CyberLink Announces UPnP™-Compliant Home Entertainment Applications

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.cyberlink.com.tw/eng/press_room/press_view.jsp?id=603' target='_blank'>http://www.cyberlink.com.tw/eng/press_room/press_view.jsp?id=603</a><br /><br /></div><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/top_01.gif" /> "CyberLink Corp., a leading developer of digital video software and training solutions, will preview its latest Universal Plug and Play (UPnP™) technology at the Intel® Developer Forum, Spring 2004, Taipei. CyberLink solutions featuring UPnP™ technology include CyberLink's all-in-one home entertainment center, PowerCinema, and the award-winning DVD playback software, PowerDVD. New versions of each application featuring UPnP™ technology are planned for release in the third quarter of 2004.<br /><br />UPnP™, is about making home networking simple. UPnP™-compliant products can automatically access and view multimedia contents on other UPnP™ devices on a home network, without requiring additional configuration of settings. Future versions of PowerCinema featuring UPnP™ technology will be positioned as both digital media server and client player, while PowerDVD will function as a digital media client player for UPnP™ home networking environments. The technology will enable users of PowerCinema and PowerDVD to automatically access the video, music and image files of other UPnP™-compliant products."<br /><br />I have to admit I'm a bit confused by this announcement - I had always though that UPnP was a Microsoft initiative that centred more around networking hardware such as gateway devices. This is software that will talk to UPnP hardware and find content? Sounds promising, but we'll need a lot more UPnP devices out there for this to work properly. I really like the idea of devices being able to find content anywhere on the network though! It makes de-centralized storage a reality in a way that today is quite cumbersome.

[klinux]

UPnP is a Windows service. Basically Cyberlink is saying that its future applications will support that service to find other clients running the same service so that the machines can share content.

For example, if your Tivo runs UPnP and is on your subnet, in theory you should be able to access content on your Tivo from your PC.

Apple has been working on its version of zero configuration IP networking called Rendezvous that works on OS X, UNIX, and Windows. Apple is making it open sourc and has submitted it to the IETF Zeroconf working group. See http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/rendezvous/. Tivo has previously voiced support for Rendezvous.

There has been some concerns about the security about Micrsoft's UPnP service. You can either Google it or see http://grc.com/UnPnP/UnPnP.htm for more info.