Hi,

I'd like to build an htpc for music more than films. Is a touchscreen case my only option for navigating through music without switching on the tv? Are there any other alternatives?

Thanks

Drew

You can use something like a Nokia 770 and point it to a web interface you'd set up to browse.

Bryan

A wi-fi or bluetooth enabled PDA or old laptop can be used as a handy portable "front end" for many of the popular media players, hardware or software based. Even many newer "cell phones" as Bryan suggests can do the same, although with smaller more cumbersome screens. (I suspect an i-Phone with its scrollable touch screen would be an excellent if expensive solution.)

For example we use a venerable old Audiotron in the HT rack to play music off the house network and a NAS drive in the closet. The device itself has a simple 2 line display, not very useful. But you can see the device and manipulate its playlists, choose by artist/album/genre etc using its onboard "web" interface, either with just an instance of IE or Opera or name your favorite browser, or with third party apps like Javatron. Right now we use an old laptop to drive it, but are looking at a used Palm PDA to go smaller.

Similar "remote" front ends are available for WinAmp (a popular media player), and probably for Windows Media, Real Audio, I-Tunes too. Once you've decided which media player you'll use in the HTPC, you'll probably find a lot of both free and for sale software front ends for it.

I know it can be a bit daunting because of the huge number of highly technical posts, but there is some good reading on this kind of project in the AVS HTPC threads: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=26

Mike