XBMC Media Server (UPnP/DLNA)
#1
I've no idea if technically possible or any parties would even be interested but what if XBMC and PS3 Media Server or Serviio joined forces ?

I mention those two as they are both cross platform, open source and free.

The UPnP/DLNA server could be an add-on like the PVR one, so while still being part of XBMC it could also exist as a standalone application XBMC Media Server [XMS] that anyone can install without needing XBMC.

I think this could bring a couple of benefits to XBMC;
* More frequent updates to the XBMC UPnP/DLNA server.

* Improved compatibility with various DLNA devices to stream media to via XBMC or XMS, they have profiles for various devices which all have their own weird DLNA implementation (e.g ffw/rwd on Samsung TV's).

* Video transcoding would allow streaming media to other devices from XBMC that dont have the same level of media support.

* With transcoding it could possibly allow XBMC Lite (GUI only) clients through official app store smartphone/tablet channels ?

* XBMC clients could scrape movie info from the XMS server properly, at this time PS3 Media Server is the only one that I know that works. As most servers do not expose the file name in the UPnP/DLNA media path.

* Might even spawn XMS built into NAS directly if XMS became the defacto free UPnP/DLNA server, most commercial linux NAS ship with the Twonky server but some people have gotten the better Serviio and PS3 Media Server running on them through a lot of hacking.

Of course there could be a lot of obstacles to this, technical reasons or other projects having no interest in merging with XBMC
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#2
While this is an interesting idea, why not simply use PS3 Media Server or TVersity? They already accomplish this and will work just fine with the other devices. I'm not really sure why this would need to be built into XBMC.
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#3
Well yeah you can just use those but XBMC also has a UPnP server built in so instead of re-inventing the wheel [plus XBMC devs probably have their hands full] maybe adopting another might bring in more functionality plus coders to maintain and develop it.

The problem I guess is whats in it for other projects other than higher visibility through XBMC brand, maybe more developers take an interest in it and help out.

Also certain features like media scraping only work with certain servers (e.g PS3 Media Server) and some features need explicit support in the client and server like subtitles so having an XBMC Media Server could be useful to some, as all XBMC features work with this server whereas they may not work with UPnP/DLNA server x/y/z.
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