After some time in the DLNA wonderland I have found couple of brilliant apps for iPhone.

First is AirMusic app:

http://www.plutinosoft.com/airmusic

This app will effectively turn your iPhone into a DLNA server and scan your music collection to be shared to other DLNA devices/software.

In real life you can use BeoSound 5 Encore with MOTS to play your music from iPhone without any wires. Better than AirPlay in some ways indeed! Covers will display with somewhat poor resolution on the Encore - but at least they are there. You will need to tell the Encore to look Music Storage and it will find the AirMusic in seconds. (After installation I had to reboot the AirMusic once - but that's normal to iPhone apps). This app costs 2.39€.

Second is iMediaControl app:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/imediacontrol/id418107884?mt=8

Now things are getting serious. With BeoSound 5 you can stream your music to Bang & Olufsen system and control it directly from your iPhone. This is allmost as good as a AirPlay solution. Your media storage is again your iPhone and AirMusic is the server software to provide the content. With iMediaControl you will get really beautiful coverflow view. This is a free app.

I'm so exited about this "new" DLNA stuff that just works and enables new possibilities.

Interesting stuff!

I have a few questions that I need to know before I would get serious about buying the encore.

What I would like to do is control the Encore with my iPad, is that possible?

I would like to keep my music library on a NAS drive, don't want it/nor will it fit on an iPad/iPhone.

If I was to put my music on a nas drive, connected to my Apple network (Time capsule) at home can the Encore read it? 

Can the Apple lossless files including artwork be losslesly converter to an equal format, say FLAC?

bayerische:

Interesting stuff!

I have a few questions that I need to know before I would get serious about buying the encore.

 

What I would like to do is control the Encore with my iPad, is that possible?

 

I would like to keep my music library on a NAS drive, don't want it/nor will it fit on an iPad/iPhone.

 

If I was to put my music on a nas drive, connected to my Apple network (Time capsule) at home can the Encore read it? 

 

Can the Apple lossless files including artwork be losslesly converter to an equal format, say FLAC?

At the moment there is no way that I know of controlling Encore with any other than Beo4/5/6. This might change in time though... With the full BeoSound 5 this is possible today.

If your nas will support DLNA (like the B&O recommended iomega NAS StorCenter px4-300d) you will be able to play that music with an ease from Encore.

For converting there is about as many ways as there are users in BeoWorld, but http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm might be the most commonly recommended for windows users. For OSX there is http://sbooth.org/Max/.

bayerische:

What I would like to do is control the Encore with my iPad, is that possible?

If the Encore acts as a "simple" DLNA renderer, it should be possible. But it has to be confirmed by an Encore owner/seller. The current problem is that no app will give you a user experience close to what B&O can offer (poor interface/low res covers...). I hope that the B&O app will come out very soon and give everything with a B&O touch of magic.

bayerische:

If I was to put my music on a nas drive, connected to my Apple network (Time capsule) at home can the Encore read it?

As long as the NAS has some kind of DLNA server app (usually Twonky), it will work. Look for the DLNA label on the box. I have choosen LaCie for their design (full aluminum body, heavy... Looks like B&O!)

bayerische:

Can the Apple lossless files including artwork be losslesly converter to an equal format, say FLAC?

Yes, and that's a really fast process. I highly recommend XLD for doing that on a Mac. Correctly set up, you should be able to just drag and drop all your ALAC library on XLD and get a second identical FLAC library really quickly.

Let me share what I can do today.

I have BeoSound5 connected with masterlink to BeoVision7 in the livingroom. I have music stored both on BeoMaster5 and Windows Home server. Only Apple devise is the iPad2 with iMediaControl.

• All in stan-by
  • Starting iMediaControl it shows the following detected devices
    • BEOMASTER5 (B&O logo)
      • Music
        • Album
        • All Tracks
          • Choose track
            • Select output deivce
              • iPad
              • BEOMASTER5
                • Shows coverart and strat playing in living room on BeoSound5 via A.AUX
        • Artist
        • Artist Index
        • and so on...
      • Photos
    • Windows home server (Windows Media Connect icon)
      • Still loading.....
• Watching TV
  • Same as standby, TV turns off and BeoSound5 starts playing via A.AUX
• Listening to BeoSound5
  • Terminates track and starts playing via A.AUX
• Listening to BeoSound5 via PC connection on tv (coverart showing on TV and BeoSound5)
  • Terminates track and starts playing via A.AUX

mbee:

bayerische:

What I would like to do is control the Encore with my iPad, is that possible?

If the Encore acts as a "simple" DLNA renderer, it should be possible. But it has to be confirmed by an Encore owner/seller. The current problem is that no app will give you a user experience close to what B&O can offer (poor interface/low res covers...). I hope that the B&O app will come out very soon and give everything with a B&O touch of magic.

I can confirm that this is true.  Currently it does not have "renderer" functionality.  Actually if anyone has it and runs a port scan you'll see it doesn't even have a single port open.

@MikaelB

So you can browse through your music stored on the BM5 with the app in the iPad2 and Coverart is shown like music was choosen from BS5 itself -> I mean that's all what one is in need of; don't know if Beo6 already shows the content of the BM5 and let you scan through it; but with this app is seems to be possible;

I don't want to stream music from iDevice to BS5/BM5 - I've got all my music on it already

regards elmar

f5434964:

I don't want to stream music from iDevice to BS5/BM5 - I've got all my music on it already

Exactly.  I have well over 100gb of music on the BM5, some mine, some the kids, and some of the wifes.  We each have an idevice with a small portion of it loaded on for when we are out and about.

Any one of those idevices will allow me full control of the BS5 to play whatever tracks I like through a nice coverflow type interface.  If I ever wanted to, I can also send music from the idevice to the BS5.  I can even use my iPhone to slect the music on my sons iPad and strem that to the BS5.

The killer feature for me comes back to the fact that a phone or ipod only has a selction of your music stored on it.  Now, I can dock the iPad in the BS8 in the kitchen, find my favourite track on the BS5 by navigating with the iPhone, and stream it through the iPad to the BS8.  Also, I can go into the garden with my A8's and listen to any track on the BS5 through my phone without having to sync to iTunes.

If Airplay did all that people would get seriously over excited.  For me, this is a much beter solution to airplay with much more flexibility (it's also a lot more stable than the airort express we have which suffers from audio drop out)