How [slashdot.org] many [slashdot.org] times [slashdot.org] are you going to say [slashdot.org] the [slashdot.org] same [slashdot.org] thing [slashdot.org]?
Until they wrench the keyboard from my cold dead fingers. If something is worth saying then it's worth repeating.
Media Center Version 11 - Software for Grown Ups
on
Winamp Down for the Count
·
· Score: 1, Informative
What a wonderful iTunes rip-off. Hah.
You're just showing your ignorance. Have you used both softwares for any appreciable amount of time? I have. When and if your media collections grows beyond the larval stage then you will probably realise the limitations of most jukebox software out there.
Considering that Media Center was first released several years before iTunes, that it is now at version 11, that it pioneered programmable smartlists and user-defined dynamic tags, client-server streaming, programmable visualisations, programmable and scriptable playback screens, and that it supports over 30 audio and video formats, multi-Zone playback, 32-bit internal processing, 3d digital playback upsampling, scheduled recording and broadcasting, on-the-fly downsampling and transcoding, as well as managing photo collections and Tivos, which would you call a "rip off"?
Furthermore, iTunes chokes on anything over 40000 files. I know, I tried it on my 100K multimedia collection. It just whimpered and died, much like the MS player and the Real Player. However, Media Center just kept on chugging, read in all tags correctly, and even successfully spent around 400 hours of CPU time analyzing the entire collection, writing BMP and auto dB levelling info into the ID3 tags. Given that this entailed processing around 800GB of data assorted into over a dozen different formats, and that Media Center completed this mammoth job without a single crash or complaint, I was impressed.
I'd just add that thing about MC that I like most is that its client-server streaming mode is not lamely limited to LANs like iTunes. I can stream from my home server to anywhere over the internet, and I do. It's quite a kick to be visit someone, or work abroad, and simply hit "Play" to instantly hear what I want to hear.
Lots of people say 'iTunes". But one of the great things about WinAmp was its complete interface flexibility with skins and mods. iTunes is classic Apple: "You'll take your music this way and no other. This is unquestionably the single greatest design ever... until *we* change it in the next release". The kind of people who like WinAmp for its freeform nature would probably find iTunes too limiting.
The best media jukebox software on Windows (for customization and probably overall) is Media Center. It has several modes (Maxi, Mini, Theatre) and the "Playing Now" screen can be customized with HTML, Flash, Java and ActiveX widgets to load and manipulate tag info, or anything else. So you get to make your own killer playback screens. But your streamer is a nice workaround iTunes' lack of interface flexibility.
How true that is. iTunes is classic Apple: "You'll take your music this way and no other. THis is unquestionably the single greatest design ever... until *we* change it in the next release".
The best media jukebox software on Windows (for customization and probably overall) is Media Center. It has several modes (Maxi, Mini, Theatre) and the "Playing Now" screen can be customized with HTML, Flash, Java and ActiveX widgets to load and manipulate tag info, or anything else. So you get to make your own killer playback screens. But your streamer is a nice workaround iTunes' lack of interface flexibility.
J River Media Center - It's iTunes For Grown Ups
on
Winamp Down for the Count
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
The best media jukebox software on Windows is probably Media Center. It's what iTunes would like to be when it grows up a bit. Unfortunately for Apple, it's a moving target. The motto is "All Media, One Interface".
You just need to subscribe to a show or two (I use ipodder and enjoy Adam Curry's Daily Source Code). Then listen to a couple of shows while you are away from your computer (important--do this while commuting or walking or something).
Been doing this for years with Media Center's Media Scheduler. Got several hundred of my favourite shows preserved for posterity and occasional listening (Essential Mix, Breezeblock, Left Right and Centre, etc). Thanks very much but there's nothing new to see her, moving right along. By the way, I think I recorded my first stream (Real Audio) and transcoded it into low mp3 bitrate for listening on an mp3 player around 1998 or so. Welcome to the party!
