UPNP/DLNA music player for Windows?

Question

I'm looking for a UPNP/DLNA Client for Windows.

The server is MediaTomb on a Ubuntu box.

The clients are Windows (any, XP and up).

I'm looking for a simplistic music player program but failed to identify any.
I'm hoping for something in the style of Winamp or Windows Media Player.

I've looked, but so far only been able to achieve playback on Windows with HTPC-ish software like XBMC, and on an android cellphone (several players for that there, all worked fine).

Edit: Just to clarify, I'm not looking for an HTPC Suite (IE XBMC), I'm looking for a regular-looking music player.

Answer 1

foobar2000 has a supported DNLA plugin. Its winamp-styled, configurable and works pretty well in general

Answer 2

Believe it or not Windows Media Player sees my mediatomb server - unfortunately it won't play the files on it due to codec issues, but it may work for you.

Answer 3

MediaMonkey plays over DLNA. Also syncs with lots of devices. http://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/index.php/WebHelp:Setting_UPnP/DLNA_Media_Servers/4.0

Answer 4

Have you tried VLC? http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Upgrade it to VLC media player 2.0.1 Twoflower. UPnP was added back into the Windows build as of V2. If you still like your V1.1 for some reason you can always parallel install V2 in a different folder. Open the Playlist menu. On the left side, click on Local Network and Universal Plug'n'Play should be an item, click on it and wait from a few seconds up to 30 seconds or so to list all the media servers on your lan. Click on your media server's icon and work with its media listings. It may take a while for it to populate a large collection's listings. You can build playlists from there.

Answer 5

Kinsky works nicely. It's a control point only, so it reads a remote library and renders to a (remote) player. I use it for Serviio + Onkyo receiver (DLNA enabled).

Answer 6

Try foobar2000 + pair it with ArkMC application (free trial also available) on your devices, will work perfectly!

Answer 7

There is a Winamp plugin called ml_dlna that is supposed to work. Some people have problems loading it but the problem seems to be that you have to have the "Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package (x86)" installed even if you have a 64-bit operating system.

Microsoft Media Player does work but does not seem to have the codecs it needs. But if I try it a few times it seems to work. I use Mezzmo as a server though, and it supports transcodeing, so it might be converting them on the fly.

Answer 8

I have been searching and testing extensively. The only sotware that fully enables a window pc as a DLNA renderer is XBMC, eith its huge, heavy, memory-eating interface.

Other solutions have different problems: - WMP gets to be listed, but won't decode many contents, and won't support audio - MediaMonkey can be tweaked to load as a rendere player, with just an icon in the system tray shown; but the memory usage is not as light, and it seems to hang when control point starts reproduction of remote streming contnts (icecast, udps etc)

It may look as provocative, but if you just need to remotely operate audio, maybe the best solution is NOT to use a PC as a pure renderer: there are so many cheap Android devices available now (simple tablets, or even an old phone with a broken screen will do!), and there's plenty of DLNA apps available. Instead of setting up a renderer on the Windows OC, with less than 80$ you can set up an Android device to be dedicated to do that.

A.

Answer 9

iTunes is the ultimate solution for me. With its Home Sharing feature, I can view and listen to my library on any computer running iTunes or iPhone. Sometimes I even stream my music to my AirPort Express with AirTunes. (I'm a Mac guy, but this all works on my Windows PCs too)

Other than that, XBMC or Boxee seems to be the way.

EDIT: Or use Twonky server for linux to keep a dedicated media server.