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Or, stream your own music? There used to be lots of technologically-saavy on Slashdot who used to do this kind of stuff (I do).

Icecast works quite well for this.

http://www.icecast.org/

It's been around forever, start reading the server docs.

SHOUTcast is just a bad copy of icecast. Keep using icecast for your audio and video streaming and do not accept lesser, closed source imitations.

I do hope that the specific VLC developers involved with the shoutcast fiasco get the drubbing they deserve, if for no other reason than as an example for others and as payment for the trouble they've caused the rest of the project. It's 2010, closed source does not belong on the net and FOSS developers have no business undercutting FOSS projects.

SHOUTcast is just a bad copy of icecast. Keep using icecast for your audio and video streaming and do not accept lesser, closed source imitations.

I do hope that the specific VLC developers involved with the shoutcast fiasco get the drubbing they deserve, if for no other reason than as an example for others and as payment for the trouble they've caused the rest of the project. It's 2010, closed source does not belong on the net and FOSS developers have no business undercutting FOSS projects.

You mean like Icecast, from the makers of Theora and FLAC?

Seems to me that if you don't like MySpace, you can always just dump it, and tell everybody why.

And the five people that visit your site will find that it's having issues because you didn't pay your hosting bill, or went over bandwidth, or since you don't know jack about admin'ing a website just plain doesn't work right, and they'll go back to MySpace where things are familiar, and everybody else is going.

It's not a matter of whining about their policy. The problem is that they have one policy towards large companies with powerful lawyers, and a different "fuck you" policy towards everyone else, but still claim to only have one policy for everybody.

This is why MyGaySpace has no space. just check my homeboy page http://www.fluxradio.org/ everything is private. I stream when I want to and so do other artists, DJ's and producers. I use Icecast http://www.icecast.org/ Netbsd, Debian and FreeBSD servers, set up round robin DNS so I can avoid this bullshit. I have servers in different countries that load balance and stream from Canada. Where getting sued for playing some music is bit of a problem for authorities. OVH networks provide a juicey connection as well. Why do you need myspace or any of these other moron sites to get music out? If one has done their homework, you just do not need myspace, twitter, facebook, youtube, beebo and the rest of the other sites jumping on the Bandwagon for fame and fortune. Tune of the day - Tangerine Dream "stratosfear"

You have to love http://www.icecast.org/ and I am Sir Audiophile E-MU 0404 geek. I know more about open source radio than the poster. I also own http://www.fluxradio.org/ The Linux word is for brave people. You can advance and go commando BSD! It will take a very intelligent individual even to get to grips but in the words of Brenda Russell. "I cry just a little, caught up in the middle, when he plays piano in the dark". I suppose music is music is power. Music and lyrics makes one elite 31337.

I've been using Icecast for several years now. http://icecast.org/

DVD are usually something like Mpeg2 + Ac3 for surround sound support or Mpeg2 + raw PCM (uncompressed audio) for stereo. Also you may have some with mp3 compression.

No AAC, which is Apple's baby.

The reason you use something like H.264 is because it offers much higher compression with similar visual quality as mpeg2. So you can take a DVD movie and compress it down to a third of it's original size (or more) and still keep enough quality that the difference is unnoticable.

This is important for doing things like streaming, for instance, or for downloadable media.

Also for HD content the H.264 stuff is still going to be like 20 gigs or more. In mpeg2 form it would be massive and you'd have a hard time keeping up with the bitrates nessicary to play it even at LAN speeds. Also I am told that mpeg2 has several undesirable characteristics at very high resolution when it comes to quality and such.

With Free software considurations probably your best bet will be something like OGM with Ogg container format with Vorbis audio and H.264 video. Vorbis is able to provide up to 255 different audio channels so you can provide multiple audio streams in one go for different languages or for commentary tracks or something like that. Although I don't know of anything that realy uses many multiple streams in Ogg Vorbis, most everything is just stereo. There probably has to be some work there, but it shouldn't be hard to create a standard people can use. AAC may have some slight advantage over Ogg in sound quality, but it's nothing like either of those guy's advantage over Mp3. Not a big difference to warrent realy caring about AAC when Vorbis is around and already has widespread support.

