Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA)

DLNA is group effort of over 200 companies working to create a home entertainment ecosystem with seamless interoperability between digital devices.

The ecosystem for digital living is based on and builds around the concept of home networking. The home network can be a wired and/or wireless topology, with a mix of wired and/or wireless devices that can discover and communicate with each other over the network. The device types are not limited to just the traditional PC, printer and broadband router that may first come to mind, but can include HDTVs, DVRs, Stereo Systems, Gaming Consoles, Blu-ray Players/ Recorders, Digital Camera, Mobile Phones and other mobile devices. If you have ever experienced the misfortune of trying to get digital content stored on your laptop to display on someone else’s TV (so that more than 2 or 3 people can view it) , the benefits of seamless integration between different devices is obvious.

DLNA devices simplify enjoying digital content; for example: you want to present a slide show of digital pictures of your child at his second birthday party on your HDTV. The digital pictures are stored on your home computer. If your HDTV has a USB port you may be able to store the images on a USB memory stick and plug that into your HDTV. If your HDTV doesn’t have a USB port, then your options are to burn it to a DVD and play it from your DVD player, or move the computer from its current location and connect it directly to your HDTV, (provided that your computer and HDTV have the appropriate connection types, and you have the correct interconnection cables on hand). With a DLNA HDTV you could summon the slide show directly to the HDTV across the home network as easily as you get content front an internet server. You get the content you want displayed on your HDTV without rearranging your house. You can even stream the content to more than one DNLA HDTV just as easily.

To meet the guidelines for DLNA and achieve certification, devices must be able facilitate transparent connectivity to other devices inside the home network, either directly or by use of bridging and routing technologies. The goal is to enable endpoint-to endpoint information exchange between all devices in the network. Devices must be able to discover, configure and control other devices and services on the network. DLNA devices must also use common media formats and media streaming protocol so there is the easy exchange of content. Interoperable media management across all devices is also a requirement, so that any device can be used to search, browse and select the content to be consumed. Devices must also use compatible authorization and authentication mechanisms so that the various devices on the network can grant or/and request access to the content.

DLNA devices are broken in to 3 categories with each category containing classes of devices:

Who is involved?

It seem, just about everyone who manufactures consumer electronics and computers is involved with DLNA, the big 3 computer processor manufacturers; AMD, Intel and Motorola. The top tier CE companies; Kenwood, LG, Matsushita Electronic Industrial Co. Ltd. (Panasonic), Mitsubishi, Philips, Pioneer, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Toshiba are also supporters. I.T. heavyweights, Broadcom, Cisco, Dell, HP, IBM and Microsoft are also on board. All of the major cell phone and camera manufacturers are also supporters of DLNA. The complete list of supporters is lengthy; the only noticeable absentees from the list of member companies are Apple, Nortel, Sun Microsystems and Texas Instruments. Sun and Texas Instruments are promoting members of another organization call HANA (High Definition Audio-Video Network Alliance), whose goal is to “address the end-to-end needs of connected, high-definition, home entertainment products and services.

Going forward DNLA will look to expand the capabilities of the framework. A Likely area for expansion is into your automobile, so you can do things like stream MP3 audio to your car audio system, without the use of a docking device. Extending the framework to network using IPv6 is a natural fit. The “Link-Local” and Neighbor Discovery specification in IPv6 will greatly simplify home networking, allowing for device auto-configuration which doesn’t break when you VPN to another network, while keeping network data from being inadvertently routed to an unintended destination.