Design and implementation of a prototype home media system for an IP-based settop box

Abstract: This thesis covers design and implementation of a media system solution for home networks with personal computers and a set-top box. In a home there are effectively two independent media systems with the same purpose: the personal computer and the digital set-top box, with the purpose of delivering digital media in form of audio and video to the consumer. The goal of the thesis work was to implement a solution that bridges the gap between the two systems, so that the user, from the set-top box, can play back media that is actually stored on one or several personal computers. Our solution is based on UPnP technology, which is used for service discovery and control. The choice of UPnP is motivated by an evaluation of discovery protocols, which concludes that UPnP is the most suitable technology in this particular system. Also, an evaluation of suitable transport protocols was done. Here,HTTP was used. For the personal computer, a media server and a graphical user interface for configuring the media server were created. For the set-top box, a media client, and a graphical user interface for browsing the content of the media server, were created. In conclusion, the creation of the prototype was successful and the set-top box was able to playback media that had been shared by the PC on the network.