home audio system

[Evan Leibovitch]

FWIW, earlier this year I decided to pull the plug on Rogers and go
antenna+Internet.

Process so far:

   - Get Rogers out for everything, replaced by teksavvy 50M DSL and a
   Usenet account
   - Got  a Channel Mater antenna which feeds into an HDHomerun
   - Ubuntu server running Plex Media Server, TVHeadend, Sickbeard,
   CouchPotato and Deluge
   - Clients are a mix of XBMC and Plex (unfortunately, each has its own
   set of insufferable flaws):
      - The main room is a Win7 PC because it is proxied to get US Netflix,
      Pandora, Hulu, BBC iPlayer as well as Plex Home Theater
      - I have two Pis running RasPlex and OpenELEC (haven't picked between
      them yet)
      - Seriously considering the CuBox <http://cubox-i.com/> to replace
      the Pi's -- less fragile case and built-in IR receivers

Still having problems making the TVheadend PVR work. I've been
experimenting with a few different remotes but haven't yet found one I
completely like.
But generally happy overall, and I'm paying $200 a month less than I used
to.



On 14 December 2013 00:15, Matt Price <moptop99-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 13, 2013 at 7:18 AM, Stewart C. Russell <scruss-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>
> wrote:
> > I've been doing something similar to Richard for the last four years.
> > Here's my setup:
> >
> > * server: a SheevaPlug (could very easily be a Raspberry Pi).
> >
> > * software: Firefly/mt-daapd (this is now unmaintained code, and lots of
> > people have complained about the code quality and produced a variety of
> > half-assed forks, but it's been rock solid for me for a 30,000+ track
> > collection). You want the r1696 nightly, or one of its Debian patched
> > relations. The least half-assed fork is forked-daapd, which adds iPhone
> > remote control but loses mt-daapd's SQL-based smart playlists.
> >
>
> huh.  I hadn't heard of this at all.  And it looks like forked-daapd
> will run on openwrt, so maybe I could just use our router as the main
> media server (wow!).
>
> Has the disadvantage of being itunes-centric.  But as I understand it
> rhythmbox can manage daap, and there's an android app or two I see
>
> > * hardware: ancient Roku SoundBridges. If you can find these used,
> > they're pretty good. They crop up on eBay quite a lot because Roku
> > shipped crappy power supplies that couldn't drive the big VFD displays
> > on the SoundBridge. A new decent PSU can be had for about $10. They do
> > wireless (sorta; the very latest supported G) and wired networking, and
> > have phono, mini-stereo and TOSLINK digital outputs.
> >
> interesting.
>
> > mt-daapd and its variants pretend to be an iTunes shared library. There
> > is lots of software that supports this (curiously, the frequently least
> > compatible is … iTunes. Hmm). I have had little success with DLNA; I
> > don't think devices expect to get 35,000 tracks come at them. My DVD
> > player goes to sleep before it has parsed the whole stream.
> >
> > Transcoding with a Raspberry Pi will be difficult. You should *just* be
> > able to do a single stream from flac → mp3 in real time. Last time I
> > benchmarked it, lame -V2 encoded at 1.3× real time on the Pi. There are
> > no really good fixed-point MP3 encoders, so lightweight ARM chips really
> > struggle.
>
> ok, that's good to know, thanks.
>
> >
> > Many NAS boxes have mt-daapd built in. My Synology one is slowly
> > becoming my main music server, as its dual-core PPC has a little more
> > grunt than an ARM, and it serves tunes just fine. So you may not need a
> > separate server.
>
> ok, neat, thanks
>
> >
> > cheers,
> >  Stewart
> > --
> > The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
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> --
> The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
> TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
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>



-- 
Evan Leibovitch
Toronto Canada

Em: evan at telly dot org
Sk: evanleibovitch
Tw: el56
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