AVI container format has some nasty limitations when it comes to having things like subtitle support. I don't know how well Ogg container deals with that.

I don't know how well Ogg compares to Quicktime either.

Also it's worth not overlooking the fact that Flac and Speex (VERY high compression for speech.. usefull for VoIP) can be mixed into Ogg streams also.

It may be usefull, for instance, for VoIP to do H.264 streams combined with Speex in OGG container to get the highest compression possible for doing video confrencing.

Also we already have a nice streaming media server that supports not only OggVorbis, but can do video Ogg support also:
http://www.icecast.org/

Icecast has had Theora support for a while now. I wouldn't expect it to be difficult to extend that to support OGM format. Icecast has a veriaty of existing clients and web interfaces as well as the ability to support bandwidth-saving stuff like multicast and unicast. This can be very usefull if you want to do things like... oh.. having multiple IPTV channels aviable to students on a college campus.

there are no working Theora VFW plugins

NO video editing software supports it

and finally

no streaming server for Theora

Is there an open streaming format?

I bought a USB Radioshark, set it up under Linux, and used Icecast with Liveice to setup realtime streaming.

I then setup a cgi to change stations. Works like a charm.

Icecast is the obviously reference. I know a couple of organizations that have used and created revenue with both pay streams as well as free streams supported by advertising.

I've never had much luck with otto. I have used Icecast to relay ogg files which were streamed from Ices or mp3s from Muse. I'd simply replace "stream" with a dedicated client. You can also broadcast/mix "live audio" (station ids) into the stream using Darkice. I've can also recommend Shoutcast.

I've used the above and am confident you can build a solution around them. Freshmeat shows tons more.

I've never had much luck with otto. I have used Icecast to relay ogg files which were streamed from Ices or mp3s from Muse. I'd simply replace "stream" with a dedicated client. You can also broadcast/mix "live audio" (station ids) into the stream using Darkice. I've can also recommend Shoutcast.

I've used the above and am confident you can build a solution around them. Freshmeat shows tons more.

Did you do any bit of research at all on this?

Icecast will suit your needs just fine - it'll take your files, and encode on the fly to either vorbis or mp3. If icecast doesn't have native support for the file formats you want, grab something like foobar2000, play everything through that, and get the plugins that pipe that sound output to icecast for post-proccessing.

Icecast homepage

The recording industry ARE a bunch of greedy bastards that are just in it for the money, so any place they can squeeze out a few more bucks, they'll do it. And they know the power of Intellectual Property © ® and all the fists full of money that can generate, so they do everything they can to extend and expand copyright, so they can retain monopoly rights on something they paid someone to create but somehow they own.

But the real question is how can you make it. Well, to make it on-line as a musician, this is what I would do:

• Make sure your website has features to keep and gain fan attention. Make sure you have available media such as:
  • MP3s, WMAs, OGGs, and AACs of your music in lower but still acceptable quality. I'd say 56k-96kbit, so casual listeners can listen but true fans would want to purchase high quality (192-512k) copies and lossless copies. Doesn't even have to be all your music. Imagine it like singles played on the radio. You can even have a tip section for each song so they can donate if they feel like it. And since you're distributing these files, you could have an introduction where you thank them for listening and direct them to your website, and put meta-data tags (ID3 tags and OGG comments, and I'm sure WMA and AAC have similar info blocks) on the files so it shows your information in iTunes, Winamp, Windows Media Player, XMMS, and so on.
  • Maybe setup a Shoutcast, or IceCast channel. "All $MYBAND! All the time!"
  • Videos of the band. Again, low quality, Windows Media, Quicktime, screw Real Player. Make them stream-only for free and offer to sell downloads of higher quality copies.
  • Sell swag from your website. Audio CDs, DVDs of shows you've played, music videos if you're inclined to make them; T-shirts, hoodies, baby-doll shirts and all that crap that Cafepress will make for you. Turn album covers into desktop wallpapers, and have band photos for download. Make cell phone themes and ring-tones, sell those for $0.99 or even $0.50. Find a local starving-artist to help with the media if you want.
  • If you've got the time and energy, have a band blog, podcast, or even for have those for individual band members.
  • Promote your site with other artists and promote them on yours if you like them or if you think your fans would like them. A couple of banner ads on your site (provided that they're not obnoxious) in return for a couple banner ads on someone else's site.
• Get signed with whoever you can, but make sure you retain copyrights and possibly distribution rights. Get your music on iTMS if you can. Look into on-line record companies/distributors like Magnatune or MP3 Tunes as long as they won't interfere with you hosting your music on your own if you want.

