DoCoMo Uses Handset to Show PC-stored Content on Remote TV

NTT DoCoMo Inc developed the "MH2H (mobile home to home)," a technology to enable its users to display the content stored in the PCs in their homes on the TVs in their friends' homes when they visited them. The company expects that the technology will be used to show pictures and movies taken by a camera to users' friends. It exhibited the technology for reference at CEATEC Japan 2008. With the MH2H, a mobile phone equipped with a wireless LAN function acts as a virtual media server in the network in a user's friend's home, and transmits the content stored in the user's home via the Internet. The technology is based on the "DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance)," a standard to share content in a home network. NTT DoCoMo is now providing the "Pocket U" service with which users can watch or listen to the content stored in their homes by using their mobile phones away from home. This time, the company developed the MH2H as the next-generation function of the Pocket U. "Thanks to the Pocket U service, we can now watch and listen to content whenever we want even if we do not have any content stored in our mobile phones," the company said. "However, displays of mobile phones are too small to be watched by multiple people at the same time. So, we decided to show the content on a large screen of a TV and make it possible to share the excitement."
Handsets become virtual DLNA servers
The MH2H enables a user's mobile phone with a wireless LAN function to act as a DLNA's "digital media server" in the network of his/her friend's house. As a storage place of content, the IP address of the user's PC in his/her home was sent to a "digital media player," which streams content (PlayStation 3 in the demonstration). At this point, the mobile phone orders, via a mobile phone network, the PC installed with software for the Pocket U service to accept an HTTP request from a device outside the user's home. Those techniques enabled the DLNA, which is usually used for home networks, to transfer content between homes. Any device can be used for the service without changing its specifications, as long as it has DMP capabilities.
In addition, with the MH2H, a mobile phone can periodically check if it is connected to the network in the user's friend's home. Therefore, the user's friend cannot watch the content without the presence of its owner, NTT DoCoMo said.