Question About uPnP and "Home Network"

This is actually quite easy. Once you have Simple Centre running on your Home PC, go to Gallery on the Nokia and click on the Home Network option at the bottom of the list. thiswill bring up SimpleCentre. from there open your music folders and play the music.... Bob's your uncle.

If I do that, my menu options are:
- Play via home network, which goes off looking for another device,
- Find
- Copy to phone
- Copy to memory card
- Mark/Unmark
- Help
- Exit

There's no option to play on the N95

This is exactly the same problem that I have. I have two UPNP servers running already - TVersity and Orb - and I can see both via the gallery in 'Home Network'.

However, if I select a music or Video file from the Home Network selection within the gallery, I get the same options as the poster above (no option to play the file), or if I simply press the middle select button I get a message in a large square box saying 'select device' and then below that, simply trhe word 'empty.

So what next?

neilhoskins wrote:There's no option to play on the N95

Sorry, I got this totally base-about-apex. (blame lack of sleep and a 6 week old baby - brain stops working) There is no facility to stream TO the N95, as Nokia have not made it a true upnp device. It is only effectively a remote control. The only way to get music on your PC to play on your N95 is to copy it across first via the file structure you can see once connected via the Simple Centre upnp software.

Major flaw that lots of people complain about.

chrsfrwll wrote:
Major flaw that lots of people complain about.

Yep, including me.

I was in fact shocked to fine that the N95's UPNP implementation is not actually proper upnp. One of the reasons that i bought the N95 was because it had upnp on the box/spec list. Nokia really dropped the ball here, it would be so easy to implement streaming on the N95, all the hardware is there. Very odd ad a real shame.

Yes, that's annoying, particularly considering that a friend of mine with a TyTN has been doing it for ages now. Maybe it's something that can be implemented with future firmware?

neilhoskins wrote:Yes, that's annoying, particularly considering that a friend of mine with a TyTN has been doing it for ages now. Maybe it's something that can be implemented with future firmware?

Possible, yes. I would go as far as also saying that it would be relatively easy. Upnp is a well established framework. However, this is Nokia we are talking about and it's 99% likely they wont. After all, we need good reasons to upgrade out phones ever year 😉

I have been doing it with my HTC for over a year, it's amazing. But it requires extra software (which is free, very good and easy to use). It would be possible that a third party company could develop software to do it. But the problem is that Symbian software development is way behind Windows Mobile, especially in the media and networking side of things. It could be a while!

If you have Orb, I believe there is a way to stream from your PC to your router and then straight to your N95, bypassing the internet connection to Orb servers and then to your phone. At least, that is what I think their help files say. Trouble is, I haven't worked out how to do it yet. :con?

Sorry Orb has a built in UPNP server. That's what they are talking about.

You can still stream your content via Orb - but it does it over the Internet rather than over the local network; which can be slow (especially for video).

I think Nokia really dropped the ball here too. Trust them to come up with a UPNP implementation which wasn't really fully UPNP compatible.

Which begs the question also, what with all of the complaints and bugs that people here have reported, does anyone from Nokia actually read any of these forum posts? Or is it (except for the excellent help of other forum members here) somewhat equivalent to pissing in the wind at this point?

If so, what is the best and most efficient way to make Nokia aware of the bugs/issues that we have encountered?

I'm pretty sure that Nokia do have people reading these forums, as it's great market research for them, although they won't admit to it as it'll create a flood of questions.

According to the ORB help pages,

"DirectStream, a.k.a. UPnP, is a feature which enables Orb to send streams directly from your Orb PC to your Orb client device (i.e., other PC or PDA) without going through Orb's stream servers. This feature is automatically activated by Orb if Orb detects that you have a router with the UPnP functionality enabled. "

I'll have a go later.

neilhoskins wrote:...is a feature which enables Orb to send streams directly from your Orb PC to your Orb client device (i.e., other PC or PDA) without going through Orb's stream servers. This feature is automatically activated by Orb if Orb detects that you have a router with the UPnP functionality enabled. ...

I'll be interested to see if you can, because whenever I tried it this way, all that happened was that the N95 only showed the Simple Center access point and that then streamed on the PC. I think the N95 screws up the process.

But if the ORB way works, the N95 doesn't know that you're streaming across the WLAN: it thinks it's streaming from your ORB web page. Presumably. I assume you have to log into the web page but then the actual content comes directly from the router rather than going all the way to the ORB servers then all the way back again. Anyway, I'll give it a try.

You're not listening. Orb has a built in UPNP server. That IS exactly what they are talking about.

Which means a) it won't work for streaming directly to the N95 and b) the only way I know how to play a stream is directly over the Internet. (Via, for example, the Orb Web interface).

Local media streaming directly to the N95 is not possible at this time.

I know this seems bizarre, but there you are.

raid517 wrote:...Local media streaming directly to the N95 is not possible at this time...

