[mythtv-users] alternatives to mythmusic?

Tom Burt benefici at fastmail.fm
Sun Mar 5 20:36:27 UTC 2006


On Sunday 05 March 2006 16:59, Tony Rein wrote:
> On Saturday March 4, 2006 9:21 pm, Gabe Rubin wrote:
> > I just set up a new backend/frontend that has completely
> > digital outputs (sound and video).  I have my music from my
> > desktop computer mounted via samba to the mythbox.  Playing
> > music via myth is no problem as intended, but with several
> > thousand music files, it is very difficult to navigate with a
> > remote.
> >
> > Is ther any alternative out there?  Preferably something I can
> > control from my desktop?  My windows box is not connected to
> > my receiver via digital (it is analog) and I get a nasty
> > ground hum.  I would prefer to use the mythbox and control it
> > from a remote computer, even if it means not using mythmusic.

I have separate frontend and backend machines and was also looking for a 
similar solution. I tried mp3act and mpd. My experience so far (please 
correct me, wherever I'm wrong) :

mp3act:
- Web interface
- Very easy to start playback on both the server side and the client
- Requires well-tagged files! This was the main drawback for me. Some of my 
files don't have proper tags and you cannot browse by directory.
- Browsing by tags is also limited, you can only browse by artist or genre. 
Even if you browse all albums, you get the full list, but again, sorted by 
artist.
- You have to login first. Great if you want to protect your collection but I 
don't and I couldn't find a way to disable this completely
- I found no way of pausing/stopping playback on the server (jukebox mode).
- I have at least one mp3 file that mp3act failed to play. (Might be caused by 
a + sign in the file name?)

mpd (Music Player Daemon):
- LOTS of different clients, including console, graphical, web etc.
- Can play back locally and over the network - so far I only tried playback on 
the server side.
- Search/browse capabilities depend on the client. I'm using phpMp2 now as a 
client, this can browse by directory and by artist and album tags
- Pause/Stop work as expected
- You can setup the server to require a password for certain commands but can 
also enable all commands without a password.
- It can played all my files

I've only spent a few days with mpd so far. I found phpMp2 a bit confusing 
sometimes, maybe I will get used to it after a couple more days.

Tom


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