the walled garden ain't working for me

In short: I've got the music library on the Mac upstairs. I want to play the music in the home theater downstairs. Most of the music is in Apple Lossless format.

I tried routing the music through my Tivo. Turns out to work great for MP3s, but Tivo doesn't support Apple Lossless.

I found a thing called AudioFaucet that seemed like an elegant solution to the problem. It's a Tivo HMO service that hooks into your iTunes database and can directly decode MP3s or can route other content types through AirTunes. Since I've got an Apple Airport Express already, that seemed ideal. It kinda worked, but the AudioFaucet app has a habit of blowing up. It's not stable yet.

Next attempt: maybe I can use a laptop downstairs, via wireless, to grab tunes via iTunes Sharing and spew them back over the wireless to the Airport Express. This turns out to work perfectly for MP3s and even the handful of protected AAC files that I've got. However, no love for Apple Lossless. Nothing happens when you try to play one. (Everything is running the latest iTunes version 7.6.) Google searching turned up a year-old post that describes the same problem. No solution.

I'm toying with buying an Apple TV, since that might work, but it might also suffer the same problem I'm experiencing with iTunes. I could also do regular file system sharing but that's radically slower; I don't want to have to wait for the whole library to be scanned by the laptop before it can start playing.

VNC and such is probably not a winning idea. I'd either want a dedicated client that has all the fancy searching features of iTunes (kinda like iTunes already does for network shares...), or maybe a web thing that would work anywhere. That pretty much knocks out netTunes, but it might still allow for Signal or Sailing Clicker.

So... anybody have any other ideas for what I should try next? Anybody with an Apple TV care to try it with Apple Lossless audio?

Does playing from the upstairs Mac to the Airport Express work? If so, you could use screen sharing from the laptop to control playback, or use an app to control iTunes remotly like the many ones for the iPhone or other possibilities that should also work to any normal web browsing capable device.

Playing from the Mac to the Airport Express, directly, seems to work fine. Of course, to do this properly, I'd have to go get an iPhone, which is much more money than an Apple TV. Since the big TV is down there, it would be awfully nice to have an interface that works through it rather than needing to dork around with some handheld UI.

I don't have one myself, but if nobody else chimes in I can check my folks' Apple TV and see if it works. It should, as it's listed on the Apple site.

I thought that Galleon might support Apple lossless, but it appears to only support mp3s.

It's funny, though. I'm very tempted to enter the walled garden. Believe me, there's plenty I don't like about Apple, but I would love to have an Apple TV of my own. I think that product is fantastic, and I felt that way before the new software upgrade*. I've tried several ways of showing photos to friends, and I've not come across a better way than the Apple TV (which is funny because I find it more of a half-assed function on the iTunes side of things).

*Jobs' keynote made it sound like the entire Apple TV interface was going to be redone. Heh. Really, they've just replaced the main menu with an overlay, moved things around, and added some ITMS features. Once you actually choose an area (like "My Music") it takes you to the exact same area as before. If anything, in featuring the iTunes store options, they've made it more of a pain to get to your own content, by placing it at the bottom of every menu.

I'd still love to have an Apple TV

In general Schneier makes an excellent and thought provoking read...

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/02/lockin.html

If you enjoy this then subscribe to the monthly email.

If your folks have an Apple TV, I'd definitely appreciate if you could do the experiment. Rip a CD in Apple Lossless and verify (a) whether you can get to it via iTunes sharing service, and (b) whether you can get to it via Apple TV.

(All of this would be so much simpler if I'd just stuck with MP3, but no, I wanted a lossless format. Grumble.)

I'd be happy to, but I'm not familiar with the "iTunes sharing service." What's that?

Squeezebox with SqueezeCenter (formerly Slimserver) running on your Mac. It will pick up the music listed in iTunes when you tell it to read from your iTunes DB and it will support Apple Lossless and even AAC as long as it's unprotected.

It's the best for music. The Apple TV would be decent if you're planning to do video. Even then I might still recommend a Squeezebox for the music.

If you've got two computers on the same subnet running iTunes, then they can share music. The server's preferences, under the "Sharing" tab, must enable the sharing. The client just magically sees the server listed as "Shared" on the left of the screen, below "Library" and "Store".

I assume, for lack of any information to the contrary, that this is the same mechanism used by AppleTV to see the music you're sharing from your computer.

iTunes music sharing provides extremely simple access to the music without any of the benefits normally found when using the full iTunes UI (browse and sort by album, etc.)

Apple TV may use the same iTunes sharing but may also create an index of the music locally (on the unit itself) as it seems to have much better browsing and control abilities than using a remote iTunes connection.

Running an instance of SqueezeCenter however, provides a fairly nice web interface to browse and search the music database and control playback on any number of Squeezebox units or software-based SoftSqueeze instances. With much better tag treatment and support that iTunes as well, which can let you make really fancy playlists or selections.

