UPnP

I spent today configuring my media server using Media Tomb on the WD My book world edition The WD my book world edition i must say is a very nice product and I am very pleased with it. UPnP sounded like something worth trying after reading how it is supposed to seamlessly and easily make all your media files available to the machines and other devices on your network, i was used to sharing my media files on the network and using the built in database (Library) of Windows media player on each machine to access my media but was hoping that by using UPnP my PDA, and later on my music center could seamlessly and easily access my media. My guests at home could access my media on their cell phones etc.

The server side of a media server is pretty straight forward to setup, their are also quite a few good programs available that will allow you to turn a PC or the WD my book hard drive into a media server. I posted a link in my previous blog on how to install Media Tomb. However its the client side so far that has disappointed me, since i thought that UPnP by nature should have shown up automatically as an option on all my media programs on all my devices and PCs on my network. At the very least windows media player would automatically and without effort see my UPnP stream ... well it didn't.
the only client program I had some success with was "Nero showtime" but not seamlessly or effortlessly. It seems that the standard hasn't been included into most media players.(i tried Core, VLC, Windows media player)

WD My Book World edition makes for a terrific media center and is a great product especially after you have performed some simple hacks to it. It has a Intel ARM processor and has Linux installed on a 2.5GB partition of the 1 terabyte Hard drive, so you could easily install a web server and use the WD Mybook as a fully functional Web or FTP server with 1 Terra Byte of Hard disk Space and for a lot cheaper that what it would cost you to purchase a PC. if I can only find a good client program to access my Media tomb UpNP stream I'd be plain sailing but I havent' so I'm pretty disappointed about that, I read that the PS3 works with it, I will try it out again when i upgrade my AV receiver to one that has a Gigabit Ethernet port and is able to use my UPnP Stream.