DLNA Remote

CONTROL YOUR PLAYERS

DLNA Remote allows you to remotely control the playback of your player devices, even if they’re in a completely different area of your home. Adjust volume, pause playback, skip a song – with DLNA Remote you regain control. All popular DLNA® certified devices are supported: TV sets, digital video recorders, PCs, electronic picture frames and many more.

BROWSE YOUR MEDIA COLLECTIONS

Your songs are stored on the PC, your videos are on the network drive and your images are on the camera? No problem anymore, as you can browse all your media collections from within DLNA Remote. Again all popular DLNA® certified servers are supported: Windows media library, network attached storages (NAS), mobile phones just to name a few.

STREAM MEDIA FROM SERVER TO PLAYER

With DLNA Remote you connect all your network devices with each other: stream video from the NAS in the basement to the TV set in the attic. Send your holiday photos from the Windows 7 PC to the electronic picture frame. Don’t even leave the sofa.

FULL PLAYLIST MANAGEMENT

Assemble your favourite media in playlists which you can always save, load and edit. You can even share a playlist between multiple player devices. Best of all: DLNA Remote allows you to use playlists on devices which don’t support playlists on their own.

INTUITIVE USER INTERFACE

Easily spread your media throughout your home network with intuitive gestures.

1. Make sure your iPhone is connected to your Wi-Fi network.
2. Hit the “Player” button. If you don’t see one or more media players (although you know you should), please refer to the how-to section. If you see a player, then you know that everything’s set up correctly.
3. Hit the “Content” button. If you don’t see one or more media servers (although you know you should), please refer to the how-to section.
4. Navigate through the media hierarchy. If you see an album or a file you want to see on one of your players, and then tap the blue button. You’ll now see a list of players (given that there’s more than one in your home network). With the left green button you start playback immediately, with the right gray button you append the media to the player’s playlist.
5. If you want to add more media items to the player, simply repeat the last step.
6. Your player will now have started the playback of the media.
7. To control playback hit the “Player” button and select the player. You’ll now see a screen with generic controls: To seek within a video or audio track, drag the top slider’s thumb. To seek within the playlist or to start, stop and pause playback, hit the respective button in the footer bar. To adjust the volume, drag the bottom slider’s thumb. Note that you might not always see all controls as you can’t seek within an image and some player devices might not offer volume control.

System requirements

Before you start using DLNA Remote, your home needs to meet a few criteria. You need to have at least one player device which is compatible to DLNA or UPnP. You also need to have a wireless network. And finally your iPhone and all DLNA or UPnP compatible devices must be part of this network.

Set up your home network

To connect your iPhone and electronic entertainment devices with each other, you need a wireless LAN access point and a router – which in most cases is the same device. Refer to the device’s manual on how to setup the Wi-Fi network. In most cases your router is also a firewall, preventing network traffic on some so-called ports. If you find a setting like “Open UPnP ports for internal use”, then enable it. If you don’t have such a setting, you’re most probably fine. If your computers and your entertainment devices aren’t already connected to your home network wirelessly or via cable, you’ll need to give them access to your network. Refer to the devices’ manuals on how to connect them with a cable or wireless network. To connect your iPhone with the wireless network, choose “Settings” and enter “Wi-Fi”. Enable Wi-Fi, and select your home network. You might need to provide a password.

Set up your servers

Most hardware servers such as Blu-ray players, digital cameras, video recorders and network attached storages NAS don’t need any special configuration. Just make sure they’re connected to your LAN. Please refer to the device’s manual to find out if and how it needs to be configured to be part of an entertainment network. Look out for the terms “DLNA” and “UPnP”. Software servers like Windows-based PCs require some configuration. In Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 update to the newest version of Windows Media Player. Under Windows XP start Windows Media Player, enter the Tools/Options dialog and enable media sharing on the Media Library tab.

Under Windows Vista or Windows 7 start Windows Media Player, hit the “Stream” button and enable “Automatically allow devices to play my media…”. If you choose to share the PC’s media only with selected devices, then you’ll need to allow sharing with your iPhone. If you want to use a different software solution like TVersity or TwonkyMedia, please refer their web sites for support.

Set up your players

Most player devices need to manually be enabled to be discoverable in the home network. TV sets generally have a menu entry like “Media Player” which allows the TV set being a “Renderer” or a “Network player”. Similar is true for AV Receivers.

