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Component MP3/OGG Players?
RJV asks: "I currently have a rather large digital music collection. It is all in mp3 or ogg format and it is all from CDs that I personally own or have borrowed from friends. I have built a rather cheap mp3 server to store all of the music on and I listen to it on my machines rather easily. However, I'm looking for a better solution for accessing and playing from the archive in my living room. I currently have a linux box that uses the TV as a monitor. I can use it fine to play mp3/ogg files through the home theater, but mostly because I know where the buttons are in xmms. (640x480 isn't the best resolution for xmms). I've looked into multiple other projects, such as Aurian Music Manager and Freevo (the computer also has a TV in card) but have not been satisfied with their performance and/or ease of use, especially when trying to use my Universal Remote Control. So, I've decided that perhaps the best course of action for the living room is to purchase a stand-alone component that will integrate with my current system. What are my options and are there any experiences within the community with these products?"
"I'd like to find a product that has the following features (in order of importance).
- Ethernet Connectivity (NFS/SAMBA/something Linux can share out)
- Intuitive/Easy-to-Use Interface
- IR Remote Control (so I can use my Universal Remote)
- Ability to play mp3s and oggs
- TV display capabilities (may fall under Intuitive Interface)
- Digital Out
- CDR capabilities
Here is a project I found a little while ago that is trying to create a Linux distro (actually just a graphical interface) for home theater multimedia devices to be displayed on the TV.
h tm
here is the homepage:
http://staff.washington.edu/jmgasper/index.htm
check out the screenshots here, pretty cool looking!:
http://staff.washington.edu/jmgasper/screenshots.
--- Brad (http://www.LinuxReview.net)
The moment you say that musical works are somehow worth less than written works or inventions, then you have stripped musicians of their rights.
There's no way to guarantee that the song you just wrote isn't also the song that somebody else just wrote. Such coincidences are exceedingly likely to happen, and defending oneself in court against an allegation of plagiarism is prohibitively expensive for a novice songwriter. Thus, songwriters are already stripped of their rights.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Grab a 2-U case and build what you have under . . .
*GASP*
WinXP. I hate to say it, but for this application, Windows running UIce for a remote interpolation prog seems to work best for me. I played with several different things, but the best performance/usability I've gotten is with XP and UIce using an AverTV card. Here's why:
1) The AverTV Studio card works best under Windows and has limited TIVO-like functionality and has a remote control that most IR remote apps will recognize. It's also suprising quality, and quite cheap.
2) UIce will direct keystrokes to any running prog, and any key on a remote can be designated to pracicaly any function, including mouse movement.
3) WinAmp has a nifty double-size function that makes it quite usable on the TV. I don't know if XMMS or any of it's ilk have this, though.
4) A 2-U case with stereo feet screwed to the bottom looks like a stereo componant, mayhaps an amp.
5) Guests can use the machine intuitively. They already understand how everything works for the most part, they just have to get used to using an IR remote for the computer.
Reasons why Windows isn't a good choice for this:
1) Security. Unless your machine is behind a firewall, I wouldn't recomend it.
2) Umm . . . you want to run Linux.
I've built the box, and am quite impressed with the results. I'll be putting up a page for what to use and blah and blah in about a month, once I've got the faceplate cut and installed.
-Dirk R.
Sure, nobody asked me, but I knew they eventually would.