Really? Well, using Orb I'm currently listening to my N95 playing content saved on my PC and my phone line is pulled out of the router. Yes, I set it up initially using the Orb web page, and it may even be phoning home to the Orb servers occasionally for various reasons; but the content is streaming directly across the WLAN at WLAN speeds, and not going anywhere near the internet or the Orb servers. If that's not local streaming then I'm not sure what is. It's using uPnP on the router, rather than on the N95, but until the Nokia uPnP implementation is sorted-out, that's a good enough workaround for me.

OK well that still sounds a bit odd to me, since as far as I can tell (both from what has been said here and my own experiences) that while the N95 can *see* UPNP servers, be they Orb, or TVersity (both of which I have) or a UPNP server on your router (I guess some routers might have this, but not all. Some are UPNP compliant - in that they allow access to certain devices via other UPNP compatible devices - but that doesn't always mean that they work as fully operational UPNP servers in their own right (as in you can add media to them that can then be streamed across the network at WLAN speeds).

Anyway of course if you have done this and you do have a router with a fully compatible and working UPNP media server included, then this still presents the problem that your N95 might be able to see it, but that doesn't mean that it can stream directly from it. (I'd love to be wrong about this BTW - which is why I just bought SymSMB (since I will get version 2.0 for free next month) as this might enable me to do the kind of direct streaming I want.

Anyway not to doubt your word, but if you have some neat formula/method for doing this without SAMBA access, or without direct access to the UPNP server content from your phone, I think a lot of people would appreciate you sharing it. A small step by step how to, stating what you did and how you did it would undoubtedly prove very useful to a lot of people.

However some things still aren't so clear to me.

You say you are 'streaming content' from a UPNP server? How did you do this when the UPNP home network app in gallery won't allow content to be played in this way?

You say, that 'you don't even need a PC'?

If this is the case, how can you access the content on your PC?

It's true that you don't need to be connected to your own local WLAN, as you can pretty much access your Orb content from anywhere in the world (or at least in theory you can, providing there is fast enough Internet access and the correct ports on whatever router you are connected to are open), but you still need to leave your PC on in order to access this content.

Also how did you access this content and get it to play? Via gallery, or via your web browser, or perhaps via some third party media player that can stream UPNP content directly from a PC to the phone?

If it was via the phone web browser, then this is not the UPNP server component of Orb, this is just content being streamed via your PC over the Internet. If it was via the Gallery -> Home Network -> Orb, please do let everyone know how you achieved this, as there are it seems no options to play the content directly via the home network while accessing this view.

Anyway, when you say you are 'streaming content' to your phone, do you mean 'streaming' (as in playing the content via a media player before it is fully loaded), or streaming as in copying the entire content of the media you are attempting to play to your phone first via the WLAN before playing?

Anyway, if I'm wrong I will happily stand corrected - although I still think if I can get a good SAMBA network set up, this will probably serve my own needs better in the long run.

Gordon Benett. I'm not going to get pedantic over terminology and I didn't say you don't need a PC. You do it via the Orb web page. So yes, it has to make contact with the Orb web server in bloody California or wherever to start things going but I'm assuming that if you have a router then you also have web access.

- You install the Orb server on your PC as per their instructions. You open an account with them.

- You enable uPnP on your router as per their instructions. If your router doesn't support uPnP then you can do it with port forwarding, as per their instructions.

- You open Web on your N95, browse to your Orb web page and choose what you want to hear out of the list of content stored on your PC.

- Web opens RealPlayer, Orb figures out that both the server (on your PC) and the client (on your N95) are on the same public IP address. It therefore starts automagically to stream your content across your WLAN rather than via California.

- At this stage you may plug your headphones into the N95 and walk around the house to your heart's content listening to good-enough quality music streaming across your WLAN. If you like, if you really want to, you can unplug your phone line. It doesn't matter, because the music is being streamed across your WLAN and not across the internet. And before you ask, no, it's not coming into my N95 magically via HSDPA because there's no 3G coverage where I live and precious little T-Mobile signal at all, and I don't think I was getting an indicated 695kb/s over GPRS.

None of this is a big secret and is described on the Orb help pages.

That's all I have to say on the matter.

That still looks to me like it's comming from California (via your PC).

Whatever it is, it almost certainly has nothing to do with UPNP.

The web streaming component and the UPNP server component of Orb are pretty much two entirely seperate entities.

As has been noted, currently it isn't possible to stream via UPNP directly to your phone.

UPNP can be implemented by software over any network connection. You dont even need a UPNP router, or any specific hardware for that matter, just a network and suitable UPNP server app running on your PC thats access via the correct IP (your PC's) and port number + the client. Just because the N95's UPNP does not support direct streaming, does not mean that someone could code a UPNP client (i.e Orb). It's independent of of the N95's UPNP. It not magic, just a networking protocol.

Take a lot at Conduits Pocket Player. It's a Windows Mobile media player that does UPNP very well. I use it and my HTC does not by itself have any UPNP capabilities. Neither does my router and i did not need to use port forwarding either. It just works.

