Linux Media Server

So I'm attempting to build a linux media server and so far it's been pretty painful. The goals are to have it able to stream media to a variety of clients, including Pc's and hopefully my xbox  360, share files securely, and be accesible from outside the LAN. To expand this I would like to at the very least password protect everything as  it's getting dumped into a University LAN environment.



So far for the Server I have:
Mediatomb for Upnp Media Streaming (Fuppes/Ushare being alternatives)
Firefly for DAAP sharing
OpenSSH to use SFTP filesharing

On the Client Side:
Windows:
Windows Media Player - Upnp client
Putty - SSH
Itunes - DAAP Client

Linux:
Banshee/Rhythmbox - DAAP Client
Nautilus File Manager - SFTP

However through all this I can't seem to find a great linux Upnp client that works well like Windows media player did., it showed the library right away when i opened it up and didn't cause any fuss streaming anything.

I also still want to find a good way of securing everything a bit better, especially the Mediatomb Upnp library. UShare might also come into play to help with streaming to the xbox 360. I don't like that the web interface just sits out there on the lan with no protection so hopefully I can lock that up as well. As for making everything more secure I was considering dropping this Server into a VPN and then just connecting to the VPN network for all these resources so hopefully an extra layer of password protection.