Seeing that Media Center is codec agnostic and does video as well, it is nice to be able to timeshift video from the web as well. I can download shows or upload from the ReplayTV. Audio is easy and a problem solved years ago. Video is more challnging but it's sure nice to be able to check out last night's Daily Show while commuting.
All these different portable players are great, but how do we deal with our libraries? My library is fully managed by iTunes, but is primarily MP3 (I don't import using AAC).
Yes, iTunes support for multi formats is rather... limited. Try something like Media Center - I've yet to find a format (audio or video) it can't manage. If your collection is fully tagged then transferring to another jukebox software should be relatively painless.
Because "podcasting" is just a rehash of internet streaming audio, which has been around for a decade? Finally Mac people have a few programs that can record streams and they think it's nirvana.
iTunes won't work for this...what would really be nice is something like iTunes that ran remotely so that I could control it from my laptop... iTunes is nice, but it is hardly the most advanced jukebox conceivable. There's a lot of room for improvement.
You're right there. Try Media Center - it makes iTunes look pretty weak. It has a web interface, an API interface, and of course a GUI. Best of all, it understand Zones with multiple distinct SPDIF outputs, so you can route different playback streams to different rooms or speaker configurations depending on mood. It also does ASIO playback (full 32-bit internal sound processing) so you have pinpoint control and amazing DSP options. Another thing MC is notable for is its client-server mode: the streaming works across Internet as well as Intranet. I've used it for on-demand streaming of tunes and video coast-to-coast. There is no silly LAN-only limitation.
If you have money to burn you should get an AirPanel controller with something like NetRemote for couch bliss. With less money you should go for a cheap JP1 remote.
There are some good MC user rigs described here, here.
Media Center embedded is also used as the software "glue" for some OEM'd HTPC products: Music Mountain and Cinemar come to mind. MC also understands uPNP, so it's becoming increasingly easy to autodiscover and stream to random devices using uPNP.
I think there is a category error here. ReplayTV or Tivo are not direct competitors to MCE - different setup, different price points. People buy something like a ReplayTV precisely because they want to deal with as little PC-like cruft as possible. Which, of course, MCE offers in droves. MCE still requires too much sit-up effort rather than a more comfortable TV-like sit-back groove. It's possible it may always be burdened by this because of its full-scale Windows nature.
Surely the closest competitor to MCE is the equivalent PC PVR software such as SageTV or BeyondTV (or even the crappy pack-in software from ATI or Hauppauge). I know MS wants to imagine this is otherwise by not easily unbundling the MCE software from the hardware base, but it's a fact.
: the condition of being different from the norm; also : a theory expounding the exceptionalism especially of a nation or region
I would say your definition of the US system of government to be superior to the vast majority of the world's other democratic systems to be exceptionalism. What definition of exceptionalism are you using?
Also, presenting blanket observations from anecdotal evidence is casuistry, and that's well-recognised as a specious argument.
You don't think that a blanket condemnation of virtually every single democratic system on the planet -- irrespective of their varying advantages and disadvantages -- versus the US system is not evidence of US exceptionalism?
Furthermore, you make a classic naive error of conflation between an electoral system, which I was talking about, and a legislative system. Many countries feature several different systems of electoral voting feeding into different models of government. Your blanket condemnation is therefore even more ridiculous.
How do you know? Have you done a poll? Have you tracked a representative sample. How do you classify a median representative of/. and how do you distinguish yourself? This throwaway statement speaks volumes about your perception of yourself. Believe me, you really do need to get out some more.
I contend that we cannot consider ANY third party candidate to be truly serious about running for President until they have run for AND WON a race wherein the votes cast were made from a statewide race
Given that roughly 50% of adults don't bother voting, and you have a system where typically 50-70% of votes cast are effectively "wasted" or thrown away by the mechanics of the process, you have a situation where the vast majority of people see candidates being elected for whom they did not vote, or actively voted against. That is pretty sad.
