Rob Hudson wrote:
> The attached message has been automatically discarded.
Oops.
> Is there a piece of hardware to be had for cheap to pull those files
> over the wireless and play them on my entertainment system? Piping
> music to my stereo, movies to my stereo and TV. Preferables: HDMI
> and/or digital audio output.
>
> I know there is one solution: A Mac mini. I'm just checking if there
> may be something cheaper and more open.
First, SMP is a red herring. Your NAS should support AFS, NFS, or
DMAP, or you shoud get one that does.
I bought a Mac Mini in October for exactly the same purpose. I've
learned a few things since I got it.
First, the good. FrontRow is exactly the interface you want when
you're zoning in front of the TV, or when you're not a geek but you
live with one. (-: File sharing, once I got the Linux server set
up for guest access, is ridiculously effortless. Using mt-daapd, aka
FireflymediaServer, I made a jillion MP3 files show up in iTunes, as
well as in FrontRow.
Second, the bad. Out of the box, the Mac Mini supports very few video
formats. I've had to transcode nearly everything to make it play on
the Mini. I've downloaded a few freeware codecs, and they've helped a
little. I haven't bought QuickTime Pro. I don't know whether QTPro
gives a Mac good video compatibility or not.
Thirdly, the ugly. Rendezvous and DMAP/DAAP/DPAP.
You know that modern Linux systems have avahi, the open source
Rendezvos/Zeroconf/multicast DNS implementation. It sort of works out
of the box, but you have to configure it a bit to get file servers to
show up. After several hours of banging my head against the config
files, I got my rather complicated server setup working correctly.
Digital Media Access Protocol, DMAP, is Apple's family of protocols
for music, video, and photos. On the Mac, iTunes uses Digital Audio
Access Protocol (DAAP) for music, movies, and TV shows. iPhoto uses
Digital Photo Access Protocol (DPAP) for photos. I can't tell you
exactly what the difference between a movie and a TV show is.
FireflyMediaServer is the open source DMAP server. I've gotten it
working for music, which is what it did first. I haven't successfully
served any video yet, and it doesn't support photos. I intend to poke
at it some more, but it promises to be a lot of work. The FMS
developers claim it works for video, even transcoding on the fly. But
I'm not there yet.
I think it'll be Insanely Great[TM] if it works. Mac-to-Mac, you can
browse videos in FrontRow with a coverflow-like interface, and it's
transparent which vids are local and which are on the server.
> AppleTV is cheaper but doesn't have built-in SMB mounting -- you
> either need another computer as the server or hack it up.
Since it looks like everything needs to be transcoded into
QuickTime/H.264/AAC for the Mini anyway, the Mini's only advantages
over the Apple TV are its higher resolution output and a complete Mac
desktop. BTW, the Mini won't drive the TV at 1080p - it insists on
1080i. It has no trouble driving a monitor at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
Bob Miller K<bob>
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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