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Windows 8 Metro Apps Play To and Media Sharing

New APIs in Windows 8 to enable Play To and home media sharing for Metro apps

Sep 27, 2011 14:01 GMT  ·  By
Windows 8
   Windows 8

Developers will be able to take advantage of new resources in order to build Play To and media sharing capabilities in their Windows 8 Metro apps.

A couple of weeks ago the Redmond company launched Windows 8 Developer Preview Build 8102 Milestone 3 (M3), the first public test release of the operating system.

Targeting developers as the main audience, Microsoft is looking to spark the development of Metro apps with the availability of Windows 8 Developer Preview Build 8102 M3.

The software giant is even providing a range of resources, tools and guidance to streamline the process of building Windows 8 projects.

Case in point: the “Play To and Media Sharing for Metro style Apps” whitepaper, which is provided free of charge to early Windows 8 adopters through the Microsoft Download Center.

“The next version of Windows introduces a number of new APIs to enable home media sharing experiences in Metro style apps. This document provides an overview of these new APIs along with some examples and guidance for how developers can use them in applications built on the Windows Developer Preview,” the software giant said.

Microsoft wants devs to focus on a total of three media sharing scenarios that have Windows 8 Metro apps at the core: Streaming media from apps to Play To Receivers, Consuming media from Media Servers and Adding Play To Receiver functionality to apps.

According to the Redmond company, new application programming interfaces can be leveraged in order to build Windows 8 Metro apps with Play To and media sharing functionality.

The software giant reveals that new Windows 8 APIs:

“- make it easy for developers to enable Play To media streaming from apps to devices like TVs and Audio Receivers;

- make it easy for developers to build rich media experiences for media stored on Media Servers on a user’s home network;

- make it possible for apps to embed Play To Receiver functionality and become targets for the media streaming experiences.”

Windows 8 Developer Preview Build 8102 Milestone 3 (M3) is available for download here.