I love it how the Apple fanbois have been repeating like a mantra for the past two years "audio only good, video output bad" in drone-like Pavlovian response to the Delphic utterances of their Cult Boss Steve. Despite the overwhelming evidence that there was a healthy market for portable digital video players they persisted in repeating over and throwaway mantras from Big Brother Jobs about how nobody needed video, or colour, or photo support. Even the existence of literally dozens of PVP handhelds in the marketplace failed to convince most of them.
Now, however, that it seems possible that Apple might bless the product category with its sacred magic beans, suddenly portable video is the *coolest* *thing* *ever*! And hey, you know? Apple invented it!
The "next" thing would be video, but that'll be at least 3-5 years away.
Have you looked in Best Buy or any other big box store the past few years? I think video portables are here. The question is, does anyone really want them.
The other movie, it's on VHS, if anybody wants it.... I'm not going to spend the, we're talking millions of dollars here, the money and the time to refurbish that, because to me, it doesn't really exist anymore.
This is obvious bunk. The original versions were cleaned up dramatically, both picture and sound, for the Ultimate Edition Laserdiscs, or whatever they called them. And there are some very, very, very fine DVD conversions (and Divx versions!) of the LD editions floating around as torrents. So Lucas's weird wish that they be confined just to old mouldering VHS is just fantasy. He doesn't even acknowledge the existence of Laserdisc, and all the late-80s/early-90s high-quality Star Wars releases. My God, a guy I know even has a Videodisc edition of the Trilogy and it looks very fine. Anyway, this interview once again illustrated to me that Lucas is indeed a man devoid of shame.
I have a hard time believing the ReplayTV option is much better
Here's the thing... the ReplayTV commercial skip really is that much better. The fact that it's so much better than Tivo is one major reason the TV companies spent so much time suing the various RTV owners but left Tivo untouched.
As it records the RTV monitors the record stream and analyzes for commercial break cues such as fade-outs, fade-ins, sudden increases in volume normalization, stuff like that.
Along with the MPGs it writes, it also writes associated XML info files with chunk sequence information. So during playback, if you decide to "Skip Commercials", then the RTV just jumps right past those ad blocks. You don't even get a notification that they were there. No fiddling with remote buttons. It Just Works.
Well, around 95% of the time it works. For those other times, you can of course hit a manual 30-second skip on the remote, or customize a button for longer skips, or punch in the number of minutes you want to jump ahead. I'd imagine the Tivo is similar.
The fact that the RTV tags the content chunks has some cool applications. The first is that when and if you decide to move the MPGs over the LAN to your PC/Mac/Linux for editing or conversion to DVD or XVid, then with the excellent RTVTools and ReVue you can choose to transcode the entire stream, or just output the commercial-stripped stream. It's a time saver.
The second cool feature is a consequence of tagging the commercials: inverting playbvack to skip all content and play only commercials. I use this for the Superbowl - just play it back on "Content Skip" and you don't have to fast-forward through several hours of tedious homo-eroticism and tight bums but can just sit back and watch all the adverts uninterruped.
And as for hacking your Tivo to add extra disks and network connectivity, then Bravo! But you know all those things come standard with ReplayTV, right, and the network sharing is unencumbered by HMO's clunky DRM?
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How [slashdot.org] many [slashdot.org] times [slashdot.org] are you going to say [slashdot.org] the [slashdot.org] same [slashdot.org] thing [slashdot.org]?
Until they wrench the keyboard from my cold dead fingers. If something is worth saying then it's worth repeating.
What a wonderful iTunes rip-off. Hah.
You're just showing your ignorance. Have you used both softwares for any appreciable amount of time? I have. When and if your media collections grows beyond the larval stage then you will probably realise the limitations of most jukebox software out there.
Considering that Media Center was first released several years before iTunes, that it is now at version 11, that it pioneered programmable smartlists and user-defined dynamic tags, client-server streaming, programmable visualisations, programmable and scriptable playback screens, and that it supports over 30 audio and video formats, multi-Zone playback, 32-bit internal processing, 3d digital playback upsampling, scheduled recording and broadcasting, on-the-fly downsampling and transcoding, as well as managing photo collections and Tivos, which would you call a "rip off"?
