A short while ago, I bought a WiFi Radio from BT. Now, don’t get me wrong, I like the simplicity of the design and the audio quality is pretty good… But.
It really doesn’t manage it’s network connection very well, buffering is a little excessive, it can’t cope with large numbers of SMB shares and I want it to be able to do more.
On top of that, I’ve got a PC connected to my TV, which originally was going to be a MythTV box, it worked OK, but I struggled a little, both with the back-end services (the channel guide in particular was a bit of a struggle) and the front-end (I couldn’t make the remote work – my fault entirely for buying without checking it was compatible, and it wasn’t quite unified, so all the TV stuff was in one menu choice, where all DVD and AVI stuff was in another menu, and music was in a third, when really, all the playback should have been under “Play”, all recording should have been under “Recording/Ripping” and the playback screens for each of the media systems was different – I guess as they were all using a different player).
Lastly, I have a pair of DAB radios. I’ve had a few problems with both of these, and I know that my DVB tuner should handle DAB as well.
So, what do I want to do? Merge them all of course!
I’d originally looked at both the Multi-Room systems from both Sony and Philips (the Gigajuke and WACS7500 respectively) but they both have flaws, which are *mostly* solved in MythTV.
I think I want to use EEE-PC (probably 701 or 901s – mostly as I have a “spare” 701, and also a 901 which is my personal laptop) as my remote systems, with the main system being plugged into the TV, as it is at the moment.
Here’s what I want from this system
Must Haves
1) Low profile device2) WiFi
3) Central store of all Media
4) Remote Control (Bluetooth, IR or Wifi)
5) Easy interface
6) Quick powerup Should Haves 1) Stream radio from DAB/Internet to all hosts
2) Auto-rip CD tracks Could Haves 1) Last.FM
2) Bluetooth Proximity Detector for audio up/down and preferences
3) Party Mode (all devices play same stream) and Follow Me (one stream played across multiple devices as move around house)
4) Picture Frame Mode (Play music while pictures are shown – either from a web feed or from local store)
Does anyone have any ideas?