Make it easy for interested fans to find you, refer you to their friends, buy stuff from you. Make your website easy to find and accessible. If you're not so good with visual media or website design, you probably know of a geek or a family member who is good at that, you could have them make a site for you (Payment would be between you and them). Once you're big enough, see if you can setup some tour dates. Sell CDs there, give out business cards with your website URL on them. Give away CDs with a few singles on them. You can even have an introduction on the CDs and DVDs and direct them back to your website, especially on any CDs you give away. Put a data track on audio CDs and DVDs that has some promo material or music files for your band and a link to your website. Remember everything can be used to promote yourself/your band, so make sure you've got it there where you can. But don't be obnoxious about it. People understand self-promo

It only deals with music, but Icecast apparently supports video streaming now, so with some changes it could support video too, I imagine.

It only deals with music, but Icecast apparently supports video streaming now, so with some changes it could support video too, I imagine.

If you have a network, and a stack 'o PIII's then you have what you need. It doesn't really matter what kind of network, as long as everything connects via TCP and has enough bandwidth for your needs.
Setup a linux server, with enough disk space for your media collection and whatever else you want to store there. Install gnumpd3 from
here: http://www.gnu.org/software/gnump3d/
Install a desktop linux distro on the machines in each room. Aim a web browser from any machine at the URL of the gnump3d server and viola! you have music from your collection on demand in any room!
Streaming radio style music is easy as well. Install icecast from here:http://www.icecast.org/
and aim the xmms player from here: http://www.xmms.org/ and you have streaming media! woohoo!
If you want to control a distribution system that plays the same songs things get more complicated, you'll need Apple computer's RTSP server and some client software to get everything sync'd throughout the house.
I use secure shell from my zaurus wireless pda and mpg123 and aumix to operate this from a pocket sized device. For everything else I just browse the music library with gnump3d's web interface. FWIW, I use SuSE linux. It came with all the above except for the Darwin Stream Server (or whatever it is that Apple calls it these days). I had to download and compile the icecast source, but what the heck, it wasn't to hard to do either.

HTH

Both Shoutcast and Icecast support AAC streams. But as for AACplus, I'm not sure but I'd say "probably".

kceasy

real alternative player

lots of tools at http://www.oddsock.org/

Media Player Classic http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli

Most succinctly put: WM, iTunes, Real Whateverthefuckthey'recallingitnow, and especially Musicmatch PieceOfShitBox are all bloated pieces of crap.

Use Icecast 2.

I've used it combined with dsp_oddcast, and soon I was streaming out MP3 or OGG Vorbis streams. Ogg vorbis sounds better at lower bitrates.

Well, there's already icecast. Works great, and has for the last few years.

...I use Ogg Vorbis and it works just fine. All my music is in one place and, it's all legal (ripped from CDs I purchased) and I can listen to it anywhere thanks to icecast+OpenVPN. Power to the people baby! ;)

I found everything I needed to create a streaming jukebox-like server in the open source world. I use Apache + mod_musicindex to provide an acceptable user interface. The music is streamed via Icecast. For ripping on the Windows side I prefer Audiograbber because it will rip directly to ogg. It's not opensource, but it is freeware.

The interface provided by mod_musicindex could use some improvement, but is friendly enough to use and allows for playing or shuffling everything, by artist, and by album, as well as custom playlists. Since it is opensource, I could always tweak the parts of the interface I dislike, but it's not such a big deal that I have bothered.

I can access my music from any computer with a decent player (e.g. winamp 5 on a Windows box), so I can listen to my entire collection (that I've ripped) from work (yes, I have enough bandwidth). To keep the the RIAA off my back, access from outside my home network requires a username and password.

Unfortunately, this solution isn't possible for someone unfamiliar with Linux and Apache. Plus, Icecast can be a bitch to configure properly.

