Tag Archives: DLNA

Managing Youtube playlists on Serviio

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Today I enhanced my Serviio DLNA server hosted on my Synology DS412+ diskstation to show videos of my Youtube playlists on my connected TV’s. I installed the Youtube online content plugin (Youtube.groovy, version 29.12.2012) in the NAS /volume1/public/serviio/plugins folder. I stopped and restarted the Serviio server in the NAS package center to activate the plugin.

The next step was to install the chrome extension Serviiotube in the Chrome browser which allows to add videos and playlists in the Serviio Online Resources Library from the Youtube webpage.

Serviiotube in Youtube

Serviiotube in Youtube

The resulting source page in the Serviio webconsole is shown hereafter :

Serviio Console, Online Resources

Serviio Console, Online Sources

Serviio DLNA media server

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Last update : May 8, 2013

Serviio is a free media server allowing you to stream media files (music, video or images) to DLNA renderer devices on your connected home network. Serviio is based on Java technology and therefore runs on most platforms. A pro version was launched in July 2012 when the 1.0 version was released.

The relevant features of Serviio are :

  • streams audio, video (SD & HD) and image files in their native format or transcoded in real-time
  • streams content from online sources (RSS feeds, live audio/video streams, web page content, …)
  • streams your PC desktop
  • includes a plugin system, based on the Groovy language, to support streaming from non-trivial online sources or to create playlists
  • supports different editable renderer profiles
  • supports external subtitles

Serviio uses a priority-based metadata extraction to describe your media files :

  • embedded metadata into the media files
  • locally stored metadata files (.nfo sidecar files)
  • scraped online metadata

The performance and high quality of the Serviio DLNA server has been documented by the fact that Sony UK first recommended Serviio for Sony devices and recently licensed Serviio to create their own customized Homestream server. Sony started the DLNA initiative in 2003.

Serviio is developed by the freelance Java consultant Petr Nejedly (alias ZIP). The current version 1.2.1 was released on March 22, 2013. Serviio is supported by a strong on-line community, active on the main forum and on the numerous sub-forums. There are also various third party tools available, for example a web user interface in php or AJAX, consoles (ServiiDroid, …), a database for storing information about online sources (ServiiDB).

Patters created a DSM package to install Serviio on a Synology NAS.

Here is a small list of some other DLNA servers to allow you to compare the Serviio features with other projects.

DLNA Media Servers and Players

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Last update : March 12, 2013

The following list provides links to informations about DLNA media devices, especially Media Servers :

A list of additional media servers and client applications is available on Wikipedia which provides also a comparisons of UPnP AV media servers.

Apple developed its own proprietary streaming protocol stack/suite, called AirPlay, that is not compliant with DLNA. Another solution to stream multimedia files is based on the SMB/CIFS networking protocols, re-implementated with Samba to open windows to a wider world.

I recommend the Serviio DLNA server which I installed a week ago on my two Windows 7 desktops to replace Windows Media Players.

Windows Media Player DLNA Configuration

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Last update : June 17, 2012
A personal computer running Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7 can be used as a DLNA certified media server simply by activating this capability in the Windows Media Player (WMP) 11 or above. Some tutorials how to configure the WMP are listed hereafter :

In the past the media server components, now integrated in the WMP, were called Windows Media Connect (WMV) or Home Media Ecosystem (HME). The Windows Media Center (WMC) includes a digital video recorder.

Late April 2012 I set up a DLNA system in my home network with a Fritz!Box Media Server and two Windows Media Players 12 running on Windows 7 personal computers.

Six weeks later I replaced the Windows Media Player system by the outstanding Serviio DLNA server. I disabled the Windows 7 Media Player Network Sharing Service (wmpnetwk) to avoid conflicts in media sharing and to speed up the system’s perfomance. A tutorial how to turn off wmpnetwk.exe is available on numerous websites.

DLNA : Digital Living Network Alliance

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Last update : June 17, 2012;

DLNA logo

The Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) allows consumers to connect and enjoy their music, videos and photos from any consumer device (computers, printers, cameras, cell phones, and other multimedia devices) from anywhere in their homes. DLNA (website : dlna.org) is a non-profit collaborative trade organization established by Sony in June 2003, that is responsible for defining interoperability guidelines to enable sharing of digital media between these devices . The private guidelines are built upon existing public standards and specify a set of restricted ways of using the standards in order to achieve interoperability.

Today there are 26 promoter members and 199 contributor members. In early 2011, DLNA began a Software Certification program in order to make it easier for consumers to share their digital media across a broader range of products. Today there are over nine thousand products on the market that are DLNA certified.

DLNA uses Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) for media management, discovery and control.

The DLNA Certified Device Classes are separated as follows :

  • Digital Media Servers (DMS) store content and make it available to networked media devices
  • Digital Media Controller (DMC) find content on digital media servers and play it on digital media renderers
  • Digital media renderers (DMR) play content received from a digital media controller
  • Digital media players (DMP) find content on the network and provide playback and rendering capabilities
  • Digital media printers (DMPr) provide printing services to the DLNA home network

Examples for DMS include personal computers or network-attached storage (NAS) devices. All DLNA devices can be mobile (wireless). Bridges between mobile handheld device network connectivity and home network connectivity are provided by  Mobile Network Connectivity Functions (M-NCF). Content transformations between required media formats for home network and mobile handheld devices iare provided by Media Interoperability Units (MIU).

DLNA is a refinement of UPnP, a set of rules and restrictions in the name of interoperability. Full DLNA specifications are available only to DLNA members who pay for. UPnP specifies the abstract device interfaces, the specifications for UPnP are available at the UPnP forum.