DLNAUPnP

DLNAUPnP is a term used to describe the integration of Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) guidelines with Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) technologies to enable home network media sharing. DLNA, established in 2003 by a coalition of consumer electronics and software companies, specifies interoperability profiles and certification for devices such as media servers, renderers, controllers, and players. The goal is to allow different brands to discover, control, and stream media across a home network without proprietary setups.

The underlying mechanism relies on UPnP and its AV architecture. Devices advertise their capabilities using the Simple Service Discovery Protocol (SSDP), and control and transport of media are managed through UPnP AV services such as AVTransport, RenderingControl, and ConnectionManager. Content transfer typically uses HTTP streaming, while some environments may employ local network protocols for efficiency. The DLNA framework defines a set of profiles that indicate which media formats and streaming features a device can handle, ensuring basic interoperability between servers, renderers, and controllers.

Key DLNA roles include Digital Media Server (DMS), which hosts and serves media; Digital Media Renderer (DMR), which plays media; Digital Media Player (DMP), a device that can play content; and Digital Media Controller (DMC), which can remotely control playback on a renderer. Many consumer devices—TVs, game consoles, NAS devices, and media players—chip away at these roles in varying combinations.

Certification is provided by DLNA to confirm conformance with its profiles, allowing devices to display a DLNA Certified logo. In practice, implementations vary, and some devices support only a subset of profiles, which can affect interoperability.