INTERACT FORUM

More => Old Versions => Media Center 11 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: sleipnir on June 17, 2006, 02:38:20 pm

Title: controlling MediaCenter from another PC
Post by: sleipnir on June 17, 2006, 02:38:20 pm
Hi

Sorry if this question sounds obvious.
I have MediaCenter running on my HTPC, but I want to control it from another PC.

I just tried the MusicLobby way, but I hit a showstopper with the lack of non english characters support in the name/tags of the files. (I have .flac files with Japanese characters in the filename and tags)

Is there another way to do it ?

Thanks for all the answers :)
Title: Re: controlling MediaCenter from another PC
Post by: Rob L on June 18, 2006, 07:29:50 am
What kind of control are you talking about?

Do you mean control what's playing?

You can do that, albeit fairly primitively, using the web-server interface that's built into it...
Title: Re: controlling MediaCenter from another PC
Post by: Jaqqe on June 18, 2006, 07:34:33 am
Something like this: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=28560.0 ?
Title: Re: controlling MediaCenter from another PC
Post by: JimH on June 18, 2006, 09:41:06 am
I have MediaCenter running on my HTPC, but I want to control it from another PC.

I just tried the MusicLobby way, but I hit a showstopper with the lack of non english characters support in the name/tags of the files. (I have .flac files with Japanese characters in the filename and tags)

Is there another way to do it ?
RemoteServer in MC -- configured in Tools/Options/Start  and controlled from a web browser

or

NetRemote, available at www.promixis.com
Title: Re: controlling MediaCenter from another PC
Post by: sleipnir on June 18, 2006, 06:24:08 pm
Thanks for the suggestions :)

As for the kind of control I'm looking for, it's controlling what MediaCenter is playing, like being able to browse through the library, building playlist using user-friendly means (multiple selection + drag'n drop)

I've just tried the 'Remote Server' (I managed to miss this option :) ) and, well.
It's quite crude, and most important of all, the pages aren't displayed in UTF-8 so non american characters aren't displayed correctly, and even then, the characters seems to be wrongly converted way before reaching the browser.
I need a mecanism where all the steps are UTF-8 / UTF-16 friendly

Title: Re: controlling MediaCenter from another PC
Post by: JimH on June 18, 2006, 06:42:11 pm
I've just tried the 'Remote Server' (I managed to miss this option :) ) and, well.
It's quite crude, and most important of all, the pages aren't displayed in UTF-8 so non american characters aren't displayed correctly, and even then, the characters seems to be wrongly converted way before reaching the browser.
They should be, and if you're correct, it's a bug that we'll fix.
Title: Re: controlling MediaCenter from another PC
Post by: sleipnir on June 18, 2006, 08:44:20 pm
If that helps, the folder itself was containing japanese characters (I was using 'File Location' in my library)
Also, this way of using MediaCenter is very unstable.
I always get some kind of crash after a few songs and I need to restart manually MediaCenter, wich defeats the purpose :)

As for the unicode issue, first there's no 'character set' in the html itself (and none in the http headers either) so there's no way the UTF-8 is displayed correctly
And even then, the blasted characters appears like '?'  (%3F) wich looks like a wrong conversion from unicode to something like Windows-1252

Hope that helps


Title: Re: controlling MediaCenter from another PC
Post by: modelmaker on June 19, 2006, 12:16:49 am
I use TightVNC: http://www.tightvnc.org/

Title: Re: controlling MediaCenter from another PC
Post by: JimH on June 19, 2006, 07:02:02 am
You may have a FLAC problem.  Make sure you have the latest plug-ins.  Check the Third Party board here for the FLAC thread by scthom.
Title: Re: controlling MediaCenter from another PC
Post by: sleipnir on June 19, 2006, 01:11:23 pm
I am already using the latest version of the Flac plugin, and it's working very well (all the characters are correctly displayed in MC interface).

Unfortunately, the instabilities of MC when controled by the browser are also present when playing simple mp3 files, so it seems it's not related to flac.
Title: Re: controlling MediaCenter from another PC
Post by: JimH on June 19, 2006, 01:17:14 pm
I don't see a stability problem using remote server.  Are you using any other third party plug-ins?  Audioscrobbler, for example?  Visualizations?

Can you describe how to make MC crash?
Title: Re: controlling MediaCenter from another PC
Post by: sleipnir on June 19, 2006, 03:51:39 pm
Just to make sure, I uninstalled everything, andput the latest build instead.
no 3rd party plugins, just the basic install.
Just using plain mp3, I was able to make MC crash be clicking repeatedly on a file. (with the web interface of course)
Ok, this may look like a stress test, but it's the fastest way I can make it crash.
Otherwise, I was not able to find a pattern yet. It just happens randomly when changing the file to be played.
MC displays some popup message and the music freezes

Are there any logs I can activate to help tracing the problem ?
Title: Re: controlling MediaCenter from another PC
Post by: JimH on June 19, 2006, 04:02:19 pm
OK.  I can duplicate it.  Thanks.  We'll take a look.
Title: Re: controlling MediaCenter from another PC
Post by: sleipnir on June 19, 2006, 05:14:27 pm
I use TightVNC: http://www.tightvnc.org/

Thanks for the suggestion ! :)

What's the difference with VNC ?
I'm already using Remote Desktop for administration / maintenance purpose (and I'm very happy with it), but I don't want to use such things for everyday use. (cause I'm not the only user).
I want the user to just have access to MediaCenter and nothing more.
Title: Re: controlling MediaCenter from another PC
Post by: Matt on June 20, 2006, 02:52:17 pm
Updates Remote Server here:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=34293.0
Title: Re: controlling MediaCenter from another PC
Post by: sleipnir on June 20, 2006, 06:46:55 pm
I just did a fresh install of the latest trial, copied the dll over the original one, and although the first pages loads correctly, everytime I click on a link, MC is crashing with a nasty popup.
So, to sum up, it's worse than before :)