Home UPnP Media Servers Not Ready for Prime Time

So I took the bait and purchased the Gateway Connected DVD player. The thought was that I could get my HDTV hooked up to my Terabyte server. In my effort I got a glimpse at the immaturity of the software in this neck of the woods.

A home media server is targeted for home theaters, in otherwords catering to simplicity and convenience. To my disapointment, installing the Gateway ADC-320 was anything but simple. Furthermore, it was light-years away from anything remotely convenient.

First the installation part. I had no trouble getting the progressive scan DVD working. It took the usual effort of navigating through a jungle of component-video and analog ac-3 cables. Fortunately, the player had a mechanism for each speaker individually. Without this feature I would have never had the patience to weed through my wiring mess.

The ADC-320 comes with a PCMCIA 802.11g card. However to get the player to recognize its presence you have to flash the player using a CD. Once I got it to find the card, you had to get it to connect to your wireless network. This is usually a painful exercise, to make it more painful was that it partially worked. It could see the access points however it could never get a correct IP using DHCP. Fortunately, I had another PCMCIA card from another manufacturer and I got that to work.

The next step was to install the "D5 Streaming Media Server" on your Windows box. The major problem here is that you got to get your firewall settings just right. With Windows you can't live without a firewall, unfortunately I can't see the average Windows user figuring this one out.

Now it was time for even more exasperation and disappointment. The player is hooked up to the HDTV using component video for a good reason, that is to get high definition images. Unfortunately the player doesn't display JPEG images at high definition. It is just plain ludicrous that most reviews on the web say that the image output is acceptable, who are they kidding?

The exasperating part is that when you try to import video files (i.e. AVI or MPEG) the media server software sometimes accepts it and sometimes it doesn't. Its hard to know why. The error message can only be found by drilling deeper into the GUI. You have to give is just the right kind of video file, unfortunately there is nowhere to figure out what that "right kind" is. The specs claim it can a whole bunch of video formats (MPEG 1,2 and 4), but seriously that's a bit of a stretch.

The media server software is cumbersome and its support for standard media is spotty, but even worse the entire concept is flawed. The primary reason why you need this device is far from being fulfilled. You need a connected dvd player because you don't have to place a bulky noisy server in your living room. You can have that server tucked away in the basement. The server is for storing and accessing large amounts of media. It is not for something that can easily fit inside a DVD.

Now here's my point, you can't have convenient access unless you can find what you are looking for. Where is the easy to use search interface? In fact, where is the search? Navigating into a directory structure simply doesn't cut it. UPnP standards say that the Content Directory Service is capable of search, unfortunately the Gateway player is incapable of providing that interface.

So I did a bit of digging around. It turns out that these players "conform" to the Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) standard. UPnP is modeled similarly to Model View Controller (MVC). You have media services, media renderers and control points. In theory, another media server (service) can serve content into any player (renderer). That's of course "theory", in reality, I tried the Streamium Media Manager from Philips and it locked up the box. I had better luck with the Twonky Media Server. Unfortunately it isn't as simple as just serving up content, you have to serve content in the right way and I'm just not sure if the UPnP protocols support that kind of negotiation. Suffice to say that the DVD player locks up if its fed the wrong "kind" of content.

The fact that the player and the media server is so tightly coupled is a big mistake. It goes in violation of Postel's Law. That is media renderers should be liberal in what they can accept. The UPnP platform would be immensely more customizable and extensible if they standardized on a simple HTML based UI rendering. Unfortunately, it appears like this is left as an option for the vendor to implement. Control independent of presentation is nice in theory, but weak in practice.

Fortunately, in the Java world there a lot of toolkits to play around with UPnP. The Streamium media server I mentioned above is written in Java. There are free tools from Siemens, Intel, CyberGarage and Gloolabs. Lots of opportuninities to hack around. Hopefully someday they'll finally grok "usability", until then you can content yourself with a bunch of Java APIs.

In summary, I'm keeping the machine. Not because it works, but rather because there's an opportunity to make it work.