UPNP / DLNA (client) player recommendations?

Question

Since neither VLC stable / VLC nightly builds / Totem with Coherence Plugin work properly in oneiric I'm searching for an alternative to watch media streamed from my seagate dockstar using minidlna as a server.

The only client that works is XBMC, but that's much of an overkill and stops me from doing other tasks. Atm I'm working around this with samba shares, but it baffles me that both a Playstation 3 and Windows 7 Laptop work better together with my debian based media server than my linux desktop in this regard.

Answer 1

First make sure that server is running fine. Then you can use djmount for upnp client. I don't know djmount is in the repo or not (I don't use ubuntu now). Install djmount & fuse.

make a mount point in /media

cd /media
sudo mkdir upnp
sudo chmod 777 upnp

You can give any name other than upnp

Then load fuse and mount the filesystem

sudo modprobe fuse
sudo djmount -o allow_other /media/upnp

You may have to restart the server. eg if you are running mediatomb

sudo /etc/init.d/mediatomb restart

Then browse to /media/upnp

However there is some problem. You have to remount it after every reboot.

Answer 2

Recently VLC Version 2.0 was released. This Release features a fully functional UPNP / DLNA Player that works without bugs. I'm using it on Ubuntu and Archlinux and it works just fine with my minidlna player.

To use VLC start the Playlist (View -> Playlist; Ctrl + L) and then select Local Network -> Universal Plug 'n' Play. However, be advised that VLCs implementation first downloads all the library information before you can select anything. Depending on the size of the library that actually might take several minutes and longer.

Answer 3

eezUPnP

Java based application - download the zip file (32bit or 64bit) and run ./CP in the extracted folder.

Obviously you need a JAVA JRE to be installed.

Be patient for the media servers to be recognised...