I think it’s time for a little more info on Play To. Having poured through the white paper that we posted about yesterday and thanks to a couple of emails with the product team here we go.
Windows 7 is really DLNA compliant. Within DLNA there are some basic rolls that a device can perform:
Digital Media Server or DMS Windows 7 does this (actually so does Vista and XP to some extent)
Servers house content
Digital Media Player or DMP Windows 7 does this (actually so does Vista and XP with WMP 11)
Players let you select content on the device for playback
Digital Media Reciever or DMR Windows 7 does this
Recievers get media poked at them by something else
Digital Media Controller or DMC
Controllers let you poke media at devices
Ok that’s a little dry, now something cool!
Say I have a NAS with all my media sat on it (DMS) and I want to listen to some music from that on my laptop (DMP) I can browse from there and find the music and play it on my laptop and create a little play list. I then decide it’s time to put the laptop down and go to bed, but I want to carry on listening to some music. With Windows 7 (as a DMC) I can tell the play list to Play To the Media Center extender (DMR) in my bedroom, and I skip through the play list to where I was on the laptop.
Now for the cool bit, I can turn off my laptop. Yep off. The music is actually streamed directly from the DMS to DMR, not via the DMC.
Cool thing number two. What if I actually decide that I’d like to do the above with an XVid movie? Well if the NAS above is replaced by a Windows 7 PC it’ll work, transcoding is built in!
If you’ve got questions about the Play To features of Windows 7, tell us in the comments here. There’s still more to come on Play To!
Posted by Simon May, follow me on Twitter or if you like email me
What would be relly cool is if Play to can play to a number of devices. ie you create a group of devices. Example if I had a party I wanted the same music in different rooms. O.K there would be no synrconisation but for differnt rooms I dont thik it would matter if you are a second or so out of step.
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Works fine if the source is Server 2008R2 as well 😉
Pretty cool stuff.
What would be relly cool is if Play to can play to a number of devices. ie you create a group of devices. Example if I had a party I wanted the same music in different rooms. O.K there would be no synrconisation but for differnt rooms I dont thik it would matter if you are a second or so out of step.