Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) is a set of interoperability standards for sharing home digital media among multimedia devices. It allows users to share or stream stored media files to various certified devices on the same network like PCs, smartphones, TV sets, game consoles, stereo systems, and NASs. DLNA incorporates several existing public standards, including Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) for media management and device discovery and control, wired and wireless networking standards, and widely used digital media formats.
DLNA was created by Sony and Intel and the consortium soon included various PC and consumer electronics companies, publishing its first set of guidelines in June 2004. The Digital Living Network Alliance developed and promoted it under the auspices of a certification standard, with a claimed membership of "more than 200 companies" before dissolving in 2017. By September 2014 over 25,000 device models had obtained "DLNA Certified" status, indicated by a logo on their packaging and confirming their interoperability with other devices. In many cases DLNA protocols are in use by services or software without openly stating the name: examples include Nokia's Home Network functionality, Samsung's All Share, the Play To functionality in Windows 8.1, and in applications such as VLC media player or Roku Media Player.
Specification
The DLNA Certified Device Classes are separated as follows:
Home network devices
Digital Media Server (DMS): store content and make it available to networked digital media players (DMP) and digital media renderers (DMR). Examples include PCs and network-attached storage (NAS) devices. Digital Media Player (DMP): find content on digital media servers (DMS) and provide playback and rendering capabilities. Examples include TVs, stereos and home theaters, wireless monitors and game consoles. Digital Media Renderer (DMR): play content as instructed by a digital media controller (DMC), which will find content from a digital media server (DMS). Examples include TVs, audio/video receivers, video displays and remote speakers for music. It is possible for a single device (e.g. TV, A/V receiver, etc.) to function both as a DMR (receives "pushed" content from DMS) and DMP ("pulls" content from DMS). Digital Media Controller (DMC): find content on digital media servers (DMS) and instruct digital media renderers (DMR) to play the content. Content does not stream from or through the DMC. Examples include tablet computers, Wi-Fi enabled digital cameras and smartphones. Generally, digital media players (DMP) and digital media controllers (DMC) with print capability can print to DMPr. Examples include networked photo printers and networked all-in-one printers.
Mobile handheld devices
Mobile Digital Media Server (M-DMS): store content and make it available to wired/wireless networked mobile digital media players (M-DMP), and digital media renderers. Examples include mobile phones and portable music players. Mobile Digital Media Player (M-DMP): find and play content on a digital media server (DMS) or mobile digital media server (M-DMS). Examples include mobile phones and mobile media tablets designed for viewing multimedia content. Mobile Digital Media Uploader (M-DMU): send (upload) content to a digital media server (DMS) or mobile digital media server (M-DMS). Examples include digital cameras and mobile phones. Mobile Digital Media Downloader (M-DMD): find and store (download) content from a digital media server (DMS) or mobile digital media server (M-DMS). Examples include portable music players and mobile phones. Mobile Digital Media Controller (M-DMC): find content on a digital media server (DMS) or mobile digital media server (M-DMS) and send it to digital media renderers (DMR). Examples include personal digital assistants (PDAs) and mobile phones.
Home infrastructure devices
Mobile Network Connectivity Function (M-NCF): provide a bridge between mobile handheld device network connectivity and home network connectivity. Media Interoperability Unit (MIU): provide content transformation between required media formats for home network and mobile handheld devices.
The specification uses DTCP-IP as "link protection" for copyright-protected commercial content between one device to another.