I see no reason why Orb can't do this. That said, it still seems like a very convoluted way of doing it. If would be much nicer if you could just open the N95's music player and select music via the home network. However, i am going to have to try it now after this thread!

I'm pretty sure that Orb doesn't do it though.

If you open the web interface it does a 'speed test' which tests your physical Internet speed (it's not for example testing your WLAN speed), so it seems pretty odd that it would do that if it wasn't streaming over the Internet.

Of course a third party app. is possible (which is something I touched on above) but as far as I know (and again correct me if I'm wrong) no suitable UPNP compatible media player app exists for the N95 at this current time.

Hi thanks. And you know this how?

Are you a SymSMB v2.0 beta tester or developer?

Has someone on the development team told you this?

Just curious.

Anyway why Nokia has such a big problem with direct streaming is anyone's guess - and why the SynSMB developers would feel restricted by any DRM agreements Nokia might have, is something I also do not understand.

If the whole world and his dog can already do direct streaming by other means (and on other devices) from a computer to another computer, or from a computer to another device etc, why should they have such a huge problem with it?

Don't get me wrong, I just want what everyone else here wants, which is to stream directly via WLAN to my device (rather than having to stream via the Internet - which although still useful at times, can be as I said terribly slow).

If it comes down to developers, maybe someone knows some developers here - or perhaps it might be a good idea to ask even maybe the Orb developers to write a Symbian native application to enable this functionality - and bypass as the above poster said, the crippled UPNP implementation provided by Nokia?

🙄 Lack of direct streaming has absolutely nothing to do with DRM issues, and why would it anyway? Nokia (and Symbian in general) are just a bit behind the times in some areas, that's all. That's just nonsense, period.

There are hundreds of bit's of software and hardware that do direct streaming, using UPNP and other protocols, including products from Apple, Sony and Microsoft (some of the biggest proponents of DRM). Its one of the fastest growing segments of the digital audio market. That's why Logitech recently bought Slim Devices (buy a Squeezebox 3 if you want to know what the real deal is).

I'm no techie, but I have been using Orb with UPnP and direct stream enabled for some time and I am confident that content is being streamed to my N95 from my PC via my wireless router across my local lan. I have been using previous versions of Orb and whilst I could get streaming to work, my internet light on my router would flash like mad and the quality was not great. Now, with version 2. my internet light doesn't even flicker when I'm playing music, but my wireless radio light flashes crazily and the quality is excellent. That's good enough for me. Yes you have to log in via your web browser, but this is small potatoes when the objective is to listen to the music stored on your pc.

Dude I am a 'techy' and I can tell you that you're not using UPNP on your N95 to play music (or anything else for that matter). A better test would be for you to physically disconnect your Internet connection and then try.

In any case the very fact that you're logging in to Orb via and clicking to play files the web interface in order to be able to play anything is a dead giveaway.

I have used Orb since day one when it was first released - and it was only with Orb 2.0 that the UPNP server component was introduced. The UPNP server however is an entirely separate component of Orb and runs completely independently of the Orb web interface.

As for the UPNP server, yes your N95 can see it - but tell me if you can disconnect from the Internet (pull out the phone cable from your modem/router) and play a file from Orb via the gallery/home network.

You won't be able to. Which as I said is the same experience of everyone here.

The UPNP server component of Orb does not depend on the Internet at all. I know this from experience as I have used it on my Xbox 1 and Xbox 360. But try as I said cutting Orb off from the Internet and trying to stream from Orb (by whatever means) without an active Internet connection to your N95 and see what happens. If it doesn't work, then you will know finally that you really are streaming via the Internet.

I guess this is one up for the non-techies! Disconnected from the internet (unplugged cable modem) whilst streaming music to my phone and it carried on playing great. As mentioned in my previous post you need to initally login to your orb account via the internet for you to choose the music you want to stream but once you have clicked play the streaming takes place over your local lan and not via the internet, as the test proved. I am not that interested in playing the music via the gallery / home network, as I know this doesn't work.

Well I did the same test (disconnect my router from the Internet) and while the media does continue playing for a while (which is natural, since a certain proportion of the content is buffered) after a while it did stop playing (when it ran out of buffer).

What happens with Orb is that it does the transcoding locally (since the Orb servers don't have the power or resources to do real time transcoding for everyone's music and video) and then it uploads it to the Orb servers, then re-downloads it and buffers it on your device.

Typically this might amount to a whole song, or several minutes of video, or whatever.

But eventually the buffered content will run out. More than that, once you are disconnected from the Internet, obviously you can no longer browse your content on the Orb servers.

Also regardless of this (since technically yes you are streaming content via your WLAN at WLAN speeds once it has been uploaded to Orb and re-downloaded and streamed to your device) this is still not how UPNP works - and still has nothing to do with UPNP, or the inability of the N95 to do direct streaming via a UPNP server. (Which is what is being discussed here).

So you see, us techies might actually know a thing or two after all. 😉

GJ