Nokia's N95: the new digital media server for your home

Stuart Corner
Monday, 21 January 2008 11:25

Business IT - Technology

Using a mobile phone to serve digital content such as photos, music and videos to other devices in the digital home may seem bizarre but with 8GB of storage on the Nokia N95 it's not impracticable, and it has just become the first mobile phone certified by the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) to do just this. The DLNA is a body advocating the interoperability of wired and wireless consumer devices. DLNA technology enables different types of devices in the home to be easily interconnected and operated as an integrated system. DLNA has already certified over 1800 products in the personal computer and consumer electronic categories and to these has added certification of the Nokia N95 8GB as a mobile digital media server, the first device to be so certified, and indeed the first mobile phone to be certified in any DLNA class or category.

Digital media servers store content and make it available to networked digital media players and digital media renderers - two other classes of DLNA certified devices. Digital media servers are typically PCs and network attached storage (NAS) devices.

According to Nokia this certification means that "the Nokia N95 8GB can hold a vast selection of your favourite media content, like those ski vacation photos and your music collection [and] you can share these with your friends and family on a DLNA Certified home entertainment system and enjoy your photos on a full-sized TV screen or jam to those tunes on your home stereo system. All you need to do is share the content wirelessly from your Nokia N95 8GB."

Mobile devices were included in the DLNA Networked Device Interoperability Guidelines published in early 2006, and are now part of the recently launched DLNA certification program. According to the DLNA web site , a mobile phone could also be certified as a Mobile Digital Media Player to play digital content from other DLNA certified devices, but "most interesting of all will be its capability as a Mobile Digital Media Controller (M-DMC).This will enable you to use your phone to control digital content from one DLNA Certified device to another."