What software for PC DLNA controller?

[Emkay]

I am running Mezzmo on a Windows 7 PC as a media server, located in my home office - runs great, excellent software!
I have some DLNA devices in my basement music room, capable of operating as media player or media renderer. I can pull media streams to these devices (in player mode) from Mezzmo over ethernet but this requires me to scroll through hundereds of albums to find the one I want, as the devices lack good search functionality. And it's not convenient to go up to the office to push a stream down from the main Mezzmo server PC.
I can get good search functionality by using an iPhone as a media controller (DMC), using an app like PlugPlayer, with phone connected to the home network by wifi in the music room. This lets me push a stream to the DLNA device (in renderer mode). I know I could also use a tablet with similar Android app. But I want to use a spare laptop PC to do this job. What software can I run on the Windows 7 laptop to turn it into a DMC? If possible, I'd like something as simple as PlugPlayer, rather than having to install and use something with a lot of redundant functionality, like Windows Media Player.

Can anyone suggest a PC-based DMC 'app'? Or, is there any way I can run a second copy of Mezzmo on the laptop to fulfil just this DMC role?


Rgds,
Emkay

[Paul]

Hi Emkay,

The current version of Mezzmo does not yet have DMC 'push' features, but we're planning this for a future version. Regarding browsing through your albums using your DLNA devices in your basement music room, you can easily tweak your playlists in your Mezzmo library to make it easier to find the albums you are after. Mezzmo installs several pre-defined playlists for music, video and photos - but you can create many different types of playlists based on how you want to browse & play your music. For example, you could create an Album active playlist that groups albums by A-Z letters and puts each album under these letters - making it easier to find them. Let us know what you want and we'll help you set up your playlists.

Regarding a Windows DMC app for your old laptop, sorry I don't have any recommendations. Most people use an iOS or Android smartphone / tablet app for this purpose. We'll be releasing our Mezzmo Android app later this month for this purpose.

[jbinkley60]

I've been looking for thje same thing. Here;s one option, upgrade to Windows 8 and run Andriod under Hyper-V as a Guest OS. http://www.servethehome.com/install-windows-8-hyper-v-3-minutes/ and http://www.servethehome.com/installing-android-x86-hyper-v-windows-8-1/ . Unfortunately Hyper-V doesn't run under Windows 7 and Windows 8 has the dreaded new interface for PCs. I am checking to see if VMware has an Android guestOS option with VMplayer or VMworkstation.

[Emkay]

Thanks for the suggestions, guys. I share the dread of the new Windows 8 interface so the option of running Android under Win8 on the laptop is not very appealing - but please let us know how you fare with the VMplayer idea jb60. I will have a play with Paul's playlist workaround, but it doesn't really solve the problem either, as I listen to a lot of classical music and want to find a particular piece of music (of which i may have multiple versions) without necessarily knowing the artist or album name. Using the search functionality of the iOS apps, I can easily find what I want without this info, because the searching looks through track names and provides a shortlist of matches that I can easily find what I want in. I can usually also filter by composer, or by conductor, etc. So maybe I will have to buy an Android tablet - I suppose it wouldn't need to be uberpowerful or have latest hi-rez screen to do a DMC job - maybe something like the Galaxy Tab 3 would be sufficient, and they are fairly inexpensive.

Paul, when the mezzmo Android DMC app is released, will it have good search (filter') functionality'like media:connect?

[Paul]

Paul, when the mezzmo Android DMC app is released, will it have good search (filter') functionality'like media:connect?

At release time, Mezzmo Android may not have search features, but they will be added in shortly after in future upgrades.

[Paul]

Update: Mezzmo v4.1.0.0 has been released and it now has Play To features to let you push your files to devices in your home for immediate playback. See this FAQ for more details - http://forum.conceiva.com/showthread.php/7631-Tutorial-Using-Play-To-features-in-Mezzmo