Furthermore, iTunes chokes on anything over 40000 files. I know, I tried it on my 100K multimedia collection. It just whimpered and died, much like the MS player and the Real Player. However, Media Center just kept on chugging, read in all tags correctly, and even successfully spent around 400 hours of CPU time analyzing the entire collection, writing BMP and auto dB levelling info into the ID3 tags. Given that this entailed processing around 800GB of data assorted into over a dozen different formats, and that Media Center completed this mammoth job without a single crash or complaint, I was impressed.
I'd just add that thing about MC that I like most is that its client-server streaming mode is not lamely limited to LANs like iTunes. I can stream from my home server to anywhere over the internet, and I do. It's quite a kick to be visit someone, or work abroad, and simply hit "Play" to instantly hear what I want to hear.
Lots of people say 'iTunes". But one of the great things about WinAmp was its complete interface flexibility with skins and mods. iTunes is classic Apple: "You'll take your music this way and no other. This is unquestionably the single greatest design ever... until *we* change it in the next release". The kind of people who like WinAmp for its freeform nature would probably find iTunes too limiting.
The best media jukebox software on Windows (for customization and probably overall) is Media Center. It has several modes (Maxi, Mini, Theatre) and the "Playing Now" screen can be customized with HTML, Flash, Java and ActiveX widgets to load and manipulate tag info, or anything else. So you get to make your own killer playback screens. But your streamer is a nice workaround iTunes' lack of interface flexibility.
This is news to me.
How true that is. iTunes is classic Apple: "You'll take your music this way and no other. THis is unquestionably the single greatest design ever... until *we* change it in the next release".
The best media jukebox software on Windows (for customization and probably overall) is Media Center. It has several modes (Maxi, Mini, Theatre) and the "Playing Now" screen can be customized with HTML, Flash, Java and ActiveX widgets to load and manipulate tag info, or anything else. So you get to make your own killer playback screens. But your streamer is a nice workaround iTunes' lack of interface flexibility.
The best media jukebox software on Windows is probably Media Center. It's what iTunes would like to be when it grows up a bit. Unfortunately for Apple, it's a moving target. The motto is "All Media, One Interface".
The best media jukebox software on Windows is probably Media Center.
You just need to subscribe to a show or two (I use ipodder and enjoy Adam Curry's Daily Source Code). Then listen to a couple of shows while you are away from your computer (important--do this while commuting or walking or something).
Been doing this for years with Media Center's Media Scheduler. Got several hundred of my favourite shows preserved for posterity and occasional listening (Essential Mix, Breezeblock, Left Right and Centre, etc). Thanks very much but there's nothing new to see her, moving right along. By the way, I think I recorded my first stream (Real Audio) and transcoded it into low mp3 bitrate for listening on an mp3 player around 1998 or so. Welcome to the party!
Seeing that Media Center is codec agnostic and does video as well, it is nice to be able to timeshift video from the web as well. I can download shows or upload from the ReplayTV. Audio is easy and a problem solved years ago. Video is more challnging but it's sure nice to be able to check out last night's Daily Show while commuting.
iPod was popular before the music store. It's iTunes itself. The killer app for organizing your music. Nobody does it better or simpler.
The fact that you think this is probably because you haven't tried Media Center.
All these different portable players are great, but how do we deal with our libraries? My library is fully managed by iTunes, but is primarily MP3 (I don't import using AAC).
Yes, iTunes support for multi formats is rather... limited. Try something like Media Center - I've yet to find a format (audio or video) it can't manage. If your collection is fully tagged then transferring to another jukebox software should be relatively painless.
just one front page item on podcasting?
Because "podcasting" is just a rehash of internet streaming audio, which has been around for a decade? Finally Mac people have a few programs that can record streams and they think it's nirvana.
