I'm getting a smartphone (Blackberry Q5) which - it seems from the paper specs - may be able to decode 1080 h264 video.
Sadly no HDMI port, so direct connection to TV isn't possible in this case but it does have DLNA over WiFi (although TV is not DLNA enabled).

Is there any software for MorphOS which can act as a UPNP client (hopefully allowing playing back of transcoded video)? Has anyone tried this with MorphOS's admittedly beta, and quite old VLC port?

[ Edited by boot_wb 29.09.2013 - 23:43 ]

I subscribe, I'm also intereseted :)

In a DLNA player too.

So, according to your description, you plan to have your smartphone simultaneously decode 1080P video, encode the decoded video frames in a different format and stream everything to your MorphOS system via wi-fi.

A few comments:

1. A lower compression video codec that might enable you to play 1080P video on your MorphOS system sufficiently well will require substantially more network bandwidth than h.264 would. The required bandwidth would most likely far exceed what you can expect your small smartphone to deliver reliably.

2. If you use a lower compression video codec and adapt the quality to reduce network bandwidth to reasonable levels, the video quality will be notably worse than what you would see if you just played a 720P h.264 version of the original 1080P content on your MorphOS system locally.

For your specific situation, my recommendation would be to purchase an inexpensive media streamer (50 UKP on Amazon UK) and connect that to your TV. It should happily play 1080P video from shared network resources (harddisk connected to a router, computers, smartphones, etc.).

I would suggest an external streaming device, too.

Beside the fact that the whole UPNP stuff is quite stupid, a simple Raspberry Pi can deal with all kinds of media (even 1080P SBS) for just about 35Euro. It also not only plays streams via UPNP, but can access via SMB, NFS and basically any other protocol available, so there is no need to have some recoder inbetween that eats power to lower the video quality just to match the video formats on both ends. Just 3W for the pi and a simple display.

Thats all it takes.

Geit

[ Edited by geit 15.10.2013 - 10:41 ]

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Put like that it does seem ill-considered.

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All good points, and food for though.

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Hmmm. I feel like I've underused my Efika, so had not been planning on buying another 'embedded' type system any time soon if it was just going to sit around reltively unused, but I might reconsider getting a Pi after all.