Cloud-based Home Media System Model: Providing a Novel Media Streaming Service using UPnP Technology in a Home Environment

Home media services are gaining in popularity with the ever-increasing availability of a wide variety of personal media devices. A number of media devices support UPnP technology for providing media services in a home network. UPnP technology is used to share media content among multiple media devices connected to a single network. However, UPnP-based home media services have a few problems. First, personal media devices should have sufficient storage space to keep a large amount of media content data. Additionally, the devices must have sufficient computing power to properly provide media streaming services. Moreover, for media streaming services using UPnP, the users have to utilize their devices with great care, remembering the name, available services, and functions of each device. To resolve these problems, this paper proposes a system model designed to store and manage media content in a cloud-based media server, namely, a cloud server. To ensure an easy-touse media service, this paper also proposes a UPnP-based service model to provide media streaming services by extracting the most appropriate media renderer for playing the media content. The proposed system can provide the user with improved home media services in conjunction with cloud computing and UPnP technologies.