Cool. According to the DVD Player Compatibility List, there are just 5 players currently available with DIVX and ethernet. There are now, however, about 223 standalone DIVX players, around 13% of the total, which is much more than this time last year. Even the most modern ones, however, still sometimes have trouble with advanced or unsupported DIVX/XVid profiles.
iTunes won't work for this...what would really be nice is something like iTunes that ran remotely so that I could control it from my laptop ... iTunes is nice, but it is hardly the most advanced jukebox conceivable. There's a lot of room for improvement.
You're right there. Try Media Center - it makes iTunes look pretty weak. It has a web interface, an API interface, and of course a GUI. Best of all, it understand Zones with multiple distinct SPDIF outputs, so you can route different playback streams to different rooms or speaker configurations depending on mood. It also does ASIO playback (full 32-bit internal sound processing) so you have pinpoint control and amazing DSP options. Another thing MC is notable for is its client-server mode: the streaming works across Internet as well as Intranet. I've used it for on-demand streaming of tunes and video coast-to-coast. There is no silly LAN-only limitation.
If you have money to burn you should get an AirPanel controller with something like NetRemote for couch bliss. With less money you should go for a cheap JP1 remote.
There are some good MC user rigs described here, here.
Media Center embedded is also used as the software "glue" for some OEM'd HTPC products: Music Mountain and Cinemar come to mind. MC also understands uPNP, so it's becoming increasingly easy to autodiscover and stream to random devices using uPNP.
iTunes is, in my opinion, the best software to come along in a long time for managing a large database of music.
You just haven't seen Media Center yet then, have you? You're in for a treat.
Of course, seeing as how neither MC nor iTunes is a linux solution we're both thread crapping. But you started it.
I think there is a category error here. ReplayTV or Tivo are not direct competitors to MCE - different setup, different price points. People buy something like a ReplayTV precisely because they want to deal with as little PC-like cruft as possible. Which, of course, MCE offers in droves. MCE still requires too much sit-up effort rather than a more comfortable TV-like sit-back groove. It's possible it may always be burdened by this because of its full-scale Windows nature.
Surely the closest competitor to MCE is the equivalent PC PVR software such as SageTV or BeyondTV (or even the crappy pack-in software from ATI or Hauppauge). I know MS wants to imagine this is otherwise by not easily unbundling the MCE software from the hardware base, but it's a fact.
More stuff about (mostly) PC PVR software.
That is hardly exceptionalism. Please study and learn the term before debating further.
Main Entry: exceptionalism
Pronunciation: ik-'sep-shn&-"li-z&m, -sh&-n&l-"i-
Function: noun
: the condition of being different from the norm; also : a theory expounding the exceptionalism especially of a nation or region
I would say your definition of the US system of government to be superior to the vast majority of the world's other democratic systems to be exceptionalism. What definition of exceptionalism are you using?
Also, presenting blanket observations from anecdotal evidence is casuistry, and that's well-recognised as a specious argument.
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family by HP Lovecraft.
You're backtracking:: You don't think that a blanket condemnation of virtually every single democratic system on the planet -- irrespective of their varying advantages and disadvantages -- versus the US system is not evidence of US exceptionalism?
Furthermore, you make a classic naive error of conflation between an electoral system, which I was talking about, and a legislative system. Many countries feature several different systems of electoral voting feeding into different models of government. Your blanket condemnation is therefore even more ridiculous.
Exhibit B:How do you know? Have you done a poll? Have you tracked a representative sample. How do you classify a median representative of
I definately get out more than the average Slashdot poster.
So as well as subscribing to the notion of American exceptionalism, you also subscribe to the notion of personal exceptionalism.
Bully for you.
having a two party system allows for less adherance to rigid dogma
You don't get out much, do you?
I contend that we cannot consider ANY third party candidate to be truly serious about running for President until they have run for AND WON a race wherein the votes cast were made from a statewide race
A valid point, but I am given to understand that the US voting system is inherently flawed and unrepresentative, using as it does early 19th century plurality voting that awards complete victory to the largest single minority party. Most voting in the US eschews anything resembling the representative, developed during the 20th century that encourage participation, and promote political buy-in.
