Well many of you might have played with Nokia Play To [beta] in your Symbian^3 devices which was released on very first day of the month “June 2011” by Nokia Beta Labs.
The requirement is only a WiFi network with which these devices will be interconnected. The streaming is performed via DLNA over UPnP Audio/Video (AV). The external devices must have support of DLNA. Hence it’s called a streaming between DLNA supported server and DLNA supported clients.
Quick answer is that “Not at all”. But yes it’s new to Symbian^3. In fact before Nokia Play To application, S60 devices used to have a built-in feature of streaming media over to other DLNA supported clients. For instance Nokia E52, Nokia N82 etc. There are a few others as well.
Thanks to @mobileyog and @nilayshah80 for feeding about these specific devices.
These S60 devices were having an application named “Home Media” out of the box. It does the same as the Media Server (installed with Nokia Play To) to share media from the device to external supported client devices. But on the top of that “Home Media” in S60 devices could also perform as a client player (DLNA client). Which means you can stream media from other devices having streaming server. For example those S60 devices can play media shared from Nokia N8. Unlike that new Media Server in Symbian^3 (or N8) can only stream or share to other supported devices but can not play media that is streamed or shared from other devices.
Simply to say that Home Media in early S60 devices has both the server and the client, while Play To currently comes with only Media Server.
Checkout the following screen shots from a Nokia E52. The screenshots of Nokia Play To are after the break.
Once media shared from Nokia N8, In Nokia E52 “Home Media” is showing N8 in servers list, browsing it and then opening a selected image file from Nokia N8. The following image preview was on E52. The same way audio and video can be played by the client if the format of the content is supported on the client.
Nokia Play To with its simple and cooler interface can be seen below.
However Nokia Play To for Symbian^3 devices is still in Beta Labs, so we hope this will also be having features of DLNA client in up coming updates. But we don’t guarantee it.
Watch the video demonstration of Nokia Play To on Nokia C7 sharing media onto a TV.
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I never checked this but is there any difference in quality if you use DLNA with Play To for streaming content to HD screen Vs using HDMI out cable?
Depends upon your network it varries
Technically there is a big difference between both. HDMI is just a connection which delivers only output but the content is played on the device. So the quality depends on the quality of cables and length of the cables.
On the other side DLNA which relies on UPnP network, connects multiple devices so that each device can pick the actual content from another device and plays it by itself. Or a device pushes the actual content to other device (a DLNA Player). It depends on the DLNA Player what the specifications of that player are. See the attached picture.
considering the difference between both can make you believe that streaming via DLNA will be better in quality then delivering merely an output signal via HDMI.
e.g. Streaming via DLNA is like sharing/playing a video to/from another computer within a network.
@twitter-78037142:disqus Technically there is a big difference between both. HDMI is just a connection which delivers only output but the content is played on the device. So the quality depends on the quality of cables and length of the cables.
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On the other hand side DLNA which relies on UPnP networks, connects multiple devices so that each device can pick the actual content from another device and plays it by itself. Or a device pushes the actual content to other device (a DLNA Player).
-
considering the difference between both can make you believe that streaming via DLNA will be better in quality than delivering merely an output signal via HDMI.
-
e.g. Streaming via DLNA is like sharing/playing a video to/from another computer within a network.
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A limitation is there with DLNA - It depends on the DLNA Player if it can play the content streamed via another device. As said above the content is played on the DLNA Player, hence the player needs to have all the encoders and codecs needed for the video being streamed. See the attached picture taken from a Nokia N8 when Video Support was set to "All Videos"
Thanks for info, but have you checked quality difference if at all any?
So N8 has good options, if you have DLNA capable devices and wifi otherwise simple HDMI cable o
No I didn't have DLNA certified HDTV so couldn't compare both. but I'll try to manage one so could I demonstrate a difference between both.
Oh nice, thanks for share!