Digital Living Network Alliance

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 guidelines for sharing digital media among multimedia devices under the auspices of a certification standard. DLNA certified devices include smartphones, tablets, PCs, TV sets and storage servers.
The group published its first set of guidelines in June 2004. The guidelines incorporate several existing public standards, including Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) for media management and device discovery and control, and widely used digital media formats and wired and wireless networking standards.
DLNA worked with cable, satellite, and telecom service providers to provide link protection on each end of the data transfer. The extra layer of digital rights management (DRM) security allows broadcast operators to communicate digital media to certain devices (e.g., to those of their customers) in such a manner that further, unauthorized, communication of the media is difficult.<ref name="press release 6/24/2003"></ref> In March 2014, DLNA publicly released the VidiPath Guidelines, originally called "DLNA CVP-2 Guidelines." VidiPath enables consumers to view subscription TV content on a wide variety of devices including televisions, tablets, phones, Blu-ray players, set top boxes (STBs), personal computers (PCs) and game consoles without any additional intermediate devices from the service provider.
By September 2014 over 25,000 different device models had obtained "DLNA Certified" status, indicated by a logo on their packaging and confirming their interoperability with other devices. In June 2015 the organization claimed membership of "more than 200 companies".
On January 5, 2017, DLNA announced that "the organization has fulfilled its mission and will dissolve as a non-profit trade association." Its certification program continues to be conducted by SpireSpark International of Portland, Oregon.
History.
Intel established the DLNA along with Sony and Microsoft in June 2003 as the Digital Home Working Group, changing its name 12 months later, when the first set of guidelines for DLNA was published. Home Networked Device Interoperability Guidelines v1.5 was published in March 2006 and expanded in October of the same year; the changes included the addition of two new product categories — printers, and mobile devices — as well as an "increase of DLNA Device Classes from two to twelve" and an increase in supported user scenarios related to the new product categories.
Specification.
The DLNA Certified Device Classes are separated as follows:
Home infrastructure devices.
The specification uses DTCP-IP as "link protection" for copyright-protected commercial content between one device to another.
Member companies.
DLNA dissolved in 2017. On November 2015 there were 13 promoter members and 171 contributor members. The promoter members were:
Arris, AwoX, Broadcom, CableLabs, Comcast, Dolby Laboratories, Intel, LG Electronics, Panasonic, Samsung Electronics, Sony Electronics, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon.
Neither Google nor Apple were members. Apple's proprietary Digital Audio Access Protocol preceded DLNA's UPnP protocols.
The board of directors oversaw the activity of the four following committees:
Products supporting DLNA.
DLNA-certified devices.
In 2014 over 25,000 DLNA-certified products were available, up from 9,000 in 2011. This includes TVs, DVD and Blu-ray players, games consoles, digital media players, photo frames, cameras, NAS devices, PCs, mobile handsets, and more. According to a 2013 study from Parks Associates, nearly 3 billion products were expected to be on the market in 2014, increasing to over 7 billion by 2018. DLNA certification of devices can be determined by a DLNA logo on the device, or by verifying certification through the DLNA Product Search.
Manufacturers can seek certification testing from a DLNA-Accredited Independent Certification Vendor.
DLNA technology components.
As the past president of DLNA pointed out to the Register in March 2009:
DLNA Interoperability Guidelines allow manufacturers to participate in the growing marketplace of networked devices and are separated into the following sections of key technology components:
DLNA-certified software.
In 2005, DLNA began a software certification program in order to make it easier for consumers to share their digital media across a broader range of products. DLNA is certifying software that is sold directly to consumers through retailers, websites and mobile application stores. With DLNA certified software, consumers can upgrade products from within their home networks that may not be DLNA certified and bring them into their personal DLNA ecosystems. This helps in bringing content such as videos, photos and music stored on DLNA certified devices to a larger selection of consumer electronics, mobile and PC products.