Play To DLNA TV

Hi Barb and all on the thread. Let me add some clarity on this topic as there appears to be some confusion (understandably).

Since Windows 7, Windows has a long history of supporting UPnP/DLNA and Windows 8 is no exception. In fact, we've gone even further in Windows 8 than what we provide in 7 to support fully standards-based UPnP/DLNA within the home. The Play To feature, in DLNA parlance, is a Digital Media Controller (DMC) and a Play To device, in DLNA parlance, is a Digital Media Renderer (DMR). I'll save this for another day, but Windows 7 and 8 also fully support Digital Media Player (DMP) and Digital Media Server (DMS); all standards-based.

Since Windows 7, we have been certifying Play To devices (DMRs) for Windows. This certification program doesn't invent any new standards or use any Microsoft proprietary technologies. Here is what our certification program does:

1. DLNA guidelines have a bunch of optional requirements. An example is for a device to support volume control. These things that are optional in the guidelines have an impact on the user interface both within new Store apps and in Windows UI (such as providing a user the ability to control device volume using the app volume slider, or seek into a video, or update the state of transport control buttons (play/pause/etc.) in the app UI when a user uses the TV remote control). We think this stuff is important, so Windows certification makes mandatory a specific few requirements that are optional in DLNA.

2. DLNA guidelines have mandatory requirements that they themselves don't test. I won't get into the details here, but the absence of a test for mandatory guidelines means that some devices implement things wrong, or don't implement them at all, which causes weird behaviors that are hard to work around. No doubt, this isn't on purpose (the device manufacturers always fix the issues when we bring them to their attention). Because the user experience can break because of this, we think it's important and Windows certification actually tests the few specific requirements that are also mandatory in DLNA.

3. Expanding on #1, DLNA makes optional certain media formats that are very popular today and expected by users. The primary example is MP4 video (M4V) and audio (M4A), or more specifically  H.264 (AVC) and AAC respectively. Windows 8 has a strong focus on HTML5 for sites and apps, which depends on MP4. If DMRs don't support MP4, we wouldn't be able to deliver on the promise of streaming HTML5-based audio and video from apps and sites to your TV or speakers. You might think transcoding to MPEG-2 is the answer, but Surface and other Windows RT tablets don't have MPEG-2 encoder hardware in them (and even if we did decide to do this in software, the experience would be terrible and drain your battery).

4.  Playback latency. To be competitive and to deliver a great user experience, we think a TV should start playing a video within 6 seconds and audio within 3 seconds when connected via wired Ethernet. I'd be surprised if anyone thought this was controversial.

That's it. UPnP/DLNA is our foundation technology. Remember though, DLNA means lots of things. A TV that only implements a media player (DMP) and a TV that implements a media renderer (DMR) both have the same DLNA logo, but only one of them is even capable of working with Play To (the DMR).

While new apps from the Store won't work with un-certified devices for reliability, performance, and other reasons, all your devices continue to work the same way they did in Windows 7. From File Explorer or Windows Media Player, these certified and un-certified devices will be shown in the context menu. We also added a button to the Ribbon to make it more friendly on touch screens. Try it on Surface or other Windows RT devices for example.

For enthusiast users or device manufacturers that want to test your device that is not yet certified, you can put your Windows 8 PC (this doesn't work with Windows RT devices) into test mode. DANGER - this allows unsigned drivers to be installed. It's called TEST MODE for a reason. Caveat applied, to put your machine in test mode, from an administrative command prompt: bcdedit -set testsigning on. After a reboot, if your device is truly a DLNA DMR, it will be shown in the Devices charm. You will see that "Not Windows certified" will be listed under non-certified devices. PLEASE contact your device manufacturers if they are not certifying their devices. As I show above, it's all about standards; nothing we've heard from any manufacturer to be controversial.

Hope this helps.

- Gabe