Listen to independent (usually college) radio. I spent my formative years listening to KXLU and KALX.

Listen to indie internet radio stations. A lot of people like KEXP; check the directories at shoutcast.com and icecast.org or your mp3's builtin directory (eg iTunes) (shameless plug - I run punk stream if you like punk)

Read indie newspapers, if available. L.A. Weekly if you're in Los Angeles, for example.

Read web sites that cover indie (pitchforkmedia.com is a start). Download stuff at random.

Go to music buying sites like audiolunchbox and magnatune, and listen to samples at random.

Ask friends for recommendations. Borrow stuff from them.

Hit alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.indie. Download stuff at random.

Go to indie record stores and buy stuff at random. I actually used to do this, buy something based on the cover art. Discovered some great stuff this way. And this was on a high school allowance.

All you need is a seed, and it can open up a whole new microgenre to explore.

Once you find something you like, research them. You'll often find information along the lines of "if you like X, you might like Y". Maybe a band member used to be in another band.

Look up that band's label's site. Often, indie labels have a common "sound" across their lineup, so you might like some of their label mates. Indie label sites usually have downloadable sample songs- download them.

And so on.

I do all these things. I take music seriously, it's a big part of my life. Sometimes it feels like work, to tell you the truth. But I'm driven by the idea that, no matter how much I like the music I've enjoyed in the past, there's something even more incredible out there.

I have a lot of CDs and I continue to buy a lot. But I also have a lot of downloaded music. I have a fairly clear conscience though. I genuinely feel that most indie bands wouldn't hold it against me that I downloaded their music to give it a listen, to see what they are about.

Does all the above sound like "too much effort"? Then, perhaps, music doesn't mean as much to you as me. That's cool.

Me- I'm not content to be fed stuff by commercial interests whose agenda run contrary to my search for interesting music. And I have the time and desire to invest in this pursuit. I can appreciate that others may not. Or maybe you're out in the sticks, with no broadband. In which case, I think you to resign yourself to a certain lifestyle, anyway.

That's why I don't live in the sticks :).

-h3

I don't know of any VBR streams, since streaming inherently tends to require CBR content.

Thats funny because I almost only listen to streaming VBR content. They're called Ogg Vorbis streams (and you can rip them just as well).

I usually listen to Virgin Radio as I find the commericals hysterical but you can find a whole list here: http://www.icecast.org/streamlist.php

They are a public station, and they aren't even considering Ogg Vorbis, and/or Icecast?

If we can't get even the public stations on board with free and open standards, how will we ever get those standards to spread?

Anyone who lives in the area served by that public station, please write them a letter, and ask them to look into using Ogg/Icecast. Then, instead of providing a link to the Real player, they can provide a link to Winamp. Or even Zinf.

Or maybe even Real's player. I found a bunch of old news items (from 2002) saying that Real was on board with Ogg Vorbis, and the RealOne player would play Ogg Vorbis. And it looks like the new Helix player supports Vorbis. Does Real do a good job now of playing Ogg streams? (The icecast.org web site does not list the Real players as an option, but I suppose it's possible that the web site is out of date.)

And if Real is smart, they will make their player work to play Icecast streams. I'd say the same about Microsoft and Windows Media Player, but I'll bet they can't resist the urge to try to throw roadblocks in the way of the competition.

steveha

I understand (and sometimes make) the argument that "gratis" doesn't always mean "cheap", since someone has to run the system and in this setting you'd probably have to pay them to do it. Still, the whole reason I love listening to these guys so much is that they are the alpha geeks of the automotive mechanic world. It's not like Tom and Ray are a couple of guys who tinker with cars in their back yard and have no technology background.

Real Player doesn't come with Windows XP, so you can't use the argument that you don't want to make your users install additional software, since they'll have to anyway. The official answer from NPR is that

While other media types may offer technical advantages or less restrictive licenses, the conversion and storage of audio files requires considerable time and resources.

This made me wonder if they even considered going to Ogg Vorbis streaming with Icecast. Whether they considered it or not, it made me wonder how many Icecast streams are available.

