Top 10 Windows 7 Features #7: 'Play To' streaming media, courtesy of DLNA

What the new DLNA scheme in Windows 7 enables, goes a little deeper and further than just the addition of the "Play To" command. Since network attached storage devices are now DLNA compliant (never mind the kerfuffle, to borrow an Angela Gunn term, over the variable degree of compliance there is in the market today), a Media Player- or Media Center-enabled PC can pull content from a NAS device and push it to another destination. Since more HDTVs are entering the DLNA scheme, that destination may be the family room TV, even without connecting that TV to the Windows PC as its monitor. And to do this, the PC doesn't even have to have a big display -- it can be the family laptop.

This gets bigger still: Another networking alliance which is itself allied with the DLNA is the Multimedia-over-Coax Alliance (MoCA). Its mission is to evangelize home networkers on the idea of using the sideband of the coaxial cable already wired throughout their house, as a backbone for a wired (and thus certainly more secure) network. The upshot of such a scheme would be that modern HDTVs could become network-ready devices without the user having to add any other cabling to them beyond what the cable guys have already installed.

So the "Play To" command in Windows 7 could theoretically, by means of DLNA, push anything that can be played in Windows Media Player 12 on the big HDTV in the living room. The consumer would need to purchase one device to make this happen, however: It's called a MoCA bridge, and we saw the first such devices from D-Link premiere at CES back in January of 2008. It's a simple device that has an Ethernet input and a coaxial output, where the coaxial is simply the same loop that runs through the house already, delivering CATV or satellite signals. Why haven't MoCA bridges taken off yet? Maybe because there's no one certified way to make them work yet...and that will likely change with Windows 7.

As with any so-called "networking alliance" -- which regular Betanews readers will know to be a favorite oxymoron of ours -- so many disparate factors and dissonant voices must still come together for the dream of making any Windows PC a home broadcaster to become a reality. As of now, reports are piling up of home networks that use third-party media software that recognizes DLNA devices (there's been a cottage industry there since at least 2007) that fails to connect networked storage devices with DLNA-certified, registered output devices. And in that latter category, Sony's PlayStation 3 is one of the more prominent...and notorious. When issues such as these arise, home users end up having to learn more about their computers, about Ethernet, about Wi-Fi, and about the Federal Communications Commission than they'd ever have to know if they had just stuck with something like, say, Nero MediaHome 4 and an Xbox 360.

What should change that state of affairs is the active participation of Microsoft, and the prominence of the "Play To" command. One of the unsung heroes of Windows Vista to date has been its Media Center, which often works so flawlessly and so simply that it's amazing to acknowledge its manufacturer. If the same degree of knowhow that went into Media Center for Vista is applied to DLNA networking for Windows 7, there will very likely be more households applauding this part of the operating system than critiquing it. And after Vista, the promise of shifting the balance in the direction of praise should be incentive enough to get Microsoft to finally, for once, "Go."