Introduction
This is the topic of my master's thesis at Aalto University. It takes me over two years to finish it, since I am at the same time working in Tuxera full time. The thesis is submitted on 20th May 2015.
Preface
This document is my master's thesis of Communications Engineering majoring in Networking at Aalto University. All research and development of this thesis was conducted at Tuxera Inc. in Helsinki from January 2013 to June 2014. Tuxera is a high-tech startup that develops kernel-level file systems and multimedia solutions for leading software, hardware and electronics companies.
During this project I worked together with my colleagues at Tuxera, I started to work on DLNA project for the first few months during which period I learned DLNA architecture and made a research about Digital Media Server solutions. After that I worked on an Android project to develop a universal solution for multimedia home networking.
Acknowledgements
First of all, I would like to thank the Streambels team at Tuxera, whom I worked together throughout the project. I would like to thank Karthik Ramakrishna, our lead developer. Every week he helped solving problems in the project, no matter the question was theoretical or technical, he always answered my questions. As our project manager, Oscar Santolalla helped us with organizational problems we encountered and taught us to look at things from a end user perspective as well. Sakari Tanskanen, our mobile developer helped us by integrating Chromecast and FireTV support to Stremabels. Nadir Javed, our quality assurance engineer helped us with the quality management and testing of potential bugs before releasing the product to end users. Karolina Mosiadz, our Public Relations Manager helped to listen to user's feedback every day and provide the unique insights in improving Streambels. Hien Le, our UX designer helped us to develop a very handy user interface. And special thanks to Mikko Valimaki and Szabolcs Szakacsits who lead the company and gave me the opportunity to participate in this great project. Without them, I would not have been able to finish this report.
I thank my university supervisor Raimo Kantola, who helped me to develop a good thesis topic based on my project and helped me with initial problem description. I got great support from him with his critique and useful advice, especially during the middle and final period, when I wrote the report.
Finally, I thank everybody who supported me during my graduation work, especially my family, friends and house-mates.
Abstract
In recent years, the rapid development of electronics and computer science has enabled home networking devices to become more affordable and more powerful. Several widely used multimedia-streaming solutions have become available in the market. However, as a result of their different technical designs, these standards naturally experience serious compatibility issues. Thus, end users can have several multimedia devices, with each one using a distinctive, unique protocol, making it challenging or even impossible sometimes to share media between those devices. These compatibility issues have motivated the need to determine the technological features common to the existing multimedia-streaming standards and to develop a more easy-to-use multimedia home networking solution.
This thesis compares the modern solutions for multimedia home networking (MHN), including AirPlay, Miracast, Chromecast, and especially the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) standard due to its wide adoption. By conducting research on the features and capabilities of these existing solutions, a suitable mobile solution for MHN, which takes advantage of AirPlay, Discovery and Launch (DIAL), and DLNA, is proposed for the Android platform. The corresponding system architectures, features, and analysis methodologies are also analyzed to demonstrate the competitiveness of this application.
In terms of practical contribution, an online channel proxy was integrated to the application to fulfill the target of streaming online channels, such as YouTube. By implementing this online channel proxy, home networking and Internet resources can be effectively connected.
Since its first release on the Google Play Store, the application received over one million downloads from 225 countries. According to the statistics, this solution has proved to be competitive and successful. In addition, this thesis discusses possible further development of this solution, and the future trends of multimedia home networking.