MinimServer and Windows Media Player

[DavidHB]

(18-12-2013 23:45)simoncn Wrote:  Thanks for the reminder. I have updated this list to show WMP as "functional".

Thank you. The explanation is now very clear.

Quote:I don't think it's correct to say that WMP recognises the MinimServer browse tree. WMP uses its own Artist/Album/Genre browse tree instead. WMP does recognise the metadata that MinimServer sends to the control point.

Correction accepted (and lesson learned).

Quote:Windows 8.1 includes UPnP search support at the OS level. Unlike WMP, this support does recognise the MinimServer browse tree. You can see this by finding a MinimServer library in Network and opening it.

I had high hopes for this approach, but, sadly, the implementation is a bit of a mess.

Firstly, the browse tree cannot be accessed through Network; double clicking on the MinimServer device in Network gets you a (blank) http page on port 9791 of the server (could this be used to redirect the user to the browse tree?). You do have a context menu option to open the device in WMP, but this only gives you the same instance of WMP that you can open directly, that is without the browse tree.

You can however access the browse tree after a fashion through This PC->Network Locations and double-clicking on the green MinimServer icon. The tree is then presented as a conventional folder structure, and it is much more troublesome to navigate through the way Windows presents folders than through a proper browse tree. Add to this

• that there seems to be no global setting for ordering groups and tracks,
• that Windows insists on confirming that foobar2000 is my default player every time I try to play a track, and
• that the transcoded wave files are downloaded (God knows where) before they are played, rather than streamed

and the only assessment of the capability I can make is that it is worse than useless.

People who are used to WMP are probably better off trying out just the stunted support for MinimServer's capabilities that WMP provides, and then graduating to another player, for which my recommendation would be foobar2000/foo_upnp, even though some computer knowledge is required to make it work well, and the documentation is nowhere near as good as that of MinimServer.

Quote:I find it disappointing that WMP is lagging Windows 8.1 in its level of support for the MinimServer browse tree. This browse tree is (from my perspective) the main reason to use MinimServer.

Given the points made above, I cannot but agree. The sensible thing would be for WMP to work as a properly UPnP compliant combined control point and renderer. Bubbleguuum has created 3 working and compliant control points (Bubble DS, Bubble UPnP and the foo_upnp addon) in the time it has taken the MS bureaucracy to fail to come up with one.

David