DLNA

"kbenson" wrote:

"Microguy" wrote:
These two statements seem to contradict each other.

DLNA is not the only method for providing local streaming, so the statements don't necessarily contradict each other. You may think that it would make sense for them to add DLNA support to fulfill their desired local streaming plans (which I think would be a valid assumption given the support of the technology), but we really know very little about their actual plans.

There have been threads in the general forum where it was discussed that while the hardware support mpeg2, the software may not be licensed to use mpeg2. If that's the case, it could be expensive to add mpeg2 support, which is required for DLNA, right? I have no idea how valid this is...

Their appear to be different levels of DLNA support. For
example no one would consider the Roku streaming media
player a portable device. Yet, reading DLNA supported
formats indicates that MP3 support is only required for
portable devices.

Tekzilla, (from channel Revision3), episode 173 about 6 minutes
in, lists the required formats for a "Home Device" as these;

Photo - JPEG
Audio - LPCM, (2 channel)
Video - MPEG2

Everything else is optional.

Now we all know that some home servers have enough
horse power to transcode. But the Roku probably does
not have enough horse power to transcode MPEG2 to
MPEG4 in software. That's why it has built in hardware
to do the decode.

As mentioned, purchasing the rights for all Roku streaming
media players to support MPEG2 might be too costly. And
without MPEG2 support, it can't be considered a DLNA Home
Device.