I found a list here:

http://www.icecast.org/streamlist.php

Not as many as I had hoped to find.

steveha

By using your purchasing power, you decide the fate of these almost-Nazi-like corporations. Send them the message where it hurts them the most, The Bottom Line. By denying the RIAA your hard earned dollars, their shareholders suffer. And while they'll claim p2p responsible for further reductions in sales (as if the economy, CD prices, the thousands of stupid lawsuits that contribute to the price of a CD aren't enough), the truth will be shown that the above study, and other studies that have shown the RIAA incorrect, are in fact true, and the RIAA will be forced not only to rethink their PR strategy, but their ailing dinosaur of a business model.

The number of independant bands/labels has increased a hell of a lot, and of course the quality of the music is superior simply because there isn't the corporate pressure to compromise musical integrity just to satisfy a shareholder. I discovered a progressive rock stream, progrock.com, via an article here on SlashDot regarding the current release of IceCast. This stream has been the main source of bands whose CDs I now purchase.

I haven't purchased an RIAA affiliated CD in probably over 5 years because they haven't released anything worth buying, especially at US$20 a CD. During that time I've been purchasing independant CDs from non-RIAA affiliated labels, and I do so gladly knowing the artist receives more of the money, and the quality of music is far superior. The cost of these CDs is typically US$5-US$7 (not including S&H) cheaper than RIAA affiliated labels CDs too.

As an independant artist, I offer my own original music in mp3 format, freely downloadable, and distributable, see the link in the sig below.

It gives you a FreeDB-driven web-based playlist manager and controls a running XMMS process. The XMMS Oddcast DSP plugin lets it shout to a local Icecast server so you can listen locally or remotely.

I also like the Crossfade plugin, for smooth transitions between songs.

This problem has already been solved for another purpose. Go look at ices/icecast That will do OGG -> MP3. I'm sure you could work something out with some shells scripts and a few pipes.

Icecast 2?

It's kind of a pain if the site doesn't actually put the actual mms link somewhere in their page so you can start those players with it. For sites that feed you the link through intermediaries, you can use plugins for mozilla (mplayerplug-in and a xine equivalent). It's even more of a pain if they do browser identification and so on rather than just feeding the mms link to the browser, since you'd have to spoof whatever it is they are expecting.

Using xine or mplayer to handle audio-only streaming content feels like a kluge, though, I guess I also wish they had gone the ShoutCast or IceCast route, instead.

And for that matter, to be fair to Real, the the Helix server/player/tools are also Open/Free (both Speech and Beer).

That doesn't really address the 'free Real player is harder to find than Osama Bin Laden at night' comment... Real's own employees have bitched about that for years, God knows the rest of us have. Hopefully that gives the Open movement within Real (the Helix Community) a little more leverage in selling their case to the more hardline business folk still trying to figure out why their user base is evaporating.

OTOH, I'm a bit pissed off... I have a free Real player (with all the source) that works great. Thanks Click and Clack, I can't listen to your program anymore. That 'free' windows player comes with a $200 Windows tax attached.

Nothing like a damned fool 'statement' that flies in the face of common sense.

Monty

In case, you don't know, Icecast is an audio broadcasting system that streams music in both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis format. It is available under the terms of the GNU GPL. The main home page for the Icecast Project is located here.

Icecast is used mainly for a couple different reasons. If you are like me and work at a radio station, you may want to stream your live audio feed over the Internet. This provides access to listeners who would normally fall outside your nominal broadcasting radius. Or, if you wish to play Internet disc jockey, you can create your own playlist, insert sound bytes and broadcast to the world. This is useful for smaller stations who have limited wattage and who wish to play alternative music or talk radio. Because icecast does not broadcast over radio waves or use limited frequencies, it does not fall under FCC rulings. Anyone can set up an icecast server and begin streaming songs or audio files. This ranges from home use through networked machines or for use in a business environment. There are many stations currently using icecast.

But if you're serious about digital recording you're doing 24 bit. And I'm tired of hearing about how it doesn't matter, because it does. You may not be able to hear high frequencies directly, but I strongly believe you perceive them indirectly, such as in the subtleties of imaging, in the timbre of woodwinds, and in the overall resonance of a piano. *subtle* but important, IMO, and it *is* My O that matters here.

