Quote:
Originally Posted by MichaelJHuman 
I have some more info on my attempts to create a server for my music. Being unemployed, I am not going to spend much money on this. All I want is an always on device to serve up music files to my 3900 and present them in an organized way.
There are actually a lot of options that support a DLNA media player such as the RX-V3900. There are programs that would run on your PC. And there are dedicated hardware storage devices (NAS devices,) that support DLNA.
Were I to have about $250 spare cash, I would look at the QNAP TS-109 NAS. This thing looks like it runs Twonky. And Twonky seems to work well. One thing Twonky does, at least the trial version I installed on my macbook, is present a list with entries like 'Artist Index'. It also shows playlists. My guess, is that it does all this by reading my iTunes library files and playlists.
The NAS is nice because it's small, and can be put anywhere where you can connect it to your network. It's not cheap though, $250 does not include a HD you would need to add for your storage drive.
Not having $250 in spare cash, I tried something called free NAS. Free NAS seems pretty cool. It's free, it has UpNp, and it runs on pretty basic PCs. Basically, it's stripped down version of Open BSD. Install it on a PC you are not using, carefully follow their setup guide, and you have a cheap NAS.
The downside to Free NAS is that it does not organization. It will present your music files as it sees them, as a directory hierarchy. It cares nothing about file types, so it will display all files. Based on my experience, it's no different than if you just plugged an external drive into your RX-V3900.
I am thinking that my best current option is to copy my iTunes directory to an external HD. I will then connect that HD to my PC. I would then run Twonky on that PC. I think that would give me what I need. If it's not clear why I don't use Windows Media, it's because Windows Media does not like AAC files, and I have yet to find a way to add that capability to it.
Anyway, hopefully this is not too off topic. I just wanted to share what I have learned while trying to find a cheap media server solution.
I have some more info on my attempts to create a server for my music. Being unemployed, I am not going to spend much money on this. All I want is an always on device to serve up music files to my 3900 and present them in an organized way.
There are actually a lot of options that support a DLNA media player such as the RX-V3900. There are programs that would run on your PC. And there are dedicated hardware storage devices (NAS devices,) that support DLNA.
Were I to have about $250 spare cash, I would look at the QNAP TS-109 NAS. This thing looks like it runs Twonky. And Twonky seems to work well. One thing Twonky does, at least the trial version I installed on my macbook, is present a list with entries like 'Artist Index'. It also shows playlists. My guess, is that it does all this by reading my iTunes library files and playlists.
The NAS is nice because it's small, and can be put anywhere where you can connect it to your network. It's not cheap though, $250 does not include a HD you would need to add for your storage drive.
Not having $250 in spare cash, I tried something called free NAS. Free NAS seems pretty cool. It's free, it has UpNp, and it runs on pretty basic PCs. Basically, it's stripped down version of Open BSD. Install it on a PC you are not using, carefully follow their setup guide, and you have a cheap NAS.
The downside to Free NAS is that it does not organization. It will present your music files as it sees them, as a directory hierarchy. It cares nothing about file types, so it will display all files. Based on my experience, it's no different than if you just plugged an external drive into your RX-V3900.
I am thinking that my best current option is to copy my iTunes directory to an external HD. I will then connect that HD to my PC. I would then run Twonky on that PC. I think that would give me what I need. If it's not clear why I don't use Windows Media, it's because Windows Media does not like AAC files, and I have yet to find a way to add that capability to it.
Anyway, hopefully this is not too off topic. I just wanted to share what I have learned while trying to find a cheap media server solution.
Thats exactly what I have done. I have my iTunes folder on external drive. I have installed tversity on the laptop (runs XP). Not sure if tversity runs on Mac. We have 2 iTunes libraries. My wife's music is encoded in AAC and mine in ALC. Even though tversity is supposed to transcode the ALC to AAC, it doesn't work. Everything shows up on the 3900 as well as the PS3. But both devices can play only the AAC contents. Maybe it can't stream the big ALC files over the network. No idea why it doesn't work. As far as organization, I do get to see the iTunes organization on the devices, which means I can view everything based on artists, albums, etc..
