The real issue is that SD's business model is to give away the server and charge for the player. I would guess from a market perspective that a player is a player and the fact that the SB/Transporter are probably better audio components is lost on the majority of folks buying these products. So, the value is therefore in the server software which is where the rub is. SD doesn't charge for the server, so if they made it DLNA compliant (I'm sure easy enough to do), I could buy a Roku and use SC for free to control it since the other DLNA server products in the market stink. Then SD would be in the business for free. The SB/Transporter supporting DLNA probably makes more business sense for SD because at least they could still sell players - but clearly it wouldn't make much sense for someone to buy one only to use it with a DLNA server today - but it could in the future. In my opinion, SD can't ignore this issue. They will probably have to dance with that devil at some point to stay in the game. It's risky, but ignoring it would probably limit their success over the long run.
It would probably be ideal for someone to build a plug-in to provide DLNA client support off of SC. That way SC can be the center of a user's audio streaming world and eventually folks will realize the SD products give them more functionality than their DLNA product does which might bring revenue back to SD. I just bought a TV and an AV Receiver that both require DLNA, so now I'm evaluating DLNA servers. SD better have a strategy for integration with DLNA or have tremendous value add to justify remaining an island IMO. DLNA has standards and pictures/video on it's side...I'm sure the servers will improve with time as well. I don't necessarily like running a single server for all (since all implementations get clunky with all of that going one), but it could become compelling over time. -- thomsens ------------------------------------------------------------------------ thomsens's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=1352 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18295 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