Please refer to the devices’ manuals to find out how they can be configured to take part in an entertainment network. Again, look out for the terms “DLNA” and “UPnP”. Software players like Windows Media Player 12 need to manually be enabled to be discoverable in the home network. Update to the newest version of Windows Media Player and start it. Find the button “Stream” and enable “Allow remote control of my Player…”. Note that this only works for Windows 7 and later. Windows Media Player 11 and 12 don’t support the player scenario on Windows Vista and Windows XP.

Browse your media

With DLNA Remote you browse through all your media libraries. To start browsing, hit the “Content” button on the app’s footer bar. You now see a list of all media servers known to your network. Hit one of the list entries to descend into the server’s folder hierarchy.

If supported by the server, you’ll see an “Edit” button allowing you to delete media items or folders. If supported by the server, DLNA Remote presents a search button (the one with the magnifying glass). Hitting this button allows you to enter a search text to find specific media items.

Stream your media

To actually play a media item or an entire music album or photo collection, , tap the item’s blue button. You’ll now see a list of players (given that there’s more than one in your home network). With the left green button you start playback immediately, with the right gray button you append the media to the player’s playlist.

Control playback

With DLNA Remote you remotely control all your UPnP compatible player devices. Hit the “Player” button on the app’s footer bar to see the list of all players known to your network. The green overlay over the player’s icon is the number of playlist entries; the small sub line is the name of the currently played media (or the player’s manufacturer name if the player is idle). Hit one of the players to see the player’s control screen. At the bottom you see up to four control icons: With “Previous” you start playback of the previous item in the player’s playlist. With “Pause”/“Play” you interrupt and resume playback of the current media. With “Stop” you also interrupt playback, but resuming starts at the item’s beginning. With “Next” you skip the current item. There are up to two sliders on the screen. The upper one allows seeking within the current track while the lower one adjusts the volume. Depending on the player’s capabilities you also see the current item’s duration, name and album art. If the item is an image, you can zoom in.

Manage the playlist

DLNA Remote assigns a playlist to each player – even to players which don’t support playlists by themselves. To see such a playlist, enter a player’s control screen and tap the “Playlist” button (it’s the list icon at the top right).

You now see the playlist. A small arrow hints to the currently playing item; tap any item to instantly start playing it.

If you want to sort the playlist, tap the “Edit” button. The red dot allows removing single entries; the three grey lines allow dragging items for sorting. When you’re done with the changes, confirm by tapping the “Done” button.

You can save the playlist for later use by tapping the “More…” button followed by tapping the “Save” button and providing a unique name. The saved playlist can even be used on a different player – just enter the respective player’s playlist and tap the “Load” button. To remove all items from the playlist, tap the “Clear” button.

Q: What is DLNA Remote?
A: DLNA Remote connects your player devices with your media servers. It allows streaming media from a server to a player, control playback and manage playlists. All participating devices must be compatible with the UPnP or DLNA standards. Note: iTunes Server or compatible servers like Firefly aren't UPnP servers. They use a proprietary protocol and aren't supported by this app.

Q: Why can’t I find the Windows media library in the list of media servers?
A: Check if Windows media sharing is enabled.
A: Check if Windows allows your iPhone accessing the media library.

Q: Why can’t I find my Windows PC in the list of media players?
A: Only Windows 7 running Media Player 12 can be used as a player device. Windows XP and Windows Vista don’t support this feature.
A: Make sure that Windows Media Player 12 is started.
A. Windows 7 tends to randomly disable the “Allow remote control of my Player…” setting. Enter Windows Media Player, find the “Stream” button and re-enable the setting.

Q: Why are some of my player and server devices not always listed?
A: Some devices automatically enter stand-by mode to save energy. While they still physically exist, their network log-on expires. It might need several hits on the “Refresh” button of the DLNA Remote until such devices wake up and log on again.

Q: Why are some player and server devices listed although they’re switched off?
A: If a device is shut down and doesn’t log off, it might still be listed in the lists of available devices for up to 30 minutes. Use the recommended method to shut down those devices (see manual). Contact the device’s manufacturer for a firmware update.

Q: After sending a media file to my TV set, the TV set freezes. What happens?
A: Some player devices support only few media formats. If you try to stream an unsupported file on such a device, it might react with freezing for some minutes. Contact the device’s manufacturer for a firmware update.

Q: Why aren’t some playlists processed when I exit the application or when I turn off the iPhone?
A: Many devices don’t natively support playlists. In this case DLNA Remote emulates a playlist and sends the next media item to the player when the previous one is finished. This emulation only works when the application is running.