Hi!

I really like the Squeezebox products, but I'm wondering why it cannot
be used with upnp/dlna-certified servers? I'm using a consumer NAS
(DiskStation from Synology), which provides an upnp server. with 64MB
RAM and 266 MHz it's probably too slow to run slimserver fast enough,
but even if it's fast enough, I have to void my guarantee if I install
it. From the synology community I know, that many people would buy a
squeezebox, if they had not to install slimserver. And I don't think
that many people like running it on their PCs with 200W power
consumption. And probably most people don't like going to their PC,
booting it to swith slimserver on before they can listen to music on
sunday morning...

upnp and especialy dlna has become something like an industry standard.
Even PS3, Apple TV and other products can play music and videos from an
upnp server. Since squeezebox did not support upnp, I bought a Freecom
MusicPal, which is far cheaper and is capable of playing media from
upnp servers. But this device has some problems (which have nothing to
do with its upnp integration, which works perfectly), so I'd really
like to optain 2 squeezeboxes. So I'm asking here, if their is a chance
that squeezeboxes will support upnp servers some day?

And yes, I have read some threads about the topic, like
http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=29706
http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=43840
and I understood that there are so meny great plugins which would not
work using a upnp server. But are you sure that there are more people
who need these plugins, than people who want to use their existing upnp
servers? I'm using mediatomb as upnp server, and here you can change the
whole listing and browsing structure of your files. This is the most
critical task I think. I think that most people want a convenient
listing of their files, and want to browse through the mp3-metadata of
their music collection. That's what you can do with an upnp server like
mediatomb. mediatomb is really nice, as here is a very active community
which improves the server, and it's very customizable and runs nicely
on a NAS (there are already ipkg packages for most NAS).
And as response to the "rendering on the server" issue, I'm programmer
too and I relly don't see the difficulty in changing the
interface-layer, to simply render the upnp data send from the server.
Free libraries are available for all platforms which will do the most
difficult tasks like communication with upnp servers.

Why not supporting both slimserver for those needing the plugins, and
upnp for those who simply want to listen to their mp3 collection
without breaking the guarantee of their NAS?

Have a look at the list of devices mediatomb upnp server supports:
http://mediatomb.cc/pages/devices (not complete!). Or look at what
TwonkyVision supports:
http://www.twonkymedia.com/Products/TwonkyMedia/devices.html
So if squeezebox would support upnp too, everybody using any of the
devices mentioned in the links above could use a squeezebox, without
the need of installing any aditional software! And don't forget that
installing slimserver on a NAS is not a simple task for the average
user... (most NAS already ship with upnp servers, some even with twonky
or mediatomb).

Once there is upnp server support, I'll definitely buy 2 or perhaps 3
squeezeboxes, because I really like the devices itself. I hope this
will happen before other companies come up with similar devices
including upnp support.


best regards
Andreas


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