Unfortunately, changing the MPD user to “eugenia”, it would result in an error, MPD telling me that my music folders are not directories (which of course they are). After installing, you must edit the /etc/mpd.conf file and set up directories, and permissions. On the MPD side, you need to first find packages of the latest version, which have some important bug fixes (there’s a third party 0.15.9 package on Launchpad for Ubuntu, for example). Since we’re using the Apple TV as a headless server, we found that if we blindly press the “menu” button three times, and then we long press on the “play” button on its original remote control, this will turn it off. The Remote app let’s you do everything you need to do with the music side of the Apple TV, except rating songs, and turning off the device. Then, you just control it via the iPod Touch or iPhone, or iPad (“Remote” app in the App Store). The Apple TV comes with 160 GB of drive, but hacks exist online to upgrade it. Then, you just sync your iTunes library to it. The Apple TV requires to be connected to a video cable, even if you are only going to use its audio features (otherwise it will fail to start up). You just connect its power, Ethernet or Wi-Fi, audio-out, and a video cable. Installing the Apple TV is fairly simple. In terms of price the Apple TV wins if you must have to buy the various parts from scratch, but the MPD solution wins if you already can put old hardware into good use. If you must buy a cheap netbook, plus an iPod Touch, plus an external sound card that features an S/PDIF port, plus possibly an external hard drive, the price can go up to $600. Price: If you already own an old PC that you can put to good use, and you don’t mind using a PC interface, the price is $0. Any web interface, application, or iPod Touch, or Android phone can remote-control the MPD server. Any old PC that is able to run a modern Linux distro can also do the job, as long as your sound card has a proper line-out (e.g. Output is coming from a USB sound card via Line-Out (not headphones-out). The MPD server runs on a netbook with 160 GB of hard drive in it. Price: $230 for the Apple TV, plus $200 for the iPod Touch, that comes to about $430. iPod Touch is remote-controlling the Apple TV via the Apple “Remote” application. The Apple TV is connected via Ethernet on our main PC, which runs iTunes and syncs the Apple TV occasionally. The Apple TV is simply a headless server, serving music to our Yamaha amplifier and speakers, and is controlled via an iPod Touch. Change albums/artists and scroll through thousands of songs very quickly, just by sitting on your couch!Īfter lots of consideration, the Apple TV and the MPD solutions were closer to what we needed. So the remote control had to be “visual”, like the iPod Touch’s interface. And we don’t want to turn ON our TV to do that either. We don’t want to get up, go close to our appliances, just to view a small screen and change to another artist (e.g. If another PC or server had to be ON, at another part of the house, that was less than ideal: we wanted to be able to turn OFF all the devices used easily and fast (and without having to get up of the couch). The music must be stored in a living room device, for the best “appliance” experience. But none comes close to our needs than Apple TV and MPD. We researched many products, from Boxee running on a PC, to Sonos, to Logitech’s audio line. My husband and I tried to find a solution that will work for us for over 6 months. In this article I’ll try to figure out which one of the two is the best solution for my household’s usage pattern. On the other side of the country, a friend of ours uses the open source MPD solution. We used to use CDs, in a 250 CD-changer device, but the experience was not nearly as good as when dealing with files that have metadata. We don’t use our Apple TV for anything else, not even video (our much more video-capable Sony PS3 bears that task). And when I mean “music entertainment system”, I mean just that. For over 9 months now we use our Apple TV as our music entertainment system in our home.
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