DLNA video streaming? Need to understand it better

[Veggav]

Hey there guys, I really don't where should I post it so I hope this doesn't break any rules.

I keep reading about DLNA but I've always used samba share with me media players on my house.
With samba I know the device read the files on my computer and there's no difference except speed comparing a playback from a samba share and a usb connection.

Now if you use DLNA if I understand it correctly the device will not render the file, the computer will do the job and pass that along. It would be in a very rough comparission a virtual desktop or VNC for videos.
The video goes ready to the device and it shows display the image.

Is that correct? How does DLNA works?
The wikipedia on it talks nothing about the technical side and this really interest me.

[aedipuss]

dlna just allows more devices to share files. the device discovering the file must play it. it's just a network sharing standard.

[Veggav]

Yeah but it limits the type of files to share?

I can see many files from a blu ray structure are not present when I browse with my devices.

[jagabo]

DLNA can work in two ways: 1) The server can simply send the compressed video and audio streams to the client. 2) The server can transcode on the fly -- usually done when a file uses a codec the client doesn't support. Not all servers support transcoding.

DLNA uses less network bandwidth because it uses UDP rather than TCP, and only the requested video and audio streams are sent to the client. No container overhead, other audio streams, etc.

[aedipuss]

the only limit of the types of files to share is what the client can handle. movies, pictures, music...

[jagabo]

the only limit of the types of files to share is what the client can handle. movies, pictures, music...

No. The client can only see what the DLNA server exposes. Not all DLNA servers handle all types of files. ISO images are often not handled, for instance.

If you're saying in theory there's no limit, well, yes. But then the only limit to how fast we can travel from New York to London is the speed of light.

[aedipuss]

you've got it backwards. the client won't see .mkv files if it doesn't play it even if they are on the server. none of my dlna servers care what type of file you upload onto them, iso included.