Small screen devices like cellular phones or Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) are the artifacts of information technology almost everybody carries around today. Together with wireless networks they are the ubiquitous gateway to information and services. Especially the increasing bandwidth together with the improving processing power of these devices supply us with capabilities known only from desktop computers a couple of years ago. However, the access to rich multimedia content using these devices is almost impossible due to the physical limitations without performing lossy content reduction. An idea to overcome these limitations results from the observation that our daily life is surrounded by information technology almost everywhere, e.g. PC’s, Laptops TV sets, public terminals, etc.. These “larger screen devices” can be used in conjunction with the small screen device to extend its capabilities and to provide access to rich multimedia content and services without any sacrifice. In order to do so the small screen device must be able to access these devices and to remotely control them. UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) [1] is a technology, which connects appliances on an adhoc basis. In this paper we will present our concept of ad-hoc personal ubiquitous multimedia services and illustrate an UPnP based implementation, which allows users a high degree of mobility and in parallel facilitates the access of rich multimedia contents by using a small screen device.
['Georg Schneider', 'Christian Hoymann', 'Stuart Goose']
Adhoc personal ubiquitous multimedia services via UPNP