The OurTunes media networking application is extremely lightweight and can run on a wide range of operating systems and devices. The small footprint and platform agnostic approach enables OurTunes media experiences to occur in a variety of setting and across multiple devices.

HOW IT WORKS

The application forms an ad hoc network made up of devices that can share media, render media, or both. A PC and a set top box are both good examples of devices that would both store and render media whereas a home file server might only share media and a smartphone would only be able to render media.

In a perfect world, all homes would have a centralized media server. It would have endless storage capacity and infinite network bandwidth to distribute media. Any time we bought a track from a download service or imported a CD, it would magically be transferred to this device. However, this is simply not a market reality. In truth, the typical home has files spread across a wide variety of computers, DVRs, and mp3 players. We recognized this situation, and designed OurTunes in such a way that a user in the home can always access an up to date copy of the files available on all of their machines or devices.

OurTunes enabled devices find one another by advertising their presence over the network. No advanced registration is required; when you see another device appear on the network, you simply select the device to see its media files merged into your collection view.