Tech Up!: DLNA

Everyday from every side, you come across hundreds of adverts about things you "should" have. From chocolates and ice cream, to the latest perfume from some designer company. But how many of these products do we actually need? How many of these products have you bought and shelved after a few hours use? (Nintendo Wii anyone??) 

Well, Tech UP! will have examples of technology that actually comes in useful, allowing you to be more mobile, more productive and possibly more relaxed

This is the logo you want to be looking for.

First of all, sorry for taking so long to write something else, been a hectic week! Today on Tech Up! we're going to talk about DLNA. I had mentioned this when we spoke about NAS but I think it needs some further explanation. 

When it comes to what technologies to use in our house, the main thing we want to look for, is something that is compatible with a multitude of devices, and is scalable. The idea is that we don't want to get tied down by some manufacturer's own software and end up having to buy every piece of equipment from now on from Sony or Samsung (nothing against them!). We want a "universal" communication language that can speak to any manufacturer's devices as it is a worldwide standard. There are about 250 companies that are using this DLNA protocol, and according to wikipedia by May 2010, there were over 8000 devices working with it. 

So what does DLNA do? Why do we need it? And why should i look for this functionality when i'm shopping for new technology?

I think its fair to say, that for most people, technology is always an afterthought when it comes to buying a house / planning where to put stuff. Noone seems to think about where to pass network cabling, where the computer should go, and how it would connect to your TV / Entertainment system. Actually, most people don't even know that a computer can be hooked up to an entertainment system in the first place! So when the afterthought happens, its usually a case of passing as little cabling as possible to do as much work as possible. But as your computer is next to the kid's room on the second floor and the TV is on the bottom floor on the other side of the house, a direct link between them, or a simple TV-Out cable from the pc's video card wont do it. 

A typical DLNA Setup

This is when DLNA devices come in handy. First of all, I hope you all remember when we spoke about the NAS. If you dont have a NAS yet, a computer running Windows XP / 7 / and if you must, Vista, (Vista is shit, if you have it, get rid of it) you can easily create a media server. Apple took the usual holier-than-though attitude and refused to work with a worldwide protocol, making MAC users have to install 3rd party software (that isn't free) to get their devices to talk to DLNA products. Once your media server is set up, then your DLNA stereo / TV / and even printer can all hook up to it to see your shared media. So from a completely different room in the house (as long as it is networked) you can access your music, photos, and movies that are shared by your server. This also means that you don't need multiple copies of the same media on different machines, but you can have 1 machine that is your media "server" and everything else can connect and share with it. 


So those movies you downloaded? You don't have to burn them to DVD anymore to watch them on your TV. Those mp3's you have, you don't need to run around with your ipod & speakers anymore to have some music in the other room. The bigger the household, the more people make use of digital media, the more sense it makes to invest in a similar system. Just make sure your network can keep up with all the traffic, and no, wifi CANNOT stream 1080p movies comfortably to multiple sources at once.


But we'll speak about networking another day.


Thanks for reading

Tech Up! :NAS

Everyday from every side, you come across hundreds of adverts about things you "should" have. From chocolates and ice cream, to the latest perfume from some designer company. But how many of these products do we actually need? How many of these products have you bought and shelved after a few hours use? (Nintendo Wii anyone??)

Well, Tech UP! will have examples of technology that actually comes in useful, allowing you to be more mobile, more productive and possibly more relaxed.

Today's article is going to talk about something that is useful for anyone that has a digital life. Do you have multiple mp3's and movies on your computer at home? Do you have multiple computers that have the same copies of movies / mp3 stored on their drives, technically wasting precious space? Wouldnt it be nice if you had a backup system that would automatically make a second copy of all your photos and documents so that you dont have to worry about them even if your computer instantly detonates??

Well, luckily for us, something like that exists, and its called a Network Attached Storage (NAS). First of all, you must make sure you have a network already set up at your house, but most people with a digital life already have one, in spite of them not knowing :P So thats not something you need to worry about. The picture above shows a basic home NAS that should do the trick for most casual users. What happens is, that once you hook up the device to your network and follow some simple instructions on how to set it up, you have a virtual drive show up on your computer. Once there, you can transfer all your media to it, and it will be instantly available to anyone else on the network. That way sharing between computers and other DLNA devices (i will go into that another time) will be instant and effortless. There are advance features allowing for security and permissions for separate folders giving privacy for stuff you don't want to share. You can even set the NAS to download your torrents so you dont have to keep your pc on all night.

Other features of entry level NAS's include acting as a print server, so even printers can be shared through all pc's, a remote login system for people who need access to their data when they're away from home (great for laptop users), although the speed of that is limited to your internet connection uplink, which could make it a bit slow for larger files. And to top it all off, you can even hook up network security cameras to it, so it can monitor, record and even playback.

I hope that made you start to imagine the possibilities with how easy it can be to make your digital life slightly easier on you. As i post more things on Tech Up! i'm sure i'll be adding more devices that can make use of the NAS, adding you all empowering feeling of having technology do the work for you, and not vice versa.

If you have any questions, feel free to post below, and i'll be glad to share the knowledge :)

thanks for reading