MiniDLNA

miniDLNA itself is a very nice and tiny application, it works very reliable on ~25'000 files (mostly pictures, but also music and videos). However I couldn't help but noticing that many people downrate this app, due to DLNAs fault. DLNA ITSELF IS TOTAL CRAP - the idea is good though. If you want the details you can go read up on them on the blog of the uShare developer http://gxben.wordpress.com/2008/08/24/why-do-i-hate-dlna-protocol-so-much/ (so while I'm just a user, he knows the protocol in and out). IF something DOESN'T WORK it's probably your TV/PLAYER/CLIENT/..., I had that problem too with my Sony Bravia, which is apparently only able to play formats that are produced by a sony camcorder (nice move!), while it can play XviDs from a stick with no problems ... Well, fortunately my BluRay player on the other hand can even handle .mkvs streamed over the network (and served by miniDLNA).

Works with every DLNA client I have tried. Very easy to configure and is light weight. I have packaged this for Red Hat/CentOS/Fedora & SUSE and it is available in the openSUSE build service (http:/software.opensuse.org/search)

It worked with my Sony KDL37V5500 and my Samsung UE46B7070 and W7 Media Player (V12). Windows Media Player 11 has problems displaying the proper metadata and names for videos. As miniDLNA does not transcode on the fly, there are some issues with the media players on the TVs above especially with the AVI files and HD resolution. I can circunvent the problem by converting the files to mpeg or wmv. I am running on Ubuntu 9.10 64 bit.