I've been doing a lot of ripping with media center... I have been tagging everything correctly it seems. I also ask it to gt cover art although it hasn't had much luck very often.

Here is an email I sent out to the DIY speaker list where we have been discussing this:

I know it doesn`t support FLAC, but for me, I just had to get started on this and J Rivers seemed to offer everything I needed. I wasn't sure whether to use WM Lossless or APE so I chose APE. I figure I can always convert back to uncompressed and then recompress in another format, however, then I would have to re-tag everything?

You mentioned using an LCD touchscreen. I believe J Rivers MC supports this through support of a Pocket PC or something like that. Of course if you can write your own program... well I can`t do that.

In any case, I realize I would need to get the power supply fan noise down and all fans. I was just wondering if it was possible to make a HTPC with no hard drive because it was 'hooked' to my main computer. Yes I be ingnatant in this area.

>> You seem to have enough reasons for wanting/needing your media live
on the HD. But I'm a bit curious. Usually, people who want the level of sophistication you're looking for, even something as small an incremental improvement as automatic crossfade on audio tracks, are heavy users. Yet you say you're not going to be running this often. If so, is this worth the effort ? It seems like a lot of work (especially the ripping !) for very little in return !? Just wondering ! <<

Well, I am not going to be a resident forever, I have only 1.4 years left of a 5 year residency. So I will have more of a life hopefully soon as a fellow and then attending. In any case, building subwoofers (hopefully full range speakers someday),audio/video/HT, has been a long time hobby and I will do this eventually anyway. I was hoping to build a large dedicated A/V room with a large IB and a room behind the front wall (IB 'enclosure') to also store amps/server, etc... So the point is more like 'when' (at least I hope, because it is hard to take anything at all for granted). Then you wonder about even if you have the money, should you spend it on yourself to that degree... I dunno. But that's another story.

Lou says: >> So in order to keep system noise to a minimum, you need to address the rest of the system noises - mainly case fan(s), cpu fan, power supply fan(s). If you don't do this, moving the drives far away won't give you that large noise improvement you might wish for. If you still think you want to do this, for a simple, small and quiet playback client, consider a mini-itx platform (http://www.mini-itx.com). <<

That is very interesting! I will have to go to www.avsforum.com and see what if the HTPC people are using those. I'm going to read more on that now. I wonder how much they cost? With the requirements to play the new High Def 720p and 1080p being about almost 500 Mb Ram, 256 Mb video Ram, and a 3.0 Ghz processor... whew! I have no doubt I will want to get into a HTPC at some point, just trying to determine if right now is the time. Gotta check my funds also...

Chris

Sent: Friday, January 16, 2004 12:18 AM
To: 'Christian'; 'Louis Lung'; diyspeakers@diyspeakers.net
Subject: RE: [DIY] PC Music and Movie 'server': Terabytes, Man-Hours, Back-up,etc, then comes HD-DVD....

lou said,

> I've been working on a music server for a while now..

I have also been working on a music server project. The "server" portion will be nothing more than a file server. The clinet most likely will be winamp. Why program something when you can use winamp and windows? Or linux and a linux MP3 player.

I will have all of my MP3 stored on a file server. I am not sure how I am going to arrange them. Most likely by either alphabetical or by numerical order as assigned by a database. The database will have all titles and albums in it. I will however write some software to build playlist from the database and some custom search routines to help with the playlists.

The goal is to have a music collection that is at my fingertips. I will then build a PC for the car using an ITX motherboard and 2 160gb HDDs. This machine will store the entire collection for mobile playback. The unit will have a 802.11 card for downloading playlists and new albums. I hope to write a user interface for selecting tracks, albums, or playlists. A small LCD will be used for status display and menu selection. a 4" touchscreen may also be incorporated for menu selection...dunno yet.

=================================

If anybody has any comments to add, I'm still trying to figure out exactly what to do. Does a top of the line HTPC equal or outperform the Sony 7700 Cinematrix with 5 BNC for a CRT projector? I haven't checked on HTPC in a couple years, so I don;t know how much progress has been made. I've heard great things about cards like MyHD for HDTV, etc... but what about a silent HTPC??? What do you think about having the main computer in my bedroom (for now) with about a TB of storage, and then network it to a silent, slimmed down HTPC? I'm not really good with terminolgy when it comes to what is possible and what is not possible with hooking computers together... ????



[This message has been edited by Health Nut (edited 01-16-2004).]

7.1 System