My immediate reaction when I was listening to the podcast was to suggest mpd, but then realised it wouldn’t be appropriate because of the lack of out-of-the-box display for the TV. Mpd is for music, that’s all, whereas kodi is a media centre and you’d have to chop most of it’s limbs off before it could just focus on music.
We have mpd running on PIs scattered throughout the house (which also run kodi) and I am thrilled with how well it all works. However, I’m not sure how well mpd would pass the non-technical users test; we are both very techie here.
I did try OpenElec when I was originally setting up all the shared XBMC stuff, but found it was impossible (or, beyond my ability) to get certain things working. OpenElec seems to aim to be an out-of-the-box appliance that your shouldn’t need to customize, so trying to then bang it into a different shaped hole told me that I was using the wrong thing.
Anecdotally, my parents have the Western Digital box that Jono was recommending, and our kodi installation is a far, far better experience. Considerably faster, available on desktops and laptops with the same interface, and although it took this beardless chump a while to get it set up correctly, it all just runs without needing any intervention from me.
I mentioned that you can do so, and indeed I have done so. What that doesn’t do is hide them from remote controls
Yeah. I am, however, leaning in the direction of a trivial SDL-based mpd client running on the Pi and displaying the name of the current song (which I’ve already written for this project)…
Yeah. This was sorta the point I was trying to make: it’s hard to turn kodi into just being a music player. Remote controls won’t do that. Kodi itself does sorta do it, but you always have the feeling that it’s a video player with the video stuff turned off; the way Kodi navigates stuff is a lot less convenient for music than it is for video, etc. (Compare the experience of using a dedicated music-only thing – for example, Spotify – and Kodi’s music thing. It becomes clear that Kodi’s music thing is being hobbled by being a generic browser into which music has been placed.)
But it’s mostly the only game in town, irritatingly, and it’s what most everyone recommends (although Squeezebox has now come up a couple of times, thank you @jeremy). I can’t find the client for squeezebox; there’s the server at Support - Welcome to mysqueezebox.com!, and there are Android remote controls, but the media server doesn’t play the music, right? It’s just a repository which I’d happen to have installed on the same box. So I need the client; perhaps I’m missing something obvious here…
+1 to mpd, it’s amazing and in a lot of ways exactly what you are looking for (except possibly the tv display) but yeah, a bunch fo clients to sift through and if you’re writing a simple one that fulfils your needs (even tho in the review you said there was more beer needed first) please do share it and get it listed on the clients page, I’m sure loads of others will appreciate.
OK. Since squeezebox doesn’t do GUI output, and I don’t want lots of them, I’m not sure what it gives me over mpd. So I have installed mpd on the Pi, tried out about fifteen android remote controls (I think MPD Control is the best one), and written a little full-screen display-what’s-playing thing with pygame, and this all seems to work. Basically, this is the thing that I wrote for myself (dadmusictv) except that I didn’t do all the bluetooth stuff because I’m going to try them controlling it over wifi rather than bluetooth. (If that turns out to be problematic, I can alway fall back to my bluetooth mpd android client that I wrote as part of that project.)
Maybe this suggestion is trivial and too hard for them, however what about a bluetooth mouse and/or a mini keyboard?
IMHO each and every DE dev team is doing that: Gnome 3 is becoming better and better looking with every release - BTW the Gnome 3.16 promo video was simply amazing - KDE Plasma 5 is super stylish and so on.
I suspect that the only reason of that huge media coverage is because eOS team is very good at marketing their stuff - if I’m not mistaken Bryan mentioned this fact on the show.
I wish them all the best because I’m always more than happy to see a Linux project succeeding, however for the time being I will not run eOS or suggest it to anyone.
EDIT: forgot to put in @sil…I just found Clementine remote control Android app:
Btw, an aside on the (sorry, TL;DR to see if anyone else commented about this), I heard casually that the bigger reason for the Fluoride in water (as controversy over whether it helps your teeth/gums) is to help stop the pipes clogging up and blocking from the limescale. Although it doesn’t stop your sink/bath/… suffering (dunno if it would be worse without the fluorine). Anyone debunk this?
You’re joking. The CDC put fluoridation of water higher up on their list of 20th century medical advances than discovering that tobacco was a health hazard. You don’t need other reasons, let alone ones about limescale.
@sil: Have you seen Slice? Mine hasn’t arrived yet so I don’t know whether it can be configured in music-only mode, but it’s Kodi/XMBC underneath. UI is supposed to be one of their differentiating factors, so maybe. And it does come with an extremely simple remote control. (This link may not work if Kickstarter are being dumb; visit here and scroll down.)
@gerv as it happens I had, but I didn’t think of it in connection with this project. (And I was trying to avoid buying anything, as you’ll recall.) It does seem good that people are working on this. I think for this project I almost wanted the opposite; complexity in the remote control (run on a smartphone, show the whole list of songs) and simplicity on screen. Basically, because of searching for a song; if your remote control is simple, typing text is hard…
I’m glade to see that this thread tackles the core issue. The debate should revolve around: Who do you entrust to delegate your decisions to? (fathers are doomed to make emotional decisions - domain experts usually are more rationale)
The media center that I have for my wife is actually quite flexible, although sometimes it can frustrate her to no end. It has an AI (the emphasis is on the A) that tries to determine the selection that she would want to listen to. Sometimes it hits it right, sometimes not. It is also voice controlled. But instead of having her call “SIri” or “Ok Google”, it is activated by “Honey, would you please…”
The only tech I am really looking for this system is perhaps a new turntable and amp.
Chap 1: I reckon my life’s too boring.
Chap 2: Well, you could, y’know, find a hobby.
C1: I think what I’m going to do is start eating broken glass. That sounds like fun,
C2: what? No! Why is that fun? you’ll just hurt yourself!
C1: Nah, man. I’ve heard that, but that’s just knuckling-under-to-the-Man talk. I’m gonna open the door to a whole new cuisine.
C2: seriously? Glass has really sharp edges. You’ll cut your mouth, your oesophagus, and your stomach. None of those things are good. And glass has no nutritional value. You’ll get famous, maybe, three minutes before you get dead.
C1: No way, man! People have eaten glass before. In circuses and stuff. One bloke ate a plane once. And lightbulbs.
C2: I don’t get who you’re trying to impress here.
Thank heavens for that chap who’s willing to challenge the orthodoxy that eating broken glass is a bad idea. All progress depends on the unreasonable man with a lacerated stomach. Fuck that rational guy.
While we’ve finally gotten to the point where the majority of people in every state in the US actually believe climate change is real, we’re still far from accepting that there’s scientific consensus on the issue, which just makes me cry a little.
