INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => Media Center 11 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: jantypas on April 17, 2006, 07:25:29 pm
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I probably shouldn't have done it, but I bought a Linksys WMB54G music bridge.
The good:
For $80, the sound quality is very good, far better than those 2.4GHz RF senders
It doesn't know a whit about formats -- it just plays whatever the virtual sound card says to -- if your PC can play it, so can the WMB.
The bad:
Linksys always does something "good enough". It just never (at least when I get it), seems to be done.
The software is at best beta. As near as I can tell, it creates a virtual seound card C-Media Wi-Sonic Wireless Audio.
The "application" simply switches that card in and out and sends the "audio" over ethernet or WiFI to the IP address of the device.
The application only lets you seleect ONE AND ONLY ONE device. You can have five bridges in your home, but you can only listen to one unless you buy five PCs.
Given MC isn't as limited as the Linksys software, if I provided a WMB54G
- Given that the GPL code is available on the Linksys site, any chance of supporting this in MC as a zone?
- Can we then do what Linksys tried to do and create a virtual sound driver in MC that lets MC capture any sound output from anything else and send it to zones as input (use MC as a distribution engine).
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We've played with these. You can pick "Connect", leave the device connected and then just create a zone in MC that targets either the Linksys or your regular soundcard.
We're not sure what happens once you try to use two from the same computer, but with one it worked well using MC's zone system.
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Does this mean I can have one zone to my PC's soundcard and a second to the Linksys?
I'm really confused how the Linksys handles a setup with multiple zones. Does it take over all sound output to all Zones?
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Does this mean I can have one zone to my PC's soundcard and a second to the Linksys?
That's right.
I'm really confused how the Linksys handles a setup with multiple zones. Does it take over all sound output to all Zones?
The Linksys doesn't know anything about MC's zones. It just sets up a virtual sound device on your computer and anything sent to that sound device is delivered to the remote Linksys WMB54G device. In MC, if you assign zone 2 for example to the Linksys virtual sound device, all zone 2 output from MC will go to the WMB54G. Actually, I've never used the device but I'm pretty sure this is how it works. :P
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Unfortunately (from this PDF (http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellite?blobcol=urldata&blobheadername1=Content-Type&blobheadername2=Content-Disposition&blobheadervalue1=application%2Fpdf&blobheadervalue2=inline%3B+filename%3Dwmb54g_ug.pdf&blobkey=id&blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobwhere=1130774900225&ssbinary=true)):
Can I listen to music from more than one Music Bridge at the same time?
No, the Music Bridge utility had been designed to connect to one Music Bridge at a time. :'(
-John
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Yes, the Linksys bridge works fine with MC but I do like to see MC supporting this by creating many virtual sound cards that connect to each of the Media Bridge in different zones. This way MC is pushing content to clients a much better solution than those uPnP demons that pull like Roku, MP101.
This will make multizone system with Netremote far better than what sonos offers...
please, MC look in to this and unlock the potential of Linksys media bridge!!!
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Yes, the Linksys bridge works fine with MC but I do like to see MC supporting this by creating many virtual sound cards that connect to each of the Media Bridge in different zones.
From what I understand, the Linksys software creates just one virtual sound device regardless of how many Linksys devices there are, so there is no way for MC to send different zones to different Linksys devices. Now if someone knows a way to hack the Linksys software, or if there's an SDK, you could post that info.
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there is GPL available from Linksys site if that helps, sorry I am not a sw developer.