Media Streaming – The Beginning

The “app gap” is something you hear about constantly with Windows Phone, that I start to wonder if it’s just the easy go-to explaination for why Windows Phone is only holding 2% of the market. There are a few other bigger reasons that I can think of, but I have yet to hit a single app that I’ve “needed” other than your typical mom-and-pop shop app.

That is… until now.

There is not a single, generic, media streaming app in the Windows Phone store for Windows 10 Mobile. Sure, you’ve got Plex, but that requires a Plex server and account. There’s also Emby and Subsonic8, but again those require a dedicated Emby or Subsonic server.

I want a generic DNLA media player, and I just can’t seem to find one.

So what does a developer do when he can’t find what he wants? He makes his own.

That’s what I’m going to do – and what’s worse is I know NOTHING about DNLA or media streaming or if it’s even possible. I also haven’t started going down the path of building Universal Windows Apps yet. I’ve only worked on Silverlight/WP8.1 apps.

Since I’m going to be learning how to do this from the ground up, why not blog about it in the mean time? This will be good motivation to keep the blog alive and we’ll hopefully get a decent app out of it in the end.

Whelp… here we go.