Universal Media Server | Forum

Aside from the ease of use of being able to just run UMS and then play stuff from my TV, is there any difference than going through the hassle of extending my desktop to my TV and just playing whatever it is in VLC and maximizing that on the TV? will the quality be better? I remember comparing long ago when I used PS3MS but I didn't notice a difference (default quality settings in the program)

I don't know. It is probably in the eye of the beholder.
If you do add an HTPC next to your PC (or a simple laptop would most likely do it these day) and run VLC and just output the stuff to your TV then that has more likely a "larger" functional set than any DLNA server can compete with.

I see thanks for the response

The default ICC color profile in your PC/HTPC will not be beneficial when running directly to your TV. Considering if you already manually adjusted your TV's built in display settings, the default ICC monitor profile would likely negate it, resulting in undesirable color and contrast values that are way too high.

Ideally, you'd have to run a calibrated ICC profile based on your TV's current display settings to have the best picture.

There are quickly diminishing returns, the more TVs you want to have access media, using the direct HTPC -> TV method. DLNA devices (except for gaming consoles)/built in DLNA in a TV costs a lot less and use considerably less power than an HPTC, being the more economical option when you're dealing with more than 1 TV, IMO.

There can be some perfomance benefits in using DLNA.

For an example my Atom Based server cannot playback HD files , or it can.. but the framerate is not fluent.
So instead i stream with UMS, and let my TV do the rendering.

Yeah TVs and PS3s are better at maintaining smooth framerates than computers so it will be more stable. Plus we have features that will be useful like subtitle preferences so you can choose exactly which subtitle language you want when you are playing a certain audio language (instead of changing it for each file while they play in VLC), and right now I'm working on automatic virtual file renaming to make downloaded files easier to read without actually renaming them