TV-based playback-wise, the Apple TV will probably kill off most of the competition sooner rather than later.

So went out and bought an Apple TV, and sure enough, the problem still happens with Apple Lossless and not other content types. More Google searching found the following discussion thread:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6619589#6619589

If you ask what the dude in this thread and I have in common, it's that we used non-standard tools for encoding our Apple Lossless. Most of mine were ripped by a commercial service (MusicShifter). His were converted from FLAC to Apple Lossless using some third-party tool.

With that as a theory, I found some tunes that I've ripped directly with iTunes versus tunes that were ripped for me by MusicShifter. Sure enough, the ones I ripped myself worked fine.

Okay, easy part done: there's some weird sensitivity to the Apple Lossless file format. Hart part only just beginning: fixing these malformed files!

Thoughts?

Do they playback in iTunes fine? You might be able to "reencode" them, by setting iTunes to encode to Lossless, then selecting the files, going to Advanced menu, and seeing if the "Convert selection to Apple Lossless" works.

Heh, I'm at my folks' place now and I was going to test this for you, but I guess it wouldn't have helped you anyway.

What you're describing is a common annoyance I have with the Apple TV. It's very hard to make a video file that is compatible with it. I even purchased Quicktime Pro and was unable to correctly encode a video that would play on the Apple TV.

That said, I love the device and I really want one of my own. At last count, I've tried about seven different ways to get computer content onto the TV, and none of them have come more than a distant second to the Apple TV. I'm planning to buy one used, upgrade the drive, and enable Divx/Xvid/MKV playback. Then it would be perfect.

Uh huh. Bet that was pretty.


Uh huh. Pretty though isn't it.


Gosh. Now that I didn't expect!!

Seriously? Apple are not letting you use files encoded elsewhere. Why that's not like them at all.

Bet it looks good in the lounge though.


Yes. Once you've sorted this out, please persuade Microsoft to publish their Office XML specification too.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I see people having problems like this with file 'standards'...

Actually given that this community is one of the more intelligent, technically savvy and, wrt this kind of issue, informed groups around - I think I'll cry.


OK, I made up the last quote. (I think.)


PS No offence intended - I just have a problem grasping the 'Doctor, when I hit my head against this wall it hurts' type complaint.

Indeed, it does seem like I was "asking for it" when I decided to go with the walled garden. Here's the latest. According to the MusicShifter customer service person:


That seems to explain what's going on. Before trying dBpowerAmp or whatever, I decided to try drakino's "reencode" idea. Success! Now I just need to start the machine doing a pass across all of its files. Back-of-the-envelope says it will be about a solid day of compute time.

<grin>Well, I'm glad it's working for you now

With the recent trend away from selling DRM music (but still not lossless) then I'm not sure what the future holds for Apple's Lossless format... do you think it's a good investment?

Personally, I use FLAC & mp3 and SqueezeCenter as hybrid8 suggested.

I also think there is work happening on slimserver/Myth integration...

I know Myth is nothing like as sexy/integrated as AppleTV - but if you value freedom/control over style/ease-of-use then it's a interesting alternative. As with so many Linux activities it has a geeky element - but look at how the open aspect of our empegs is still developing and improving years after the company closed. Look at how the closed part isn't

Note that because SlimDevices made slimserver opensource I now run it on 2 Squeezeboxes and on a Rio Receiver thanks to slimrio

Surely with lossless there isn't an issue with investment, they could be fairly easily converted in bulk to FLAC at a later date.

If it was just me, I'd be willing to put up with a fair amount of non-usability. Since my wife also needs to use this, usability matters an awful lot. Right now, that means the walled garden is the place to be.

At this point, I need to decide whether I want to keep the Apple TV or whether I would rather go back to using my Airport Express, which I can now happily drive from a laptop via iTunes sharing from the server upstairs. Bonus for the Apple TV is that it's relatively slick, shows album art, and has all the video features that I may or may not ever use. Minus for the Apple TV is that the search interface is clunky; they really need a proper keyboard. Another minus is that the thing consumes enough power that the case is hot enough to cook on -- and there's no off switch.

Interesting. I haven't found that myself.

I would strongly recommend keeping it. There's a lot to like about it. I'm currently keeping my eye out for a cheap one

Awesome. Thanks for that link.

Mmm.. I'd like to try this, but have a rather fundamental question about it..

I've installed all of the software pieces needed (on Linux), but the obvious question remains unanswered...

HOW DO I TELL IT WHERE MY MUSIC IS LOCATED ?????

It's configured in SlimServer. From the web interface, Settings -> Server Settings -> Basic Settings -> Music Folder

I had the same problem with SlimServer as Mark did, took me ages to find out how to do it

Ahh. It has a webserver?

