For those of you who are living together with a spouse or kids, I'd like to understand a bit better how you would like to use local music libraries in the future. Ignore what's supported in LMS and Squeezebox today and instead think about how you would like it to work in the future.
Do you have a need to let each family member browse their library individually ? - Yes. But the content overlaps. For example - the children needs access to primarily children-specifc music and childrens audiobooks, they dont really need much else - I need access to separate libraries of music, audiobooks and radio show archives, plus the kids stuff - wife needs access to only a subset of the music I play If so, where are the music files stored ? On a central computer/NAS, on a computer/NAS per family member or on the portable device of each family member ? - all on a single HTPC in the house. Anything itunes on my laptop or the wife's has been copied over from the HTPC where all ripping/conversion is done as well If you have individual libraries, do you also have a need for shared libraries which is common for multiple family members ? - Yes as detailed above Do you have a need to keep track of playlists for each family member ? - not really. Do you have a need to keep track of favorites for each family member ? - yes Do you have a need to keep track of ratings and playback statistics for each family member ? - not in our household Does each family member have individual players which only one of the family members mostly use ? If so, should all players be controllable by everyone or do you want access to certain players to be restricted ? In that case why ? - everyone has PRIMARY players, but still a great deal of overalap - dont need "restrictions" as much as segmentation to make browsing simpler - eg the Player in the kids room use mainly by kids dont need cluttering their browsing when their segments are like 2% of the total audio files on the server - The mobile players - Ipeng and SqueezePlay - are mainly used by the individual but for example in some instances my wifes ipad is the only one at hand and I want to access my music there Does each family member have their individual remote control/smartphone to control the players or do you also have remote controls which you share between different family members ? - both individual (wife and i with smartphones) plus tablets which we share among us. If you have a remote control which you share between multiple family members, is it a IR-remote, smartphone, tablet or computer ? - IR remote for the SB Touch and Radio, plus the tablets which are shared How would your dream system work to work as good as possible for usage of local music on Squeezeboxes and portable devices in your family? - Mainly need the squeezebox server software to be able to present the content it holds as several virtual Libraries without the need for kludges/plugins. No disrespect to your plugs, which I have actually bought many of, but the entire process is too intricate and fussy. I think 95% of the people I know would not even attempt to think about doing that kind of "geek work", even if I am. And god forbid something is off, no way my wife, who is well educated, will even begin to be able to look the plugins and tweak it. IMO this needs to be a core functionality within the server software. Even better within a graphical interface, maybe driven by folder or genre drag and dropping. This level of user friendliness is where whole-house audio needs to go - or it will shrivel up even further until the likes of Apple come along and deliver - albeit at the cost of crippling and dumbing it down. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Osamede's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=11753 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=98199 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
