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Squeezebox MP3 Player Hacked to Play Video
Xenna writes "The Squeezebox MP3 Player has found a new application: With the Videobox software
and some cabling it becomes a networked Video Player. This is the latest development to come out of
the active community Slim Devices have managed to attract around
their very hackable MP3 players. Only last week the SoftSqueeze
software player was announced on the Slim users mailing list. The Squeezebox was reviewed on Slashdot last December."
It's gratifying to see a company which is aware of the "geek" segment of the market and is willing to produce intentionally hackable and extensible media players for us to play with. This can only be a good development and I hope they do well.
i don't have the thing myself, so i couldn't tell
because the ogg support is server-side rather than in the firmware isn't this able to be patched?
With all the flames for the iPod and its battery, I can't help but wonder.. do these people think that most consumer products with rechargeable batteries allow the batteries to be replaced easily, if at all? I just threw out a cordless screwdriver whose batteries stopped taking a charge, and there was no replacing them. A few months ago I threw away a rechargeable flashlight for the same reason. So what is it about the iPod that makes it deserve such relentless attacks? Do a google search on "ipod battery" and I'm sure you'll find dozens of sites that offer replacement batteries for the iPod, with detailed instructions on how to do the replacement - that's more than I can say for any of the rechargeable items I've thrown away in the past few years.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
..oddly reminiscent of the Rockbox project (which has also enabled an MP3 player to play video).
Indeed it would look like that to me as well. In the words of the Videobox site: "Just add a way to get your PC's Video & Audio signals to your living room TV set to transform your Squeezebox into a Video Player."
It is a rather novel way to control things none the less, and with something like the suggested Trust Wireless Televiewer, you could stream video nicely through to your TV set from your PC sans-wires. In conclusion however, it doesn't look like a reason to rush out and buy a Squeezebox.
This definately appears to be the case. I read the post and hoped that they were actaully streaming video to the squeezebox and using some clever server hack to modulate the video signal and send it out over one of the audio channels. This is not the case at all. They're just using the Squeezebox as the remote control for a PC connected to the TV.
While this isn't as exiciting, it's still a nifty hack. One of the great things about the Squeezebox is that its form factor and UI enable it to integreate seamlessly into an existing AV system. Not only does it look like an AV component, but it acts like one too. The UI is simple and it's easy to control with the remote control.
Other hacks let you use the Squeezebox to check weather and stock quotes. If your PC is already connected to your computer and you have a Squeezebox, this hack lets you control your audio and video using one remote and the simple display provided by the Squeezebox. It's looks like it's a natural way to combine two similar things (audio and video) under one UI, even though the data paths are completely separate.
So, even though it's not a streaming video hack, it's still a nifty hack.
(it's worth noting that I'm a Squeezebox owner and love the hacks that people have done for it - the few times I've had a cool idea for it, someone's already done it! It's a great community and it's great that Slim Devices has opened up the software for tinkering.)
-Chris
Elgato just released EyeHome which streams audio/video from your Computer(Mac Only) via Ethernet to a TV for the same price. It looks sweet, XLR8YourMac has had a bunch of users review it. It only accepts Mpeg1, Mpeg2(non-VBR), and DIVX streams from their "EyeHome Media Server". The same company Sells nice firewire tuners with TIVO like software that incorporates into the setup.
Seriously though, if you want a good TV frontend for your computer, get an Xbox and put Linux on it (no, you don't need to buy a mod-chip). It costs less than any other option and is a lot more flexable.
There's a list on the SlimDevices website, and there's also an alternative (GPL'd) audio server
Since this just makes the $250 Squeezebox a really expensive remote for you 'puter, you might want to consider some other products instead.
If want you want is just a remote for your computer, then the Keyspan Digital Media Remote provides a $40 dollar alternative.
If you want to stream video to you TV from your Mac, then El Gato's eyeHome will pull this off at the same price as the Squeezebox. It will also stream music from iTunes and do slideshows from iPhoto, with no hacking required. ( I know.. what's the fun in that :) )
If you want to wait for Microsoft Announceware, you could get the Windows Media Center Extender for XBOX and use the XBOX to stream video to your TV.
Or at ~$150 you could get the Linksys Wireless Media Adapter . This is the first round of Intel's Digital Media Adapters , of which there is a good review of the technology at linuxdevices.com
Enjoy -jim
If you're wishing that there were a device that did what the headline suggests that this hack does (that is, play AVIs and stuff without a PC doing all the work) then you might want to look into this.
0 03/qcast/qcast -3.html
I bought an early release of the BroadQ QCast software (which I believe is now sold as the Mad Catz GameShark Media Player) for the PS2. It's pretty interesting - you have to get the PS2 network adapter so that your PS2 has ethernet, and then you also have to run the Java based streaming server app on the server that has all your media files on it. Once you've done that, you run this software and it lets you browse and play your audio and video media.
Initially I was pretty disappointed in the video performance. Basically most of the movies I had wouldn't play (either due to codec incompatibility, or the codec not being able to keep up with the frame rate) and especially because there was no fast-forward or rewind. A later release fixed most of those issues including the FF/RW.
It's still kinda cool but I'm sort of over my movie-ripping phase and back to DVDs so I don't use it that much. To be honest it's fairly cumbersome to get it all set up, so unless you really want to watch a lot of non-DVD digital video on your TV, it's probably not worth it. But you might find that this is a good audio solution with the bonus of movie playback.
Tom's Hardware has a review that's concurrent with my initial experiences:
http://www.arstechnica.com/reviews/
Yep, a (wireless/ethernet) video remote with a display. That's basically what it is.
;-) That must be worth a few hundred bucks...
Mind you for that $250 you buy a great network audio player and the video remote stuff is just a free extra.
The Squeezebox has digital outputs and can stream FLAC lossless compressed audio. Just add a really good external DAC ($$$) and the sound quality should satisfy any digital audiophile while doing away with ugly stacks of CD's.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to satisfy an audiophile?
Regards,
Xenna