Control music played on an XP machine with a powerbook?

K

kane

Registered
Hello All,

I've been a PC user since the early 90's but bought myself a Powerbook two weeks ago and absolutely love it!

Problem: My stationary PC (windows XP) has a large archive of mp3 music files and is connected to my stereo system. I would like to be able to control the playback of the music with the Powerbook via my wireless network. In other words, I would like to be able to sit anywhere in my apartment and control the music that is being played on my PC, with the Powerbook.

I have actually accomplished this already by the use of VNC (using "Chicken of the VNC" for mac and running a VNC server on the XP box). However, that solution is not ideal. Firstly, the use of VNC means that no one else can use the XP machine while I'm playing music and secondly, the VNC interface is quite slow due to the protocol used.

Question: Any server-client type of music playback programs out there that would work in my case? The thing is, I need the music to be played on my PC (as that's the computer connected to the stereo) but I want the music playback interface to be viewed on the Powerbook.

I would be most grateful for any advice.

Thanks,
Kane
 
Hi Kane and welcome to the forum.
The most elegant solution would be to get yourself an Airport Express and share your mp3s over the network so you can access them on your powerbook. Then simply use itunes to stream them to your Airport Express which is connected to your hifi.
Another idea: you can stream your shared mp3s to your pc which is playing back the stream and redirect the sound to your hifi. This is the cheaper way. But that would mean your powerbook should be on all the time you need music to playback. And if I got you right, this is not really what you are looking for.
Let me just give you few ideas.
If you have a bluetooth handy, you can remotely control your winamp or media player on your WinXP and don't really need your powerbook. However, if you want your powerbook to be involved, you might want to take a look at rdc (remote desktop client) which is very similar to VNC but I believe much faster. But I am not sure if you have any music playback, once another user logs in (if I understood you right, you wanted the music to playback in the background on let's say User X and allow user Y to log in and work without the music breaking). Check if this works at all..
The more I think about it, streaming makes more sense to me. Check out mediaplayer (for windows and mac) or vlc/vls (for windows and mac). I think one of these allows you to change certain options of the streaming server. You could stream from your windows box and also play it back on your hifi while your powerbook will get the stream (you could skip the sound) and allow few possibilities to control the stream. I was streaming the audio/video from my tv-card plugged in my WinXP box and mediaplayer or vlc/vls allowed me to change the channels. And I think there was an option of changing the streaming files as well.

Ufff, few confusing ideas but I hope one can help you out. ;)
 
Try slimp3 which will allow you to use your XP machine to stream your music to iTunes. Control of what is being played is done through a web page.

Cheers.
 
Thanks guys,

This is how I finally solved it: Downloaded Nicecast, bought it, installed it on the Mac. Installed iTunes on my XP machine. Shared my music directory on my XP machine so that it's accessible from the Mac. Played the music in iTunes on the Mac and use Nicecast to broadcast it to the XP machine where it's picked up by iTunes.

Works great! Only problem is that iTunes seems to have cut off the names of my music files so now they are all much shorter, sometimes you cannot even read the name of the song, just the artist :(

Regards,
Kane
 
well itunes stores the names differently. They should all be displayed in different coloums you cna change / edit the names by (right or controll) clicking on the song and select get info then selscting the info tag at the top and then you can edit the text. Thats how it works on a mac any way I think that its pretty simialr on the PC version though.
 
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