Its like this .............

So how did the Twonky trial installation go; well there is good news and there is bad news.

Twonky installed and ran without problem. There were no compatability issues with the Kiss 1600. It is worth mentioning that the Kiss 1600 is not DLNA compliant but Twonky obviously recognises the device and makes the neccessary changes. The Twonky user interface was intuitive and some of the features are good. The "play to" function works without any problem. Nomad thinks that "play to" is a great technological solution to a problem he does not have. Somewhere in the world there is an application just crying out for "play to"; answers on a postcard please. The ability to create playlists and the "recently downloaded" list are very useful. However the real 'must have' function is transcoding. Transcoding is the process where the server (Twonky in this case) recodes the file into a format which the media player can understand. Twonky was thus able to play MOV files to the Kiss 1600. The FLV format did play but only provided sound.

Now we come to the bad news. While serving a file Twonky Media Server typically resulted in a processor loading of 70%. Serving the same file using Kiss PC link resulted in a processor loading of about 2%. Twonky might be forgiven for a high processor load on files that required transcoding but the results were just as bad for files that the Kiss 1600 could already play. Turning on Twonky Media Manager at the same time produced even worse results and with one high definition video the load went to 100% with a resulting stop start video display and loss of sound. Nomad emailed Twonky support about this problem but has yet to get an answer. This problem alone would be bad enough but Twonky also had problems with the file structure used for the videos. The final straw is that Twonky Media Manager decides to put itself in the startup box every time that it runs. It would be acceptable for an application to put itself in the startup box during initial installation but the repeated failure to accept Captain Nomads authority means that this application will shortly be walking the plank.

Some other problems arose during the trial that may not be down to Twonky. Firstly there appeared to be some interaction between iTunes and Twonky that resulted in even greater processor load numbers. Nomad solved this by uninstalling iTunes which will not be greatly missed. Also using Twonky the wifi network acted as a constraint that caused stop, start video output. This was despite the same files playing well using Kiss PC Link over WiFi. A possible theory is that Twonky produces more "bursty" data which exceeds the buffer size in the Media Player. In order to workaround the problem for the trial Nomad linked up the boxes with a piece of ethernet cable.

So Twonky is not the answer but Nomad does want Media Server Software. Given that DLNA supports a very small set of file formats; it is clear that transcoding is a vital function. Playlists and a recently uploaded lists are also very useful and will save Nomad searching through all his feeds for new files.