Establish and manage a separate server for storage and presentation of media materials. Work with videos, audio, and images accessible from DLNA-capable modules, preserve and enhance stability, etc. Check out FFmpeg, MEncoder, tsMuxeR, MediaInfo, OpenSubtitles, and other codecs.
Universal Media Player is a cross-platform uPNP media server. It is DNLA complaint, which should make it compatible with a broad number of multimedia playback devices with zero configuration needed on the devices. This project is headed by developers of Playstation 3 Media Server, a great app for serving content on your PS3. With new ideas and new people, they came up with this tool, which supports a greater number of devices and which has more support and more updates. The app is built in Java, so it is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
I have tried pretty much every little program that I could get my hands on that claimed to work with the Xbox 360. I have been looking for one that works perfectly since Transcode360, which was the last one that worked for me. Universal Media Server is very close to perfection, right out of the box. What I look for in these apps is the ability to stream MKV, H.264, and other formats straight to my Xbox 360 without having to convert them manually. Support for subtitles is a must as well. This app has all of that. My 360 detected the server instantly, and I was able to browse the shared folder just fine. The first file that I opened was of course an HD MKV file. It was opened without a single complaint and playback was quite good. I noticed some shaking on the image, and this is perhaps because I am doing this wirelessly. But that was the only problem that I found, and it only happened with MKV files. DivX, AVI, MPEG-4, H.264 and even MOV files were streamed just fine and they all played great on the Xbox 360.
I also tested this great app with an iPad 2 with XMBC and it worked quite well. Subtitles didn't work, but I am sure with some tweaking in the settings, I could get that to work as well.
In conclusion, Universal Media Player is years ahead other uPNP servers that I have tried. It works very, very well and, although it is not easy to configure, it works out of the box, and the forums have great support and help.
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