OK, looks like several people have already posted on this one, but I concur. I have two and they are great. I have had problems getting them to play in sync, but I usually don't want this behavior anyway, so hasn't been a problem for me.
Even though opinions seem very mixed, I thought I'd try Steam so as to encourage non-distributor (Vivendi) based game distribution (i.e. online). It took 3 hours to download Half-Life 2, but then it just hangs on the loading screen! Based on the amount of activity on my cable modem, I think it must not be done downloading, and they are just lying to me! http://steampowered.com/forums/ has no help on this (search is disabled!), and I can't find any option to email tech support. If I can't get any help on this within a few days from Valve, you can bet I'll never buy from them again.
Sounds about right, so in the spirit of imagining user requirements, I'll simply describe what I have done:
I've got a P3 450 MHz running XP Pro, with 300 GB of hard drive space. I'm using the optical digital output (SPDIF) from my soundcard driving a $9000 stereo system, so I don't want to fool with any kind of lossy compression, so I use FLAC. I use Winamp as the player, since there is a FLAC plug-in for Winamp, and a webserver plug-in. The webserver plugin allows you to send http get requests to Winamp to send commands to it.
Then I have a perl script that scans my directory structure (spanning multiple logical hard drives) for all FLAC (and WAV, and mp3), and generates an HTML file that has a (per album) table of contents, which is hyperlinked into the webpage body. In the body, you can play an album, any one song, or "create a playlist on the fly" by simply checking checkboxes (per song). This webpage is served by an Apache server, which is also running a Perl CGI script, which receives the commands from the webpage, and dispatches the appropriate commands to the Winamp webserver plugin.
Additionally, I can control my pre-pro from the same webpage, by using Win32SerialPort for Perl, and the pre-pro's serial port.
Lastly, I have a set of scripts that:
(1) Convert WAV files to FLAC (for use right after ripping a CD)
(2) Convert WAV/FLAC files to mp3, and copy them to another PC, where I maintain my iPod directory.
(3) Copy these mp3 to my PC at work.
Now I only need to use Apple's COM interface to automatically update my iTunes library so I don't have to go into iTunes and tell it to add a new folder!
Almost forgot to mention, the main reason I think the web interface is such a good idea, is because:
(1) I can control it from any computer on the network, and
(2) Using either an RF keyboard, and/or a standard universal remote and Girder, I can have full control of the stereo from my couch. For now, I have a 17" monitor in my stereo rack (yeah, it ain't pretty), and use PHP commands to make the web page text large on that monitor. Long term, I plan to have a 50-60" LCD or DLP projection TV, which will be much nicer.
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OK, looks like several people have already posted on this one, but I concur. I have two and they are great. I have had problems getting them to play in sync, but I usually don't want this behavior anyway, so hasn't been a problem for me.
Even though opinions seem very mixed, I thought I'd try Steam so as to encourage non-distributor (Vivendi) based game distribution (i.e. online). It took 3 hours to download Half-Life 2, but then it just hangs on the loading screen! Based on the amount of activity on my cable modem, I think it must not be done downloading, and they are just lying to me! http://steampowered.com/forums/ has no help on this (search is disabled!), and I can't find any option to email tech support. If I can't get any help on this within a few days from Valve, you can bet I'll never buy from them again.
Sounds about right, so in the spirit of imagining user requirements, I'll simply describe what I have done: I've got a P3 450 MHz running XP Pro, with 300 GB of hard drive space. I'm using the optical digital output (SPDIF) from my soundcard driving a $9000 stereo system, so I don't want to fool with any kind of lossy compression, so I use FLAC. I use Winamp as the player, since there is a FLAC plug-in for Winamp, and a webserver plug-in. The webserver plugin allows you to send http get requests to Winamp to send commands to it. Then I have a perl script that scans my directory structure (spanning multiple logical hard drives) for all FLAC (and WAV, and mp3), and generates an HTML file that has a (per album) table of contents, which is hyperlinked into the webpage body. In the body, you can play an album, any one song, or "create a playlist on the fly" by simply checking checkboxes (per song). This webpage is served by an Apache server, which is also running a Perl CGI script, which receives the commands from the webpage, and dispatches the appropriate commands to the Winamp webserver plugin. Additionally, I can control my pre-pro from the same webpage, by using Win32SerialPort for Perl, and the pre-pro's serial port. Lastly, I have a set of scripts that: (1) Convert WAV files to FLAC (for use right after ripping a CD) (2) Convert WAV/FLAC files to mp3, and copy them to another PC, where I maintain my iPod directory. (3) Copy these mp3 to my PC at work. Now I only need to use Apple's COM interface to automatically update my iTunes library so I don't have to go into iTunes and tell it to add a new folder! Almost forgot to mention, the main reason I think the web interface is such a good idea, is because: (1) I can control it from any computer on the network, and (2) Using either an RF keyboard, and/or a standard universal remote and Girder, I can have full control of the stereo from my couch. For now, I have a 17" monitor in my stereo rack (yeah, it ain't pretty), and use PHP commands to make the web page text large on that monitor. Long term, I plan to have a 50-60" LCD or DLP projection TV, which will be much nicer.