The interface isn't exactly theater view, but it is very similar.

Smartlists are available from the device.

http://wiki.jrmediacenter.com/index.php/UPnP_Server_and_Devices_%28Media_Receivers%29

j

Title: Re: UPNP Devices To Display Photos On Televisions
Post by: tuxster on February 02, 2007, 10:38:24 am

I played with a D-Link DSM-520 a little bit before I returned it.   

It did audio, video, and photos well, and could also play the Smartlists (I tried smartlists for Audio, but not for Photos).

However almost all of the current UPNP devices in the market have problems with showing photos properly. They will either get the aspect ratio wrong (i.e., force stretch a 4x3 picture on a 16x9 HDTV screen), or do a horrible job of downsizing to fit on the screen (i.e., taking a 5 megapixel picture and showing it on a 1280x720 screen), or are too slow for most purposes (may take more than 5 secs to load the next picture).

The only Upnp device that ever got "photos" correctly, was the "Roku Photobridge" (here is a review of it from PC Magazine (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1750301,00.asp)) but Roku Labs has discontinued that product.

The good news is that the new generation of Upnp devices are supposed to solve most of these shortcomings, for example NetGear EVA8000 (http://www.netgear.com/Products/Entertainment/DigitalMediaPlayers/EVA8000.aspx) and D-Link DSM750 (http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=1&pid=547). These products were all announced at CES2007 a couple weeks ago, and are not yet on the market, but should be within 2-4 months (thus why I returned the DSM-520).