AIR

[jjo]

What advantages are you seeking from UPnP/OpenHome over AIR? When AIR was not very stable, I expected the same thing. Now with stable AIR, I thought UPnP/OpenHome had no/little benefits.

It is a matter of preference, of course. If you have set up your system to your liking with AIR, it should be all you need. For me though, it's not that simple.

I'd rather not use a computer while really listening to music. So streaming from a laptop would be a no no. I could always set up a separate streaming computer and connect that directly to my Devialet, but I'd rather not have a computer in my HiFi rack, nor would I want to go through the trouble of configuring it to my liking, setting up remote control for all the apps I intend to use etc.

If I were to use a laptop, it would not have enough storage for my music collection anyway, so I'd have to use an external storage device, like my NAS. So if I'm using a NAS anyway, why use a middle man if I could stream directly to the device.

All and all, I'd just rather have something dedicated, low power, already configured to work for streaming (like an external UPnP streamer) than a computer. And eliminating the external bit, by having Devialet support it directly, would be wonderful.

Another reason is platform independence. AIR only supports the platforms Devialet has implemented it on. ATM it is Win, Mac, Android and iOS. Others will have nothing, whereas there are several UPnP/OpenHome control point implementations on various platforms and if there weren't, the specs are open and you could implement one yourself. Not the case with AIR though.

So given the limited resources of Devialet, I'd expect them not to support all the platforms separately, but have something that either works or can be made to work by others. Instead of just not giving a damn about linux/BSD/windows phone/sailfish/meego/bada/tizen/etc. users.

Also, if Devialet one day has, say financial trouble and is unable to continue the support of AIR on new versions of Win/Mac/Android/iOS, well the the AIR will just stop working on new versions of the platform, where as UPnP/OpenHome would just continue working.

Supporting operating systems at driver level is continuous work, not a one time deal like some alternatives.