DLNA function with N1T1

Quoted from Wikipedia, Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) members have stated the common goal of using standards-based technology to make it easier for consumers to use, share and enjoy their digital photos, music and videos. After building up the DLNA network, users will be able to access the file and display on DLNA devices. In my case, the home network devices including PC, NB, PS3 and cell phone. Depends on connection method, these devices have different ways to access N1T1.

Since PC1 and PC2 are connected by cable, I decided to direct mount the N1T1 as a partition disk through CIFS. That makes N1T1 act as a native drive of both PC. I don't need to login using FTP client, unlike DLNA only browses pictures, videos and songs, I can read write all the file types I want freely.

N1T1 can be found correctly in PS3 as a DLNA media server. Photos, songs and movies can be browsed correctly. And since PS3 supports Divx codec, many of the backup movie files can be displayed.

The 2nd device I would like to test is cell phone. I've downloaded a software named Skifta for Android. Skifta works properly to play my songs and photos stored in NAS. Of course, playing my files through DLNA on PC or NB is too easy to explain right here.

There is nothing special about my home network. It was basically built behind a D-Link DIR-300 router, for a 10/100 LAN speed and 54Mbps wireless connection, a very common and entry level of local network environment. I would like to test the multi-play capability of my NAS, but it's a pity that I don't have a HD level movie files to demonstrate. I picked a simple XVID movie files with a 608x464 resolution to do the testing. It's certainly not a HD file, but looks OK on my 42inch TV through PS3-DLNA. At the same time, I've turned on all of my computers and cell phone one by one to play the same file. Totally 5 devices are accessing NAS for movie display, and I'm glad to see that there is not any delay of the movie playing. Then I change my cell phone to play the MP3 files while other devices are still playing the movie. Still, everything works properly as well.

Up to now, N1T1 works great as a home multimedia center. I found from other user's experience for using NAS playing 720P/1080P HD movies. These kind of files seems to meet the limitation of NAS or LAN, I really would like to have a chance to test it some other day.