To access videos on your home computer from your cell phone or to see who rings
at your camera-equipped front door while traveling, you can now use the “Nework-
Integrated Multimedia Middleware (NMM)“. NMM makes it possible to create flexible
and fully synchronized multimedia scenarios using applications, devices, and
compute resources distributed across the network. Using new developed
technology, NMM now automatically adapts the quality of video and audio to
optimally use the bandwidth currently available in the network in order to always
deliver the best possible user experience. NMM is now available not only on
Windows XP and several Linux platforms but also on Windows Vista, Mac OS X, the
Cell-processor, and PDAs. The software developed by computer scientists from

NMM enables transparent access to all devices available in the network. Even while
traveling, multimedia data on home devices is always available. At the same time these
devices can also be fully controlled remotely – a feature only available with NMM. These
features make it possible to create completely new “virtual” devices: The cell phone
displays TV from the TV receiver at home via GPRS or UMTS or a VCR displays
simultaneously on many output devices including TV sets, PDAs, or PCs. Each of these
devices can use a different platform: Supported are Windows XP, Windows Vista, various
Linux-systems, Mac OS X, and the Cell-processor of Sony’s Playstation 3.

Networks typically used at home or on the road – such as WLAN, GPRS, or UMTS – often
do not deliver sufficient and stable bandwidth to guarantee consistent high quality for
sound and video. New techniques, available now in NMM, distribute the available
bandwidth optimally and globally to the different audio and video streams. Thus, at lower
bandwidth connections NMM will incrementally increase compressions, may at some point
replace the compression algorithms completely, or could migrate compression to another,
faster device as required. In extreme cases the frame rate or the resolution can be
reduced automatically. As bandwidth improves again these arrangements are will be
reversed, such that best possible video and sound quality is always maintained.

The NMM architecture will be demonstrated from March 15th to 21th at the CeBIT 2007 in
Hannover at the booth of Saarland University (hall 9, booth B 65) showing a networked
home entertainment setup. In addition to automatic bandwidth and quality control on
mobile and stationary devices, a four-display video wall will show synchronized audio and
video playback running on several different multimedia and computing platforms.
Originally developed by Prof. Dr. Philipp Slusallek and his research team of the Computer
Graphics Lab at Saarland University, Germany, the NMM software is now available
through the spin-off company Motama GmbH. Due to its flexible licensing policy, NMM can
equally be used in Open Source and research projects as well as in commercial products.

More information is available online: