Serviio is a
freeware
Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for t ...
media server
A media server is a computer appliance or an application software that stores digital media (video, audio or images) and makes it available over a network.
Media servers range from servers that provide video on demand to smaller personal comput ...
designed to let users stream music, video or image files to
DLNA
Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA; originally named Digital Home Working Group, DHWG) was founded by a group of PC and consumer electronics companies in June 2003 (with Intel in the lead role) to develop and promote a set of interoperability ...
compliant televisions,
Blu-ray players,
game consoles
A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location connected to a ...
and
Android or
Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants.
Its origin dated back to Windows CE in 1996, though Windows Mobile itself first appeared in 2000 as Pock ...
devices on a home network.
Overview
The free version of Serviio will stream media within a home network to connected TVs, Blu-ray players,
set-top boxes
A set-top box (STB), also colloquially known as a cable box and historically television decoder, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of sign ...
, the
Sony PS3 and Microsoft
Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series. It competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generati ...
. Since it is DLNA compliant, it will stream supported devices on the same network. Serviio also has a "Pro" license for $25 that will allow users to access their libraries outside the home. This license also enables dynamic
transcoding
Transcoding is the direct digital-to-digital conversion of one encoding to another, such as for video data files, audio files (e.g., MP3, WAV), or character encoding (e.g., UTF-8, ISO/IEC 8859). This is usually done in cases where a target d ...
to convert higher bit rate video or audio files into lower bit rate formats to permit viewing on slower broadband connections.
Another paid feature is "media browser" that allows users to stream content to a web browser (desktop or mobile) at home or on the go.
Pro Applications
The Pro license permits users to stream to third party applications for Android and Windows devices at home or on another network. In addition, users can use the server to watch online content including live TV or RSS feeds.
Supported media formats
The server can read and if required transcode several media types for playback.
References
{{Home theater PC (application software)
Media servers