First of all, neither the masses nor the enthusiasts want a server, they
neither want SBS nor a generic UPnP server. The only people who want a
server are computer geeks (persons that know they are geeks and persons
who are geeks without yet knowing it)
As I look at it there are:
1. Players
2. Music
As long as the player is able to play the music I'm happy, I really
don't care where the music is stored and served, I just want to access
it:
1. From anywhere, any room and both from stationary devices like the
Touch, portable devices like the Radio and mobile devices like an
Android/iOS phone.
2. Without the need to turn manually turn on a computer
3. Without the need to have a stationary computer, the future regarding
computers lies in laptops and tablets, while stationary computers and
even more so servers are the past. Only geeks wants to have a server in
their home.
4. Without any network wires, everything is going to be wireless in the
future.
5. I want to be able to control it using the remote control device I
have in my hand, it might be a laptop, a IR remote, a tablet or a phone
depending on which room I'm currently in.
Via third party apps, SBS and Squeezebox currently supports 1 and 5.
With TinySBS on the Touch they would have been able to support 2, 3 and
4, if the Squeezebox Touch hardware would have been up to the task.
Unfortunately the Touch hardware isn't good enough and currently
Logitech seems to focus more on Windows and OSX than the operating
systems which likely are going to be used in a "non computer" server
like a NAS, Sheevaplug, Vortexbox or player with built in server
support.
The DLNA/UPnP standard might sound good because it's a standard but in
reality it's too complex and it's not clearly specified in some areas
which makes it hard for manufacturers to make sure their devices work
with all possible servers and vice versa. It's also important to know
that while DLNA might work good on the TV in the living room it really
isn't designed to handle a multi room music streaming system with smart
playlists and similar things. DLNA/UPnP can be the base for something
like this but you need to build a proprietary solution on top of it to
get it to work.
Regarding multi room there are:
1. Possibility to select and play music in any room in the house
2. Possibility to synchronize music between different rooms
I'm fairly sure that while point 1 is important, point 2 isn't used
much by most people today. The main reason being that in most families
a family member is lucky if he/she can listen to the music he/she likes
in one of the the rooms, it's probably pretty rare that everyone else in
the family want to listen to the same things in all the other rooms. So
in my mind it's important to be able to play music in any room but it's
a lot less important to be able to play synchronized music between two
or more rooms.
Still, if LMS with its UPnP server would be opened up for third party
plugins in similar fashion as SlimDevices did with the old SBS, I feel
it might be possible for third parties to extend it to be something
really great. Unfortunately, this really doesn't seem to be a priority
at the moment, I might have missed something but the last time I
checked the UPnP support in LMS wasn't possible to extend/enhance with
third party plugins at all. Without third party plugins support the
UPnP effort in LMS is more or less pointless in my mind, because it
will be like SBS without any third party plugins/applets. It will only
support the features which Logitech decides to develop and we all know
that the Squeezebox team has been decreased in size more and more
during the last years. So without third party plugins support I'm
fairly sure there will be better UPnP servers available than LMS.
Regarding Squeezebox and proprietary server, it's important to know
that the protocol used by both the old and new Squeezebox models is
completely opened. Anyone that wants can implement their own server for
Squeezebox players, there are a few servers currently being developed
but none of them currently contains anywhere near all the features
supported by SBS. Most(all?) of the custom built servers I know of are
designed to require less resources to make them possible to run on a
"non computer" like hardware.
--
erland
Erland Isaksson ('My homepage' (http://erland.isaksson.info))
(Developer of 'many plugins/applets'
(http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/User:Erland). If my answer
helped you and you like to encourage future presence on this forum
and/or third party plugin/applet development, 'donations are always
appreciated' (http://erland.isaksson.info/donate))
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View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=90063
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