Given that roughly 50% of adults don't bother voting, and you have a system where typically 50-70% of votes cast are effectively "wasted" or thrown away by the mechanics of the process, you have a situation where the vast majority of people see candidates being elected for whom they did not vote, or actively voted against. That is pretty sad.
I love it how the Apple fanbois have been repeating like a mantra for the past two years "audio only good, video output bad" in drone-like Pavlovian response to the Delphic utterances of their Cult Boss Steve. Despite the overwhelming evidence that there was a healthy market for portable digital video players they persisted in repeating over and throwaway mantras from Big Brother Jobs about how nobody needed video, or colour, or photo support. Even the existence of literally dozens of PVP handhelds in the marketplace failed to convince most of them.
Now, however, that it seems possible that Apple might bless the product category with its sacred magic beans, suddenly portable video is the *coolest* *thing* *ever*! And hey, you know? Apple invented it!
The "next" thing would be video, but that'll be at least 3-5 years away.
Have you looked in Best Buy or any other big box store the past few years? I think video portables are here. The question is, does anyone really want them.
The other movie, it's on VHS, if anybody wants it. ... I'm not going to spend the, we're talking millions of dollars here, the money and the time to refurbish that, because to me, it doesn't really exist anymore.
This is obvious bunk. The original versions were cleaned up dramatically, both picture and sound, for the Ultimate Edition Laserdiscs, or whatever they called them. And there are some very, very, very fine DVD conversions (and Divx versions!) of the LD editions floating around as torrents. So Lucas's weird wish that they be confined just to old mouldering VHS is just fantasy. He doesn't even acknowledge the existence of Laserdisc, and all the late-80s/early-90s high-quality Star Wars releases. My God, a guy I know even has a Videodisc edition of the Trilogy and it looks very fine. Anyway, this interview once again illustrated to me that Lucas is indeed a man devoid of shame.
I have a hard time believing the ReplayTV option is much better
Here's the thing... the ReplayTV commercial skip really is that much better. The fact that it's so much better than Tivo is one major reason the TV companies spent so much time suing the various RTV owners but left Tivo untouched.
As it records the RTV monitors the record stream and analyzes for commercial break cues such as fade-outs, fade-ins, sudden increases in volume normalization, stuff like that.
Along with the MPGs it writes, it also writes associated XML info files with chunk sequence information. So during playback, if you decide to "Skip Commercials", then the RTV just jumps right past those ad blocks. You don't even get a notification that they were there. No fiddling with remote buttons. It Just Works.
Well, around 95% of the time it works. For those other times, you can of course hit a manual 30-second skip on the remote, or customize a button for longer skips, or punch in the number of minutes you want to jump ahead. I'd imagine the Tivo is similar.
The fact that the RTV tags the content chunks has some cool applications. The first is that when and if you decide to move the MPGs over the LAN to your PC/Mac/Linux for editing or conversion to DVD or XVid, then with the excellent RTVTools and ReVue you can choose to transcode the entire stream, or just output the commercial-stripped stream. It's a time saver.
The second cool feature is a consequence of tagging the commercials: inverting playbvack to skip all content and play only commercials. I use this for the Superbowl - just play it back on "Content Skip" and you don't have to fast-forward through several hours of tedious homo-eroticism and tight bums but can just sit back and watch all the adverts uninterruped.
And as for hacking your Tivo to add extra disks and network connectivity, then Bravo! But you know all those things come standard with ReplayTV, right, and the network sharing is unencumbered by HMO's clunky DRM?
I would LOVE to see [commercials] just gone completely ... I am glad that I went w/even less painful option of Tivo but that's me."
It's not too late to renounce your youthful indiscretion and come over to the dark side. ReplayTV, no commercials, no DRM, internet show sharing...