I've been looking into rolling my own DLNA setup. I've got an ancient laptop connected to the stereo; it's got a fresh Debian Linux install and a build of
GMediaRender which uses the gstreamer library. There is no "player" (e.g. DLNA Control Point) on the laptop itself; the intent is to run it headless (and, if this works out, replace it with a tiny fanless computer). For a Control Point—at least until MediaMonkey implements Control Point support itself—I'm using a program called MediaStreamer that runs on my Nokia tablet.
The good news: MediaStreamer sees both MediaMonkey and GMediaRender. I can browse the library and exposed playlists; create a playlist to run; and start it up. So long as the data stream is MP3, it works, which seems to be a limitation of MediaStreamer. I would like to send FLAC across without conversion, but that's not happening. (I've verified that gstreamer can handle FLAC, and GMediaRender recognizes when I try to send a FLAC over, but reports "Error: Stream contains no data.")
I don't have M4A support installed for gstreamer, but MM4 has successfully transcoded one track from M4A to MP3, and that plays. Very nice, but I haven't been able to duplicate that yet with a second track.
Two things:
[1] For M4A support, I have that free-codecs package installed. The first time I selected an M4A to play from the Control Point software, MM4 threw up a message that QuickTime was needed (or something like that, I didn't write down the error). But then it transcoded the track just fine; and subsequent playbacks of the track have not put that error up.
I am pretty sure that when that error appeared, I was looking at the Options dialog for the server.
[2] Instead of specifying "Supported format" in preferences, shouldn't MM be querying the renderer directly to see what it supports? MediaStreamer can act as its own renderer, and the Nokia tablet has M4A support built in -- I shouldn't need to transcode if I'm sending it to the tablet.
I didn't originally think DLNA was going to mean much, but I'm starting to see possibilities now. Pretty slick!
I've been looking into rolling my own DLNA setup. I've got an ancient laptop connected to the stereo; it's got a fresh Debian Linux install and a build of [url=http://gmrender.nongnu.org/]GMediaRender[/url] which uses the gstreamer library. There is no "player" (e.g. DLNA Control Point) on the laptop itself; the intent is to run it headless (and, if this works out, replace it with a tiny fanless computer). For a Control Point—at least until MediaMonkey implements Control Point support itself—I'm using a program called MediaStreamer that runs on my Nokia tablet.
The good news: MediaStreamer sees both MediaMonkey and GMediaRender. I can browse the library and exposed playlists; create a playlist to run; and start it up. So long as the data stream is MP3, it works, which seems to be a limitation of MediaStreamer. I would like to send FLAC across without conversion, but that's not happening. (I've verified that gstreamer can handle FLAC, and GMediaRender recognizes when I try to send a FLAC over, but reports "Error: Stream contains no data.")
I don't have M4A support installed for gstreamer, but MM4 has successfully transcoded one track from M4A to MP3, and that plays. Very nice, but I haven't been able to duplicate that yet with a second track.
Two things:
[1] For M4A support, I have that free-codecs package installed. The first time I selected an M4A to play from the Control Point software, MM4 threw up a message that QuickTime was needed (or something like that, I didn't write down the error). But then it transcoded the track just fine; and subsequent playbacks of the track have not put that error up.
I am pretty sure that when that error appeared, I was looking at the Options dialog for the server.
[2] Instead of specifying "Supported format" in preferences, shouldn't MM be querying the renderer directly to see what it supports? MediaStreamer can act as its own renderer, and the Nokia tablet has M4A support built in -- I shouldn't need to transcode if I'm sending it to the tablet.
I didn't originally think DLNA was going to mean much, but I'm starting to see possibilities now. Pretty slick!