Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[benn600]

Does anyone have a good solution to accessing your media from a portable laptop?  My laptop only has a 60GB drive so I can't store all my music in FLAC or even MP3 because it would take way too much of the small drive.  Does anyone have any ideas on how I could access MC over the internet?  I would really like it if I could open MC and connect to MC at home and then stream MP3's.  Better yet, MC would send small thumbnails so it didn't have to download the entire jpg and create a thumbnail itself--taking more processing power (battery) and internet speed which I don't have.  My upload on my DSL is 1Mb so that should handle good quality MP3's.

addition: It would be really neat if you could add a feature where you'd port forward a port to your MC server computer and then from MC, you'd have to manually enter the IP or domain of your home internet connection and then require a strong password to connect, obviously with read only abilities--but allow the user to specify if remote users can rate songs, etc.. or if play counts increase--basically give some options that are allowed to an authenticated user--nothing allowed to non authenticated.

[zxsix]

It does exactly this.  I listen at work all the time via my home system.
You'll need to go into the plugins area in the MC tree and into the Library Server item.  Select what port you want it to use and click the Start button.

Of course you'll need to forward that port on your firewall to the IP address of the PC with Media Center running.

Media Center will need to be left running on that client machine.

Media Center version will need to match between the client and server.  i.e. make sure both are running build 12.0.99.
Don't upgrade one without upgrading the other.


You should have no trouble doing this.  Post up if you can't figure it out, I'll be able to offer better step-by-step clues after I get home from work.

[benn600]

I never read the Library Manager pane to see you can enter domains or IP's!  Sorry about that.

However, I still can't connect.  Perhaps my school network blocks certain ports?  Is there a way I can scan for open ports I can use?  I have entered the ports I've tried into Smoothwall and I still can't connect.  Any ideas?

This will be SO cool!

[benn600]

It works with port 80 but I run a web server so I can't leave it like that.  How can I find ports I can use?

[benn600]

It seems to be streaming FLAC and not converting the files to MP3 like I set.  They take a very long time to buffer and show a large bitrate of 900 or so.

Addition: Nevermind...looks like I have to set to reencode on the client end.  That's a better solution anyway!

[zxsix]

Yep, client side determines whether downsampling is required or not.
Sounds like you're all set!

[benn600]

Not for the port issue.  My school seems to block a lot of ports I think.  Few questions:

1) Is there a web site I can go to that will let me scan outgoing ports?  I know a lot for checking if you are secured by a firewall and look for incoming, but I need to know what ports are available outgoing.
2) If all that is open is port 80, what do you guys recommend?  I run a web server on port 80 so I can't really use that.
3) The cover art takes a while to receive so I'm betting MC sends the entire jpg file.  Does it for sure and if so, I'd like to request that it only send a small thumbnail which would be generated at the server, lowering bandwidth requirement.

[johnnyboy]

Use port 21 - ftp standard port - its probably open.
Otherwise try port 8080 - proxy port - might be open to.
Otherwise try 110 - email port.
125 - email again.

one should work

[benn600]

8080 works great!  Thanks a lot!

Cover art takes a long time to load.  Can I suggest that you add a feature where MC would send, from the server end, low resolution prepared thumbnails so it could quickly get thumbnails to the client end since sending the full thumbnails I use takes a very long time at about 1MB per album.  800MB takes a very long time!

[zxsix]

Just let it sit for a while and do the coverart the first time.
It gets cached and future connections won't take very long at all.

[Doof]

Or just, you know... for this purpose, not display cover art?

[benn600]

But how do you disable the really small thumbnails next to each song?  If defaults to Album view but that may be because I have the server on that view.  I'll switch to panes and then is there a way to disable the really small thumbnails (icons)?

But still, the cover art scrolling in Album view and theater view is what really shows off MC's power!  And when I'm away is the most likely time others will see it and buy MC.  Good marketing!

[dcwebman]

But how do you disable the really small thumbnails next to each song?  If defaults to Album view but that may be because I have the server on that view.  I'll switch to panes and then is there a way to disable the really small thumbnails (icons)?

Can't you customize your view do remove the "Image (small thumbnail)" column?