I agreed with basically all you said up to this point. It is important to record in 24 bits indeed but it doesn't have anything to do with inaudible high frequencies (24 bits is all about quantization, not sampling) and even if it did, they are still inaudible in the same way as ultraviolet is invisible. Of course a painter could use ultraviolet paint because in his opinion "[y]ou may not be able to see high frequencies directly, but [he] strongly believe[s] you perceive them indirectly, such as in the subtleties of imaging..." etc.

Even if you really did "perceive" the sound in some magical way without the involvement of your ears (in the same way as deaf people would percieve them -- hint: they don't) they would still be removed by the lowpass filter used in every player to remove the high frequency noise caused by the rectangular edges in digital signal representation.

You are postulating existence of the same phenomena as Professor Collins (an amateur psychoacoustician) in this discussion from over a year ago. Please notice the answer by Monty of Xiphophorus fame (author of Ogg Project (including the famous Vorbis CODEC), CCDA Paranoia and Icecast) who systematically invalidates every single argument of Professor Collins point by point.

Now, back to the 24-bit quantization (once again, having nothing to do with sampling frequency), it is important, because you want to be able to e.g. compress or expand the recorded track without loosing the resolution of 16-bit samples. For example you can easily add 20dB do a very quiet portion of sound, still using the full 16-bit resolution of samples on a final CD (24-bit samples have 256 times higher resolution than 16-bit) but that's about it. It is like processing graphics using 48-bit RGB (or 64-bit RGBA) because you can play with gamma and contrast without the need to sacrifice the final quality.

High sampling frequency can only make sense if you want to downsample it later to play the sound few octaves lower than the original. It is used in techno but is pointless in real music because it sounds awful (low C of any given instrument sounds differently than downsampled high C).

As about the cost of DAC on the minidisc recorders (or CD players for that matter) it is actually surprisingly cheap if you use a 1-bit DAC and the only analog component needed is the lowpass filter but I totally agree with you about the intentional suboptimal quality of consumer equipment. It is exactly like slowing the graphics card in drivers, so you could sell more expensive "pro" version of the very same hardware.

By the way, the -96bB of quiet is expensive indeed, but one have to keep in mind that it is 150000 times quieter than the lowest order bit of 16-bit samples and still 600 times quieter than the lowest bit of 24-bit samples so it is very expensive and equally pointless even when you use 24-bit quantization. You'd need 33-34 bits for -96bB to make any difference but I highly doubt the interference on your wires would introduce the noise lower than that and of course such a recording would only make sense if you are planning to add few tens dB before the finall CD mastering.

Now, I hate the techno/pop/rock crap as much as the next guy and I'm really

I have had a house-based MP3 server running over NFS for years now... My solution has been to have a stereo near each computer that has local ethernet access, and just run the output from each computer's sound card to the stereo next to it. I have customized shell scripts for Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X that take the best advantage of the system's ps, mpg123 and kill programs -- if you would like a copy (and instructions for use), email me.

While this setup allows for independent songs to be played on each system (which is great for most purposes), there are times when you want to play the same song on each system -- in essence, creating a "concert" around your house. To do this, I set up Icecast on a Linux machine, gave it all of the MP3s to play, and then connect to it from each other computer via mpg123. This approach does work, but the result is less than excellent -- each connection can be timed up to a second or so off from the other ones, which creates a really weird echo effect in the house. While this can be fun for a little while (standing between two stereos you get a "live" effect from studio material), it gets old real quick.

My proposed solution to this would be find a low-power FM transmitter that you can hook up to one machine -- play MP3s from a soundcard into the FM transmitter, then tune each other stereo to the FM frequency that the transmitter is using. I must admit that I haven't tried this, so I don't know how well it would work -- I do know that the signal would sound synchronized because radio waves travel at the speed of light. I know that Griffin Technology makes the iTrip, which is an FM transmitter specifically made for Apple's iPod. It claims to only have a 10-30 foot range though (limited by FCC regulations), so I'm not sure how well it would work. I'm sure there's a company or two out there that makes a low-power FM transmitter that would work well on any output source, in any situation.

Yet for what I've paid for my home automation system using MisterHouse, I can't get anywhere near it with "real" automation software.
My System is made up of the following components...

