ok, first the preliminaries:
Media Center Registered 10.0.127 -- C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center\
Microsoft Windows XP Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
Intel Pentium 4 2388 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 1039 MB, Free - 602 MB
Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2800.1400 / Shell32.dll: 6.00.2800.1233 (xpsp2.030604-1804) / wnaspi32.dll: N/A
Ripping / Drive E: Mode:ModeSecure Type:Auto Speed:Max
Drive F: Mode:Normal Type:Auto Speed:Max
Digital playback: Yes / Use YADB: Yes / Get cover art: No / Calc replay gain: No / Copy volume: 32767
Eject after ripping: Yes / Play sound after ripping: Yes Soundfile: C:\WINDOWS\Media\Windows XP Notify.wav
Burning / Drive E: LITE-ON LTR-52327S Addr: 1:0:0 Speed:8 MaxSpeed:52 BurnProof:Yes
Test mode: No / Eject after writing: Yes / Direct decoding: Yes / Write CD-Text: Yes
Use playback settings: No / Normalization: None
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Now the setup:
I have my media library as .apl files referring to .ape files, one per album. So I fire up the media server on the server comp, go upstairs and fire up media center on the client laptop, find the shared library, play a .apl. So far, so good. Everything to this point works the way I would expect it to.
But what happens (at least here) is when I play .apls from the client laptop there is a loooong pause between tracks. It took some time to figure out why, but what happens is that the media server streams the ENTIRE .ape file to the client before it then uses the .apl to play the appropriate track. I'm loath to call this a bug, because for single track/file music, it works great, because I've tested that. But it is something that would appear to need looked at.
I could set up a second library with just the ape files, but the import media function doesn't let me select file extensions to import, only file types. So I would have to import all of the files, delete out the .apls and fiddle with those. Wasted work and effort.
If there's a workaround to this that I can't find, any help would be appreciated.