by rbziggy on Mon May 30, 2005 3:12 pm
Actually, re-reading the original post, I'm not quite sure what you are wanting to do...
If you just want to CONTROL the server from another device (PC or PPC) but all the playback (i.e. output from - say - the soundcards to an amp or HDTV) is from the server pc itself, then use the thin client setup as described above.
On the other hand, if you want to play music from the second device itself (i.e. a PC in the living room pulling MP3s across the network from a hard drive on another PC - or net storage device and then outputting from its soundcard to an amp or active speakers directly), then you will need a full copy of xlobby running. Here, when you setup the database, you should map it to the drive holding the music on the network - a shared drive. In this case, it shouldn't be a problem pulling MP3s across a wired or wireless network and you dont need a (particularly) powerful PC or hard drive to run on locally. However, I would suggest you invest in a decent amount of memory as XLobby does tend to use quite a bit (It seems to consume around 350-400Mb on my setup.) With 256Mb I found things rather slow. An upgrade to 1Gb (prob 512Mb would have been ok) made things fly nicely.
The difference between the two above is that in the first you have the speaker cable running from centrally held playback equipment (a central hub or 'node 0') to speakers (plus a local controller) in each room. In the second case, all the playback equipment is distributed in each room with just a run of network cable (or a wireless network link) running back to a central storage device. Two different approaches. With XLobby you can actually do either or (if you want to) mix and match and do both at once.
Hope this helps.
I finally was able to put together a pretty stable client comp for my living room. I have my main htpc system which is in my room and holds all my music, dvds, and the like. It's all outputed to my hdtv. What I would like to do, is run a client in the living room hooked up to my 7" touchscreen lcd. Whats the best way to do this? The system doesnt have a huge hd, 10 gigs or something, and I'de want it to run offa the htpc in my bedrooms database. The system will not be playing dvds or anything, just music. It will be setup to the network of course, and like I said, I dont want it for anything other then playing music in the living room. Throw me a bone and help me set this sucker up! Thanks guys and gals!