The future is here! No, not because we're tantalisingly close to flying cars, habitats on the moon or even because Telkom has finally given us 10Mbit Internet connections.
No, the future is here because I managed to play a video on my HDTV the other day. Now, by normal measures, this is not a remarkable achievement. How difficult could it be, after all? Most modern HDTVs sport USB ports that accept most manners of USB storage devices, and can play certain video formats from said drives.
Even if we don't go that hi-tech, it's possible to play video files on a TV. There are a ton of set-top boxes, like the WDTV, Mede8er and Popcorn Hour, capable of playing any video (audio or image) format known to mankind. Slick interfaces and updateable firmware make them very appealing, and prices start at around R1 200 - not a bad investment if you're hoarding 37 seasons of Grey's Anatomy on the external hard drive the IT guy “organised” for you.
Let's not forget that the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 can both play these digital formats on your TV. And things don't even need to be that cutting-edge. Let's just say you have a normal CRT TV - remember those old fat ones? - and a DVD player. Even then, equipped with the two most-recently extinct dinosaurs of the audio-videolithic era, you'd be able to achieve the task I am so proud of. Playing a video on a TV.
In control
But let me ask you this. Can you control your DVD player from your iPhone? No? Well, neither can I.
What I did manage to do was control my WDTV from my iPhone. In the age of universal remote controls, this isn't news. Heck, even my Yamaha home theatre receiver has a remote control that works with the WDTV. Controlling other devices using a third-party controller isn't groundbreaking. Given the wealth of fantastic apps on the iTunes App Store it's no wonder somebody wrote an application to control the WDTV from Apple devices.
Except the WDTV uses infrared for its remote interface and the iPhone doesn't have an infrared transmitter. The WDTV is plugged into my router, which also has wireless. The iPhone has wireless. Now we're making progress.
There is indeed an application on the App Store for controlling the WDTV. It's called PlugPlayer and it'll also control your Windows Media Centre, Windows Media Player, an Xbox, a PlayStation and even another iPhone.
Plug it in
The future is here because I managed to play a video on my HDTV the other day.
Christo van Gemert, consumer technology editor, ITWeb
It's all powered by universal Plug and Play, or uPnP. Prepare to see those four letters and these four letters - DLNA - quite a lot, in the coming months. The latter, which implements the former, is a 250-member strong trade organisation aiming to make things more interoperable. It's bringing convergence to things that should've had it a long time ago, using open standards. DLNA-certified devices use uPnP, which as the name suggests, has a set of universal commands.
In my case, I have a media server PC running Windows 7. It has a few hard drives, shared through a uPnP server called TVMOBiLi. Instead of using regular network shares, TVMOBiLi creates uPnP shares that are accessible from any compatible media renderer - a device that can see and play files through the uPnP protocol.
The WDTV is a uPnP renderer. So is the Xbox, the PS3 and Windows Media Player. They can all recognise uPnP shares and play files from them. And the iPhone? Well, PlugPlayer can join the dots, so to speak.
It sees the uPnP share on the media server and it sees the renderer. Using PlugPlayer I can browse all the files on my media server, and when I click on the play button, the media literally gets pushed to the WDTV. Universal remotes don't have jack on this set-up.
Of course, there are a few drawbacks. Server software, like TVMOBiLi, still has some way to go. There are other versions, some of which will even transcode media for use on mobile phones, but none are very user-friendly or ready for mass consumption, in my opinion. Renderers, like the WDTV and its ilk, also have some way to go before being perfect. For instance, playing a file through uPnP is treated differently to usual playback operations, and the regular remote control will not work for pausing playback.
Finally, the remotes aren't quite accessible. There are a handful of applications that can do what PlugPlayer does, but I was only willing to invest the $6 on iTunes to try it out after reading good reviews. Obviously, smartphones are the prime candidates for this visual file management and playback, and there are similar apps available for the Android platform.
What I'd like to see are remote and renderer kits from big companies like Logitech, LG and Sony. They could offer us a media player with visual remote, both using uPnP. Phone manufacturers can also implement uPnP support into their video and audio players. Microsoft already has Windows Media Player.
Throw in some proper server software, to manage and share digital media on the network, and we'll be closer than ever to a ubiquitous media environment. Switch on, browse, play. Just the way it should be.
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