Streaming Home media via UPnP

If you have a huge media library, enjoying the same might turn out to be quite a task in itself. Should you play DVD, use a thumdrive or a Network File Share (NFS)? What if your device doesn't support the media format?

Universal Media Server (UMS) is aimed to solve this problem. UMS is a UPnP media server. It also transcodes the media file on the fly and allows you to enjoy the media on any UPnP compatible device. It's written in Java. Hence it can run on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Below is a demo of UMS in action.


Devices used:
UMS running on Linux desktop (Athlon X2, 4GB RAM)
XBox 360
Lenovo Tab 2 A series
Denon 2113

Media Played:
SampleVideo_1280x720_2mb.mkv  Xbox doesn't support MKV format. UMS transcodes the file to MP4.
absolutely_mcglashan_border.avi  HTML5 compliant browser (Chrome) is supposed to support MP4 natively. Hence, UMS converts the file to MP4.
Epoq-Lepidoptera.ogg  Denon 2113 doesn't support OGG. However, thanks to UMS serving MP3 format, the song is played flawlessly.

Note: I'm working on zero configuration transcoding. Basically, UMS queries the device capapbilities (GetProtocolInfo) and accordingly streams or transcodes the media. So far I've tested it on WMP 12, Denon 2113 and XBox 360. However, it's still beta code and I could use more testers.

If you want to give it a go, here's the source code https://github.com/atamariya/UniversalMediaServer.git . Build it with the following command:

mvn clean package -DskipTests=true

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