Buzzword: Networking your digital home with DLNA

Interesting news occurred at CES, affecting how all the media devices in your home talk to each other:

Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA), an industry group, has developed a standard and certification process covering how those media devices interact. DLNA-compliant devices ensure that digitally-stored content like music, pictures, and videos can be reliably sent over a home network connection—wireless or wired—from a storage device to a player, display or another storage device.

I met with the folks who organized the DLNA at last week’s CES and got filled in on the current status. They have created an important set of requirements governing the interchange of personal content within the home and extended it to commercial, protected content (like TV recordings), too.

There are dozens of companies either on the DLNA board or signed on as promoters, making it the most widely-accepted interoperability standard for media devices, and a logo to look for when shopping. Interoperability gives you the freedom to choose whatever brand of TV, DVR, network backup drive or PC you want. This stuff is available now and growing, and most of the biggies are members.

Here are a couple of typical scenarios:

• Windows 7 contains DLNA “smarts” and will allow a DLNA-compliant TV or set-top box (with a built-in network connection) to “pull” digital photos and videos from the computer, with no additional software needed.
• I also got a nice demo of the built-in ability of a DLNA-compliant cell phone to serve as a user-friendly controller to send video content from a DLNA storage device (DVR and Xbox respectively) to a display device (TV and PC respectively). They also made a cell phone “push” a stored picture to a DLNA printer networked over Wi-Fi.

Other, proprietary protocols for media transfer require you to use products from the same manufacturer. Sometimes this is because there are no industry standards covering a new technology, such as sending HD video over a home’s power wiring 3D TV broadcasting.

But we think manufacturers should quickly adopt interoperability standards such as DLNA and Wi-Fi where they exist, giving consumers the freedom to choose.

—Dean Gallea

Update 1/12/10: The "HomePlug AV" certification from the HomePlug Powerline Alliance does, in fact, cover HD video over power line from multiple manufacturers. But there is currently no industry standard for 3D TV broadcasting.—Ed.