Simple browser control for media player?

[foxt]

I've been looking for a simple way to expand my HA setup beyond lighting control, and into playing media. I've read enough about JRMC, Main/MusicLobby, etc, to know that eventually I need to start climbing the steep media curve on these (like alot of things in HA, sometimes the documentation leaves alot to be desired, and I find myself leaning on places like cocoontech to learn from others). I like what John Wilson did with his Now Playing solution, and would probably go that way, but the learning curve for girder, netremote, etc is a bit daunting.

In the meantime, I thought a simple little first step would be to set up a media player on my HA PC (runs homeseer), import my music library, hook up a receiver to the audio out, set up a simple IR receiver/blaster so that I can use the stereo's remote to control the receiver, and off I go. Next step would be to enable a web browser front-end for the media player running on the HA PC so that I could select tracks, etc from any pc on my network. From there, I would start consolidating things like the stereo remote into the solution, etc. Someday

I'm stuck on my simple little first step, more specifically the web browser step. I didn't want to bite the bullet and go with a media player client-server approach to start with, I simply thought it would be cleaner to bring up a web page on the remote pc's without having to bother with installing clients, etc. I am willing to give up feature/function for now, I just wanted to get started! Despite a bit of searching, I'm coming up empty-handed on a simple solution for this. I thought I read somewhere the JRMC supported a web server (remote server?) but I haven't been able to find much detail on that. Can someone point me in the right direction? I can net out my question: what are my options for media players that support broswer-based control from the network, without requiring a client-server solution?

 

[TonyNo]

I've been using Winamp with the Browseamp plugin for years. I started out just using that, then augmented that with additional control via PowerHome.

 

[foxt]

I've been using Winamp with the Browseamp plugin for years. I started out just using that, then augmented that with additional control via PowerHome.

Thanks, that was a helpful pointer. Have you written your own skins at this point? I'll have to learn how to do that and was looking for some tips ....

 

[TonyNo]

I have. They should be on the Browseamp site or in the forum. There are also several others to choose from.

 

[eufreka]

...I'm stuck on my simple little first step, more specifically the web browser step. I didn't want to bite the bullet and go with a media player client-server approach to start with, I simply thought it would be cleaner to bring up a web page on the remote pc's without having to bother with installing clients, etc....

Just checking, but are you familiar with Slim Devices? (SlimServer/SqueezeCenter/SoftSqueeze)?

 

[pete]

have a look at Jinzora . . mostly offered as a steamer, but can play to the local machine's sound card too.

and it's free . .

Pete C

 

[Chakara]

Several years ago I bought Andromeda ($20 US) and am still happy with it. Extremely simple to set up and use - works as advertised. lets you build playlists, etc etc. Just drop the PHP/ASP file into the directory with your media - point your web server at that directory and you are off.


http://www.turnstyle.com/andromeda/

That said, Jinzora looks like a nice product as well!

 

[foxt]

Thanks for the responses. Andromeda, SlimDevices, Jinzora, all interesting options. I'll have to do my due diligence on these.

Please forgive the noob question, are any (or all?) of these easily interfaced to something like homeseer or cqc? Ultimately, I want to fire up a browser on any pc on my network, choose a track (or playlist) to play from a media library on my media server (which will be hardwired to a single stereo receiver/audio zone to start with, but will expand to multiple zones *someday*), have control software recognize that a request has been made to play, power on the receiver via IR, play the selection, and then power down the receiver after some predefined idle time past the end of the selection.

I can imagine (or hope) that this is a common type of setup, so maybe I can even build on something someone has already created (which would probably drive my SW selection).

 

[IVB]

There is a CQC driver for Slim Server. I know some folks have integrated the Slingbox using a CQC Web Widget (basically, an embedded browser).

Here's an example of how a web widget would look - the cameras are actually a webpage, everything else is inside CQC. Instead of pointing to the cameras, you'd just point it at the Slingbox web server.

 

[TonyNo]

The down-side to Winamp/Browseamp is no library access per se. Not that I would use it. I can access the current playlist, which is good enough for me.

Here's my current (in a constant state of flux) integration with PowerHome...

 

[johnoc]

Have you checked out the Media Player plug-in for Homeseer? You can access that via the normal HS webserver, or the Maestro interface to Media Player or ITunes is also an option if you already have HS...