Music streaming... airplay? dlna? full internet radio?

[VJ]

Thanks, I'm always worried that the free version might be too limited or artificially restricted.
Server almost reconfigured: first had some issues with windows update, so I restored from an image; then had some problems with drivers, so I restored again (is faster than figuring out what is wrong), and then I made a mistake when making a new image (at 01.00 yesterday) which corrupted the partition, so I had to start over again (but it already goes faster now ).

[VJ]

Ok, OS installed and backed up, now I can play without worrying of messing it up too much (restore is easy).
Client computer will be restored today, as its network is acting up (I suspect a faulty driver, but cannot seem to fix it). While it is updating, I can install things on the server.

[VJ]

I tried a quick installation of UMS and Serviio (first I test some things, then restore the system, then install for real). They both seem capable, but I haven't fully tested everything yet. Streaming to iPad was a bit of a problem, due to lack of a good UPnP client (the one I tried was identified by UMS as a PopCorn Hour, after which the client complained it could not play back the media). I haven't yet tried streaming to a Windows 7 computer.

[Umfriend]

Serviio does well to my Samsung PC and Playbook tablets (with KalemSoft Mediaplayer as a client, excellent program even if it costs 5 or 6 bucks.)

What would be the advantage of streaming to a W7 computer (on the network obviously) over simply opening the file located on the server on said W7 computer?

With Serviio, the only thing that comes to mind is where your W7 computer does not have the right codec for the file in which case Serviio would transcode (not entirely sure how that would work though).

[VJ]

Streaming to the W7 computer (Windows Media Player) should be the most straight forward thing to do, so I want to use that one as a test case to set it all up. Ideally, I would like to be able to stream audio and video to iPad and Android, and I want to check the full possibilities with the Revo radio I have, and then I can decide if I would go for a DLNA speaker for the kitchen, or some other solution. At the moment, this whole DLNA streaming is still a black box to me, so I need to play around with it.

But then having a DLNA server makes me wonder if streaming to the W7 computer might offload its cpu/gpu somewhat. It is a low powered Ion, and it manages full HD playback through DXVA. However, when decoding a full HD MKV, it really puts the cooling fan to maximum, which gets noisy (it is advertised as silent, but is not). Perhaps the use of transcoding might allow the movie to be sent to the W7 computer in a format that is easier on the Ion (at the cost of using CPU power on the server). Not sure on this, but I want to play around with it. I could also use it to play back things on my old laptop (Intel Centrino with gma-945 chipset), which cannot handle the full hd files). (oh, and I like to avoid installing too much software on PCs, so if a upnp client suffices, I would not need much software on the PC) When the streaming works well, I could always re-purpose the computer and get a simple (silent) media player. But the configuration would be ready.

[Umfriend]

I've not looked into it but Serviio alledgedly allows you to define profiles for client devices through which you can instruct Serviio to transcode to a format of choice. Once you get that worked out, let me know how ;-)

[VJ]

Ok, I will!
It is this fun "experimenting with computers but luckily nothing critical" thing. Biggest aim is to decide on something for the kitchen, second aim is the transcoding: first for audio (all my audio is in FLAC), then for video.

[VJ]

Ok, played around a bit. Regular streaming is not difficult to configure, and I managed to get it working to the Windows 7 PC. Ideally, I would like to run it on a VMWare, but it gives some other problems. Not really ServiIO related, but rather network configuration and shares. So I'll see if I'll go through with that effort or not. Streaming to iPad or Android had much more mixed results, and did not seem very consistent (sometimes server found, sometimes not).
Transcoding configuration is by means of manually making a specific profile. Weirdly, the profile is associated with the client's IP address, so I should make sure that they are fixed (set preffered IPs in DHCP).

I also quickly tried Universal Media Server, and it looks quite similar in functionality. Difference might be in supported formats or quality, but I don't know that yet.

Now a bit of a busy period, so not much time to play around with it, so I might just give up on running it virtually just to have it up and running now and see how it holds up in daily usage.