upnp was Re: GSoC 2009

[Bart Cerneels]

On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 7:13 PM, Ian Monroe <ian.monroe at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 11:13 AM, Bart Cerneels <bart.cerneels at kde.org> wrote:
>> Oh have I got good news for you.
>>
>> This weekend I talked to the guys from Coherence, the UPnP framework.
>> Coherence is going to be used in KDE, since it has a nice DBUS API and
>> is very well designed.
>> In addition to the normal UPnP stuff Coherence also offers extra
>> functions like exposing DAAP, YouTube and Flickr as MediaServers with
>> specialized backends. But also the other way around: a client that
>> uses the MediaServer functionality (i.e. exposes it's contents using
>> Coherence) can automatically become a DAAP server.
>> All this is very good, since Coherence will handle all the quirks and
>> maintain the server and controller functionality, Amarok won't need
>> to.
>> Coherence is multi-platform and even runs on embedded, like the Nokia tablets.
>
> Do you have more details on how its going to be used in KDE?
>
> That sounds pretty cool. The obvious issue is that it uses Python so
> I'm not sure how that would work. Via Kross? Its D-Bus interface?
>
> Ian

Coherence is implemented in Python+twisted, but since it has a DBUS
interface there would be no direct dependency on Python.

A KIO slave will be created for browsing a Media Server. Logical since
this is tree based.
In Amarok we could use the KIO slave if we want but I propose to use
the Coherence DBUS API directly in order to access more advanced
metadata and search features. Also filtering and sorting is directly
available in UPnP.

Thanks to the MediaRendered controller functionality Coherence
provides we could potentially play tracks remotely. Like for instance
on the Philips Streamium [1] in the bathroom.

In the long run we could make Amarok a MediaServer. Then we could also
update statistics when a track is played on a Playstation or N810 for
instance.

[1] http://www.streamium.com/