Audio Only Streaming from a Media Center

kmitty · 11 Jan 2012 at 18:54

I have a Windows 7 media center box in one room which holds a large amount of music and provides blu-ray/DVD, internet and Freesat viewing to a plasma screen. In another room I just want a (relatively inexpensive) device that can access JUST the music files on the media center for playback - ie no requirement for video. Anyone know what might be suitable? Happy to get hands dirty building a small form factor device - the big show stopper when I briefly looked at this before was running some kind of user interface to select the music to be played on a (very) small screen and some means of input (could be a small touch screen if such could be bought) - ie what software and what screen and input mechanism?

Any ideas people?

shanestatham · 11 Jan 2012 at 20:07

A modern smart phone or ipod would do this. My android phone can stream music from spotify, itunes etc so all you would need then is some tasty speakers with audio input from jack to headphone socket on the phone / ipod touch.

batfink · 12 Jan 2012 at 10:02

Couldn't you run Sqeezebox server and then use a squeezebox device of your choice to stream music?

Martynt74 · 12 Jan 2012 at 10:10

batfink said:
Couldn't you run Sqeezebox server and then use a squeezebox device of your choice to stream music?

This would be my personal preference. Although to add to the above you can use an app on an Android/Iphone as a Squeezebox player if you want to test functionality before investing in the hardware

kmitty · 12 Jan 2012 at 12:38

batfink said:
Couldn't you run Sqeezebox server and then use a squeezebox device of your choice to stream music?

Can the Squeezbox not access music files held by MS Media Center as don't really want to change that end of things

Martynt74 · 12 Jan 2012 at 12:51

SBS is just an application you would install on the Windows 7 machine. It wouldnt replace anything you have existingly

BigT · 12 Jan 2012 at 16:13

Squeeze box is the ideal middle ground I think.

App on smartphone is the cheapest if you already have the smart phone. The big drawback is that you need the thing plugged into your speakers and you use it as the interface. Fine if you want to sit near your speakers or just set a playlist off and leave it I guess.

Squeeze box is a nice solution as described by others.

Sonos is another option but more expensive and I'm not sure you need the features it offers over and above squeeze box.

If you've got an old PC you could rig that up and share the drive on the media centre. Then plug it into a TV for an interface or use a smartphone app to do the same thing. (Itunes on the old PC with its library being the WMC and Apple's "remote" app would work well here)