What's the difference between UPnP AV and DLNA?

Question

Am I right in thinking that if I'm DLNA 1.5 compliant, I've implemented UPnP AV? What does DLNA get me besides specifying minimum format requirements? Isn't DLNA built on top of UPnP? I know for sure that DLNA device discovery is completely based on SSDP (UPnP's device discovery protocol). Does DLNA add something in the content discovery or content delivery specification?

For example, Boxee and XBMC both support UPnP - don't they work with all DLNA devices?

Ardeen

Answer 1

Looking at the DLNA and UPnP whitepapers,

1. UPnP and DLNA are different although they look to solve similar problems
2. DLNA adopts very specific things from UPnP (see DLNA whitepaper page 5). It's incorrect to say DLNA is a subset of UPnP.
3. A DLNA device will be able to discover a UPnP server but might not be able to do anything more if both the sides don't agree to an AV format. I haven't verified this. It's more of what I understand after reading the papers.

Looking at this, it seems like the XBMC server does not support DLNA. That would explain the above situation.

Latoyalatoye

Answer 2

As far as I understand, DLNA is a subset of the UPnP standard and specifies less options and more strict formats. For getting a DLNA certified device you need to a lot of money to the DLNA forum which in return checks your device, that it works with other DLNA devices.

Because of UPNP beeing not so specific your UPNP device isn't automatically a DLNA device, e.g. my new DLNA Samsung TV is unable to access the upnp server of xbmc.

Tonometer

Actually, I think you're wrong - Being DLNA certified requires a UPnP certification, so your Samsung DLNA TV SHOULD be able to access xbmc. It's the other way that is not guaranteed - if a box is UPnP but not DLNA, it may not work with other DLNA boxes. But that's what confuses me - shouldn't all the UPnP devices work together? – Ardeen

Indeed this is true. DLNA is a refinement of the standard. – Yak