Multimedia Serving
Also found under the Shared Folders Management menu is "Manage Digital Photos, Music, Video", which really doesn't have much to do with shared folder management. This menu, shown in Figure 5, controls the SSII's multimedia serving features.
Figure 5: Multimedia Setup
The first capability (Figure 6) allows the device to act as a UPnP Media server. I tested this out with a Buffalo LinkTheater and it worked well. Movies, pictures and videos that I deposited in the proper directories were served up to the LinkTheater where I could view then on my TV or listen on my stereo.
Figure 6: Multimedia Management
The other capability provided was "Search for iTunes Music". Initially, I wasn't quite sure what this meant. I thought maybe it would recognize iTunes libraries stored on the drive for export through UPnP. But what it really meant was that the SSII has a built-in iTunes daap server! This means that the music you store on your SSII will be made available to iTunes users on network under the iTunes "Shared Music" grouping.
Figure 7 is a partial screen-grab of my iTunes application where both the SSII server and a daap server running on my Kurobox server are shown. My tests of this capability also worked well, with music deposited on the SSII made available to all iTunes users on my network. Note that since the music is played through iTunes, this capability also works with Apple's DRM restricted music purchased from the iTunes music store. However, this is not true for music served up through the UPnP server to a device like the LinkTheater.
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