GLOBAL – The great camera on your Nokia smartphone makes it really easy to capture all the big – and small – events in your life. But sharing those ‘special moments’ with your friends or family has been less easy, until now. The Nokia Play To app for Nokia Lumia lets you stream media content from your phone to your TV – wirelessly. So you never need to huddle around your smartphone screen again.
Picture the scene, if you will. You’re sitting on the couch, watching the TV. You’re partner, friend, or somebody in the family wants to show you their holiday snaps, or share their favourite home-made movie with you. Inwardly, you groan. They pull out their Nokia Lumia smartphone and within seconds you’re viewing that photo slideshow through the TV. It’s really that simple (But we can’t promise it will actually make the photos themselves any more interesting).
Once you’ve downloaded the Nokia Play To for Nokia Lumia app from the Nokia Beta Labs, all you’ve got to do is to head to the connection settings. It’s here where you’ll need to connect your phone to a DLNA-capable device.
Here’s probably a good time to explain a bit about DLNA.
The Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) is a non-profit collaborative trade organisation established by Sony in June 2003, who created a set of guidelines that allowed sharing of digital media between different consumer goods. This means that you can share content from a phone to a TV or from a camera to a printer. However, the device needs to be DLNA enabled.
It is estimated that more than 440 million DLNA-certified devices, from digital cameras to games consoles and TVs, have been installed in users’ homes. To see if you’ve got a DLNA certified product, you can search from the DLNA Certified Product Search page.
In order for your phone to be able to find your DLNA device, it needs to be connected to your home Internet network. Then, using WiFi, your Nokia Lumia smartphone sends the media content through the network and out through the DLNA device. It sounds complicated, but all you have to do is load up the app, all the magic happens in the background.
Even if you don’t own a DLNA device, this is one of those apps that’s worth having on your phone. It’s the perfect “Look at what my phone can do” type of app.
Download Nokia Play To for Nokia Lumia from the Nokia Beta Labs today onto your Nokia Lumia 610, Nokia Lumia 710, Nokia Lumia 800 or Nokia Lumia 900 today.
We’ve created a QR code for you to make navigating to the Nokia Play To page easier. Use the Vision function on your Nokia Lumia to scan the code.
The team at the Nokia Beta Labs are really keen to hear about all your thoughts, suggestions of bugs, so make sure you help them out in order to make this an even better app.
What do you think of the Nokia Play To for Nokia Lumia app?
Image credit: Matt McGee