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Setting Up A Home Multimedia Server – Just Some Impressions

January 17, 2007 on 1:45 pm | | In Dev, Fun, General, Multimedia | No Comments

Lately I saw some presentation on UPnP and that this was not – as I always thought – some born dead idea of some big companies, but also a open source challenge. Quite impressed of the possibilities it offered I created my (long before planned but never realized) multimedia home network. Following Hardware is integrated in the network:

• 2 Linksys WRT54GL Router (flashed with Tomato)
• A Terratec Noxon 2 Audio
• An XBOX running XBMC
• A Linksys NSLU2 NAS (flashed with Unslung) + Western Digital myBook 250 GB attached

How was it done? First I set up my Internet connection and a WLAN access point with my first WRT54GL. The second step was to create a WLAN 2 ethernet bridge with the second router. There I connected the XBox and – voila – the Box was suddenly “internetworked”. Third I flashed and “unslung” the NSLU2 and put it as file server on the network. The Noxon 2 was also configured for wireless access and put into the living room. The main thing now is, that I installed the TwonkyVision Mediaserver as a UPnP AV Server on the NSLU2. From this time on the Noxon could stream all my music stored on the NSLU.

In general all UPnP AV ControlPoints in the network should be able to connect to the Mediaserver, but there are problems with the UPnP library used in the XBMC and the TwonkyVision. They don’t work together. Therefore I tried the uShare UPnP AV Server, but it is painfully slow in some cases and it doesn’t work well well kwith german umlauts.
My findings were: The Terratec Noxon 2 works

• fine with TwonkyVision on the NSLU and Windows
• ok most of the time with uShare on Linux (Ubuntu) and the NSLU
• ok with the Cidero implementation
• ok with Fuppes
• not at all with Nero MediaHome