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[bwa]

Hello all.

I need some help to find a way to play media on a MC HT-PC, from a MC Library Server, with a Windows laptop with MC as a Remote Control.

After hours of reading in the wiki I find it very possible, but a guide to actually achieve this is very hard to find ( for me ...)

Here is the setup:

Server : MC 17 with all the media files
HT-PC : MC 17 with Server as a LibraryServer
Laptop : MC 17 act as a remote control to HT-PC.

I have set up the HT-PC with Server as a library server, this works fine. Playback is perfect, but I have to use Windows Remote Desktop to control the HT-PC. Also WebPlay, Gizmo and other client solutions works fine.

But I want to use my laptop with MC 17 as a remote. The reason for this is that I want to create new playlists and sync them back to the LibraryServer, and want to exploit the laptops display resolution.

How can I do this ?

The first thing that confuses me is all these possibilities. Is it zones that I'm supposed to use ? Not not ?
Should I connect to the server library ?
Or to the HT-PC library ?

Please guide me.

/Bjørn-Willy

[JimH]

You could start by setting up a client and server using Library Server.

[bwa]

The HT-PC is now setup with Server (Library Server) and my laptop is loaded with Server (Library Server).

And now I have on my Laptop:

Playing Now
 - Overview
 - Player
 - There
 - There : HT-PC



What is 'There' ?

[JimH]

If the client has loaded the library from the server, "There" is the server itself.  Dragging audio to it will play it there.  I don't know why you have two of them.  Are you perhaps running the server from an older version as well?

[bwa]

Ok, now If I drag tracks from my Laptop to There: HT-PC, the HT-PC is actually playing thye music, but only the first track is played. The other 4 is not played, and I have to manually start playing, and the it stops again after that track, even if it's more in the queue.

If I see on the HT-PC MC, only one track is on the playlist (Player). That explains, maybe. And the track on the HT-PC is mp3, even if I dragged a FLAC file to it. Any clue ?

[JimH]

You may have loaded the DLNA library by mistake.

Close both sides and start again.  On the client, the server library will show up under Playing Now.  Select it (not the DLNA library) and load it. 

[bwa]

Now I'm getting confused.

In this setup there is three devices: Server, HT-PC and Laptop. All these three devices has a Media Network (Server?) config, and a Client Options (when connected to a Library Server). It gives me 6 possible configs, so when you are referring to 'On the Client..', which of these possible places are you meaning ?

[bwa]

Aha ....

Now I seems to get it working.....

I just did the following:

On The HT-PC I load 'Server' as a Library Server, and on the 'Laptop' I load 'HT-PC' as a Library Server. And now I can play music 'There' and it's semms to be snappy and fine. I kind of serial coupling....

The problem I had was that I loaded 'Server' as the Library server instead of HT-PC as the Library server on the Laptop. And that probably tried to force the Server to remote play music on the HT-PC. Which actually seems to work, but is slow, and probably has a bug that does not send the whole playlist from the Server to the HT-PC.

And that is my point in : http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=75568.0

The documentation need to have some use cases or other kind of telling how it's supposed to work... I didn't get the whole picture ...

/Bjørn-Willy

[csimon]

I think this seems to imply that:

If you have a server PC that holds a central library
and you have one or more client PCs (HTPCs) that connect to the server PC to use as a remote library
and you have another device acting as a remote control (either another PC or a tablet/phone)

THEN it's best to connect the remote to the client and pull data from the server, rather than connecting to the server and pushing data to the client.

Does that sound like a reasonable conclusion?

[bwa]

regarding : "THEN it's best to connect the remote to the client and pull data from the server, rather than connecting to the server and pushing data to the client."

'to the client' can be 2 devices here, so you have to be spesific of whicjdevice is the client in your statement ...

/bwa

[csimon]

The client is the HTPC where you want the music to play, as opposed to the server that is holding the library.

[bwa]

Then I completly agree.

The HTPC is a Library client of Server. And the Laptop is a Library client of HTPC.

[csimon]

I was using the term "remote" to clarify the role of the laptop and the question was whether it's best to connect the remote to the server or the client. In other words, whether it's best to make the laptop a client of the server PC where the library resides and push data to the HTPC, or the HTPC where you want music to play and pull data from the server.

[bwa]

My experience was that the push type of doing it, did not work flawwlessly and also was very slow.