3 - 10.4" color touch screen displays with audio capability

16 - individual light switches with remote control

3 - video cameras

1 - 600 MHz PIII box running RH7.3

And handles these requirements

Control all devices from touchpads, or 802.11 devices.

View Cameras in near-real time (less than 1/2 sec lag)

Store MP3s on server, and playback via web interface.

Have internal shoutcast for "radio"

Have a ReplayTV server for additional storage

Act as VoiceMail/IVRS/Call Direction

Pull chosen content down for later review (get_strips)

Control PVRs (Stop/Play/etc)

Web Browse from touchpads, to pull movie times, etc...

(IN PROGRESS) Control Stereo equipment (mostly Sony gear)

(IN PROGRESS) Use existing home alarm to get door sensor and motion sensor information.
(IE. If it's night, and the lights are off, and the front door opens, then turn on the front doorway, lower stairs lights, etc...)
(IE #2, if the upstairs alarm panel is armed and it's night, turn off any light we forgot to turn off.)

and more...

What hardware/software I used was the

AOL/Gateway Connected Touchpads for the displays (bought new for $700)

the switches are X-10 "Decora" like switches

the video cameras are X-10 cameras (looking at the driveway, the pool, the dog-run)

the voice mail system is a PCI modem supported by VOCP

the video server is DVArchive

The audio streaming is done with Icecast

I'm still working on the S-Link and Alarm integration, but...

The whole budget for everything was $1,021.16 (I went over budget when I had to replace my modem.)

Adware? I have Quicktime, and I don't remember getting any adware with it... but maybe I missed something. But yeah, an open source alternative would be really nice... go Theora! (I'm assuming that someone will work out a way to stream it after it comes out, the way Icecast does for Ogg.)

Last week before the new netbroadcast rules took effect there were easily >100 netcast choices at icecast. There are now, as I look, 3 streams and 32 listeners.
Sad.
The little guys are knocked off.

A simple way would be to write the data to disc, and use annother program to follow behind it. I.e. use some program to record the stream, and then 6 secconds later set winamp on the still recording stream, that should work, but no promises.

Record the radio via the Line-In, set it to stream with a 5 second delay. Send the stream through IceCast and connect with XMMS/WinAmp and away you go. Heck, you could even use one of these and connect your soundcard's line out to your television and control the whole she-bang with your remote control.

So if the post says it's good at low bitrates, that implies it's bad at high?

Also, Ogg supports streaming.

I've seen another test showing the opposite: At 64kbps mp3pro was the way to go, while Ogg rocked at 160kbps and up. That was from another listening test I even think was posted on Slashdot.

Higher start-up and running costs mean less people using their technologies.

Of course I'd prefer to use Icecast but Real and Apple have far more cash to fight this than the Xiph crew.

Phil

There is currently no way for one Icecast daemon to serve both MP3 and Vorbis streams. You have to run two versions of the server, on two different ports. Aside from being inconvenient to administer, this also means you can't do total-bandwidth-usage new-connnection throttling: you have to assign half of your bandwidth to one server, and half to the other, instead of letting the usage determine it.

I'd like to start streaming Vorbis at DNA Lounge, but I won't do it if it has to be a "flag day" where I tell the users "today you have to stop using MP3 and start using Vorbis." The only way I (and, I suspect, just about everyone else) will start streaming Vorbis is if it is convenient to give people a choice of whether to listen to MP3 or Vorbis versions of the stream. As you can see on our audio page, we stream in many different bitrates, by having the "master" stream be downcoded into various lower resolution streams. Until I can do exactly that with Vorbis, there's no way I'll use it.

The way to encourage adoption of Vorbis is to make it be an option without shutting out existing MP3 users. As the number of Vorbis users grows, you can then think about phasing out support for MP3. But a flag day will never happen unless they give us a convenient upgrade path.

The new version of Icecast has been an even bigger vaporware disappointment than Vorbis has been (weren't the both targetted for release by the end of 2000?)

(Not to mention that the current releases of Icecast still have completely broken metadata streaming, and are (again) incompatible with Shoutcast's directory services.)

icecast has a list of stations. All of the stations blow, however.

It can... take a look at icecast... All OGG all the Time