Tuesday, January 26, 2010

MediaServer for Android

Thanks to all of you who have been waiting patiently for our MediaServer. I am proud to announce that we just published it on the Android Market. Just take your phone, open the Market app and seach for MediaServer.

Here's a little video about it:


Extract from the app documentation: MediaServer is a DLNA Media Server for devices featuring the Android platform. Using MediaServer, pictures & videos taken with your phone as well as audio files can be played back on your home media appliances like TVs, picture frames, Sony PlayStation 3, etc. Without the need to plug any cables nor to configure any network settings, your home media devices will discover your Android phone automatically once the device is on WiFi and the MediaServer is turned on.
So, take your pictures and videos while you're on the go and play it back on your TV when you come home!


Tech insights: The app embeds Mobile OSGi as an internal architecture. This helped us a lot as we could reuse OSGi's UPnP and http services. It also uses Config Admin and Log Service. While OSGi payed off, implementing multicast protocol features on Android were a pain as we had to work around the lack multicast packet reception support (most vendors don't compile the Android Linux kernel without that feature...). Anyway, it works well, try it out!

-Jo