Xbox One Will Play Media from USB Devices, DLNA Servers 112
New submitter Mauro sends word that Microsoft has announced upcoming Xbox One support for streaming media both from attached USB devices, such as flash drives, and DLNA media servers. Compatibility with a broad list of media formats will be added by the end of the year, including .MKV files. They also followed up last week's announcement of a digital TV tuner with an interesting twist: it will be able to stream broadcasts over a local network to devices running the Smartglass app, which is available on Windows, Android, and iOS.
Re:Most Tv's can already do that by themselves (Score:5, Informative)
That's a nice idea, but even tv's that cost less than 200£ can play mkv's and mp3's from a USB stick. My Samsung tv can stream straight from any PC in the same LAN [As long as a certain samsung app is installed in that pc].
I use Plex server (free) on my laptop which then is discoverable as a DLNA server on my Panasonic smart tv. Works great even with mkv files! The only downside is that non-HD files don't render as cleanly as when viewing on PC.
Re:I love competition. (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, Sony will re-add it back.
It's why even though the PS4 is technically better, the Xbone is still a contender. And it has to be, given the third entrant is a no-show this round.
Yes, laugh all you want about resolutiongate (oh wait, did you just dismiss that Killzone 1080p lawsuit? I thought PS4 was better because it could push 1080p vs. whatever the guys could do on Xbone).
And yes, the Xbone is a weaker system - but it doesn't matter, because the PS3 was a weaker system for most developers at launch too (half the system RAM since the other was dedicated graphics, if you didn't use the SPUs, you had two two-thread PowerPC cores vs. three two-thread PowerPC cores), etc. And it sold poorly the first few years. But after that, the PS3 was a decent contender to everyone else and it was pointless to joke about it.
Xbone is in the same position versus the PS4, and yet everyone is writing it off that Sony would dominate. Yes, Microsoft is stupid and arrogant (just like Sony was with the PS3), but they'll learn.
And both PS4 and Xbone are horrendously immature - if you take them now versus launch day, they are tons better, but there's still a shit-ton of work to do.
And what's making both better? Competition - you notice how PS4 and Xbone are now basically adding features the other had? Xbone gets Blu-Ray 3D in August, PS4 goes and gets it a week earlier.
Likewise, media support will be coming. And Xbone has external USB drive support for save games - PS4 will probably get that soon too (that was actually a launch feature to make up for the fact the Xbone's hard drive isn't easily removable - the external USB is a full featured citizen storage unlike the Xbox360's where there are differences between attached hard drive storage and USB).
Hell, perhaps we can kick their asses to do something fun with Kinect and the Playstation camera (which on launch day added rudimentary voice control to compete with Kinect - huh.).
Both Microsoft and Sony going after each other is good. Believing the PS4 will win may be true (like the Xbox360 won), but writing Microsoft off simply makes everything worse for us. It's the only way to keep Microsoft AND Sony from doing what Microsoft wanted to do with the Xbone in the first place.
Re:DLNA is crap (Score:4, Informative)
Why DLNA, in this day and age? It's garbage, with a "lowest common denominator" approach to media files, with only 8.3 filenames and very few supported formats. It's like the companies got together to grudgingly agree a simple standard that would mean they didn't have to do any real work with each other, just a bare minimum that would just about allow interoperability and a minimum of effort to implement.
Gotta ask for a source for "only 8.3 filenames" - nothing in the specs I've read states this, and I've never seen any DLNA software with such a limitation in the last decade.
And yes, there is a defined lower end for media support, but nothing keeps anyone from supporting additional formats. I've played 1080p h.264 video with surround-sound DTS in an MKV container using DLNA software, just as I've played .ogg files and various others ....
Anyways, why DLNA? Because it is nice and simple and does what people want? Well, perhaps not what YOU want, but you also seem to think it only supports 8.3 filenames for some quite-strange reason.