Originally Posted by
Gino Guillermo As a technical question what does these apps do anyway? How do they enable streaming of media from a computer to another device (such as a games console)? And will i need to fiddle around or change settings or should they be good to go once installed?
I don't use them myself, but basically they set up a service on the Mac (DLNA) and advertise it on the network. A device that has a DLNA client can check the network to find anything advertising itself as a DLNA server. When you set up the DLNA service on the Mac, it either discovers or you'll need to tell it where the media (video, photos, music) is in the Mac. Then when a DLNA client finds and recognizes the DLNA server, the server will send information on the available media and the client displays it. Then you select something on the client and it passes a message to the server and the server responds with what you asked for and then the client plays it.
(FYI…something like iTunes home sharing and an Apple TV works in much the same manner but it is using a different "language" other than DLNA to communicate.)
