Music Media Player

danyulland

danyulland

danyulland

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Joined
17 Jun 2005
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219
Hello,

I'm after some advice im not sure there is something on the market that particularly suits what I want. I currently have a nice amp, mordaunt short speakers and a squeezebox3 to stream my music(all ALAC and FLAC).

Although the Squeezebox has served me well I get a bit sick of turning my computer on all the time and dont find it very convenient(I don't want to be forced to buy a NAS), on top of that after seeing my friends Apple TV i like the idea of an onscreen tv based music system.

Problem is Apple TV is not particularly suitable as the new one doesn't have a Harddrive in it and it doesnt support FLAC (although i could convert if needed).

I've been looking at the Popcorn Hour as it supports external Harddrives and supports lots of formats, and has lots of video services, but i get the impression the UI isnt really designed for music(which is most important).

So i guess what im looking for is a media player that i can transfer all my music too, possibly that i can pop a hardrive in (would like 200GB+), is quiet and has a decent interface. Things like youtube and Iplayer would definately be a bonus.

Any suggestions?
 
Have you had a look at the Squeezebox Touch, which has a cut-down version of squeezebox server built-in? Just add an external USB hard drive for media.
Personally I wouldn't want to have to turn the TV on to listen to music (and it would just be swapping turning one device on instead for another).
 
Wdtv live has YouTube, no iplayer though.

Most likely it's the same as the others though now designed for music.

But you can select music then folder view and if your hdd is like K\Music\artists
Then you can view them like that,

Don't know exactly what designed for music would be like
 
I haven't got a Touch, but think I've read that it can act as a squeezebox server to other devices too, so you could run your existing SB3 from it in another room. It might be worth a read-up on server performance/responsiveness, as the Touch obviously hasn't got the processing power of a pc.
 
Yes, the touch seems like the perfect device for this. Seems like it can be had from some places for as little as £180 aswell which is excellent.

I think i'd recommend using an external hard drive with its own power supply rather than using one powered by the USB though

Wonko is also correct, you would be able to use the touch as the SB server for other SB devices
 
My SB3 in the lounge stopped working a couple of weeks ago, and I was half hoping it would give me an excuse to go looking at the duet and touch, or even a transporter. Unfortunately it was just the PSU that had failed :/ Ho hum.
 
im considering the touch but this seems an expensive option, and ive read that with big libraries the external hard drive doesn't always work well.

Might be just worth getting a cheap NAS i no i already said i didnt want todo this but i can get a 1TB QNAP TS-110 for 150ish. Ill just stick it in the lounge next to the router....

hmm options...
 
Hi again :) I've not had first hand experience of cheap NASs like the qnap, but you may find that their performance would not be great either. Better than a cheap NAS might be a cheap HTPC running squeezebox server and XBMC/boxxee/whatever. That way you'd get the options for youtube, iplayer, etc. too.
Sorry, that's more options to hmm over ;)
 
I would agree with the above. I bought a Netgear Readynas and the performance with the remote devices was very poor. However performance using the Touch direct was fine. (This is with a library of about 45k tracks.) So it might be fine

Otherwise i then ended up building an atom based machine for about £250 which i installed Vortexbox on. This is so far working excellently. However you'd also need a touch so the total cost would begin to add up
 
A WDTV Live (or whatever its called now) with an external HDD caddy connected via USB should tick all your boxes.

It's a passive unit, and plays MP3/WMA/FLAC/AAC out the box. It's also about half your budget, is easy to use and can connect to Youtube.

It offers tag searching, as well as folder searching, once the drive is indexed, so you should have no issues with finding a setup that suits you.
 
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