Linn Kazoo

[simoncn]

(22-05-2014 11:33)DavidHB Wrote:  The best I can say of the "combined Kazoo" user experience is that it is somewhat better than DNLA. Linn have clearly committed themselves to using the ohMedia standard as the basis for Kazoo, but AFAIK they are the only major equipment manufacturer to do so; all the big players seem totally committed to DNLA with its (from their perspective) convenient limitations.

I don't think it is correct to describe ohMedia as a standard. It is a specification written by Linn. In contrast, both the UPnP AV and DLNA (note: spelling) specifications have been developed by industry bodies with broad membership from many companies in the audio industry and are widely implemented.

It is also relevant to this discussion that the protocol used by Kazoo to communicate with Kazoo Server is not (yet?) a published part of the ohMedia specification and therefore cannot be implemented by anyone except Linn.

Quote:Admittedly, as implemented in Kazoo, ohMedia does provide rather more for classical music listeners than an ordinary DNLA server, but switch back to MinimServer and it is clear just how limited the Kazoo Server support for browsing classical music actually is. Essentially, all you have is a limited, static browse tree, rather than the configurable and dynamic browse paths available in MinimServer. The speed with which Kazoo serves album art thumbnails on my Windows machine is impressive, but is hardly compensation for the poor browsing experience.

As you can see from the combination of MinimServer and BubbleUPnP/BubbleDS (for example), the ability to provide good suppport for classical music isn't determined by whether ohMedia or UPnP/DLNA is used, but rather by the flexibility of the server and the control point.

Quote:The one area where the Kazoo combination does acquit itself rather well is Search. I seem to recall reading a post by Simon (perhaps on another forum) in which he indicates that the search function is implemented via ohMedia (i.e. currently only in Kazoo Server) rather than by UPnP, and this presumably explains why Kazoo search does not work with MinimServer. The search is dynamic and very quick, and more tags are searched than in any UPnP control point I have used. Is there any chance that MinimServer could implement the ohMedia Search protocol? This would considerably improve the user experience of Kazoo with MinimServer.

There is no chance at the present time that MinimServer could implement this protocol because it isn't published (see above). If and when it is published, I will look at it and decide whether it makes sense for MinimServer to implement it in addition to MinimServer's current support for UPnP Search. Linn have said that support for UPnP Search is an objective for a future release of Kazoo, so perhaps a better solution would be for Linn to add this support.