Okay: netstat -lp | grep perl
tcp 0 0 *:9090 *:* LISTEN 4993/perl
tcp 0 0 *:9000 *:* LISTEN 4993/perl
tcp 0 0 *:3483 *:* LISTEN 4993/perl
udp 0 0 *:3483 *:* 4993/perl
udp 0 0 *:50000 *:* 4993/perl
udp 0 0 *:1900 *:* 4993/perl

One of those, I imagine..

Trying them one at a time now..

Ahh.. got in on port 9000. Of Course!

Cheers

Bitt makes it sound harder than it is

On the home page of your slimserver is a link in the settings section called 'Server Settings'
Clicking that puts up a text entry box labelled "Music Folder".

So 1 click on the homepage, type and press return ???

Granted there is a lot of text on the homepage but it's not *that* complex.

Oh, and do people realise that slimserver is a standard Debian application? Or you can add slimdevices.com to your apt sources.list and use their badged version)

slimrio is cool but I need to make it use a different remote - as it stands it is really hard to change the volume from the front panel. Fortunately we have source; unfortunately I don't have time

Mark, have you seen the comments here: http://empeg.org.uk/slimrio/source.html

oh, webserver:9000
Fair enough

plus after you've used it for a bit you'll realise why Myth should have a plugin that's as simple as slimrio...

Okay, new but closely related concern.

Home music distribution? Check. Home DVD-ISO distribution? Not quite so much. I can certainly rip my DVDs into whatever format is happy on the Tivo and/or Apple TV, but that means no menus (although it's unclear that this is a major issue). I guess there's the home theater PC option (MythTV or otherwise), but that's pricey.

And then there's the Blu-ray question. There are only a few hundred titles available, few of which seem to be of much interest to me. Based on that, I figure I'm in no hurry to buy a Blu-ray player box, particularly if somebody like Apple has something clever up their sleeve as the cost of a hypothetical next-gen Mac mini with a Blu-ray drive is comparable to the price of a higher-end dedicated Blu-ray player. Thoughts?

There's a chance I'll buy a bluray player eventually, but frankly I don't think the format will ever be nearly as big as DVD. I look at how Apple is doing digital distribution of movies and tend to see that as being the future. I've used their system and Netflix's streaming service (on an HTPC), and I have to say I'm hooked. Audio and video quality are slight concerns there, but IMO, the only issue with this technology is the poor selection currently available, and I think that will change (especially for Apple).

My concern with down loadable movies is when I want to watch a movie, it may not be a planned event. With the AppleTV I've got to wait for the movie to download. Or, the time constraints are too much. I may want/need to watch that movie over a two to three day period. I much prefer my own physical copy.

Certainly Apple could give you more than 24 hours to watch a movie rental. They could even go with a Netflix variant, where you're allowed to have N movies on your box at a given time, new ones downloading when you delete the old ones. That's all a matter of business models and, for all I know, stupid business model patents. I imagine that this 24-hour nonsense comes directly from Hollywood.

Sure they could, but as you say, would those in lala land ever let them? I suppose one day we may see the restrictions ease as we are now seeing with DRM free MP3 downloads. I won't be holding my breath though. I dreading the day that all content must be downloaded.

I'm now wondering if we'll ever see region free Bluray discs. That was the one thing that I thought HD-DVD had right. A region free DVD was a nice thing to have when a better version of a film was available outside your local region. I've got a few region 2 DVDs that I'm glad I was able to play here in the USA. Just breaking down the walls of the tread topic here a bit...

Given that rental downloads from Amazon Unbox to my TiVo have the exact same restriction, I'm sure that's the case.

Not long apparently. The movie will begin playing back once enough has been downloaded. Based on my 6mbit connection, I'm usually able to play back a 20 minute TV show about 15 seconds after the download starts on my Mac Mini. I haven't tried a movie rental on it, and HD movies will likely have a bit more of a delay.


239 movies released on blu-ray are region free, while 113 have region coding. (frim http://www.blu-raystats.com/)

I'm glad the format wars for the HD discs appears to be over, as it's the route I want to go, even with rentals. While download services are handy, they are pretty brutal on the quality to get that movie to fit over pitiful US broadband connections.

Linky

HD DVD: Game Over Toshiba, Blu-Ray Wins

Toshiba plans to stop production of HD DVD equipment and cancel all future development. This comes after Wal-Mart announced on Friday that it would no longer carry HD DVD and would only carry Blu-Ray. This should have been expected all along. HD DVD and Blu-Ray are not a radical change over existing DVDs but an incremental improvement. With technology, the bigger improvement generally wins and Blu-Ray’s improvement is bigger.

...or is this old news?

tanstaafl.

It's not old news, just expected after the Warner announcement in January. Kinda hard to prop up a format with only two movie studios backing it.

Still, the zillion dollar question is whether anybody will care. Do consumers really want super-duper high-def video on shiny plastic discs or do they really want super-duper large video libraries of below DVD-quality standard def?

Apple, Tivo, and so forth seem to have the right idea.