For our October “Staff Pick” Project of the Month, we selected Universal Media Server, a DLNA-compliant UPnP Media Server that streams many media formats with minimal configuration. Universal Media Server was previously elected “Community Choice” Project of the Month in March 2014 where project founder and lead developer Klaus Townsend spoke about the project’s developments and direction. Recently we caught up with Klaus to find out how the project has been doing since then.
SourceForge (SF): What significant changes have occurred with your project since you were voted Project of the Month in March 2014?
Klaus Townsend (KT): 2014 is so long ago, it feels like everything has changed! We were on version 3 back then, and now we are well into version 7. There have been too many things to mention but just a few highlights have been:
1: Released the web interface we mentioned in the first interview
2: Added “Fully played actions” to let users keep track of what they have already played
3: Added smarter dynamic folders in the “Media Library” like “Unwatched”, along with automatic IMDb-like info lookups thanks to OpenSubtitles.
These features have allowed our users to spend less time organising their media, and more time enjoying it.
We have also had a monumental amount of speed and stability improvements, and added/improved support for many more devices including iPhone/Android apps, Chromecast, 4K and 3D TVs, etc.
Thanks to our talented past and present developers like valib, Nadahar, SharkHunter, Sami32, skeptical, and many more!
SF: Have any of your project goals changed since then?
KT: The main goal of our project is to be able to serve all media to all devices, and we have certainly come closer to that goal. While before we just supported DLNA, now we support UPnP and HTTP/S too, so it is rare to find a device that we don’t support! We are constantly improving things across all these areas with the help of our users.
SF: What can we look forward to with Universal Media Server?
KT: We have a lot of things in the works that are designed to make the program more intuitive and easy to use, including standalone builds for more operating systems (currently we have them for Windows), better defaults and automatic detection across operating systems, as well as new features on the horizon involving online syncing and streaming.
SF: Is there anything else we should know?
KT: Yes! We are currently recruiting for new developers, so if you are looking for a new project to get involved with, or know someone who might be interested, please send them our way. Here is our post about it https://www.universalmediaserver.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12722
Also, due to the huge scope of the project, there are inevitably bugs. If you use UMS and encounter a bug, please report it to us on the forum or on our GitHub page, and we will usually respond quickly.
Finally, we also want to thank our growing user base for their support and to everyone who shows their generosity by donating https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=86EZ3CGNMZB5G. It makes a big difference to our website hosting costs.